Johnson May Run As A Libertarian

You may not know it, but former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is running for president. The Republican has been a declared candidate for some time now, but his campaign has been unable to get any traction at all. That's because he gets almost no media coverage, has not been included in most polls taken, and has been excluded from almost all of the Republican debates. Supporters of Ron Paul have complained that Paul gets less coverage than other Republican candidates (and that's true), but Paul has gotten a lot more coverage than Gary Johnson has.

And that lack of recognition that he even exists has killed Johnson's campaign. Most Republican voters have never heard of him, and if he is lucky enough to be included in a poll he only gets about 1% support. He has gone as far as writing to the Republican National Committee (RNC) to ask that they help get him into the debates still being held. They turned him down. They said they had to have "standards", and he didn't meet those standards.

But while Johnson may have been tilting at windmills, he's not a complete fool. He knows that with the primary season kicking off in about six weeks, he has no chance of getting the Republican nomination. But that does not mean he has given up his presidential aspirations.

Steve Terrell of The New Mexican is reporting that Johnson is now considering running on the Libertarian Party ticket. That would get him on the ballot in all 50 states. Johnson says he has had feelers from the Libertarian Party. That party currently has nine candidates seeking their nomination (which won't be determined until summer of 2012), and Johnson is not one of those nine. However, he says he thinks he would have a good chance of getting that nomination.

I don't know if he could get the Libertarian nod, but he's obviously got a better chance of that than the Republicans have given him.