Bill Richardson might get little attention in the media (except for an ocassional scandal) but he is attracting interest among one group–libertarians. I’ve already seen favorable mention of him at several left-libertarian sites, and now this interest has been noticed by the mainstream media. Liz Mair of The New York Sun reviews the top Democratic candidates from a libertarian perspective and isn’t impressed. She argues that this is a mistake:
This is a surprising oversight on the part of Democrats because, according to the libertarian Cato Institute, Democrats have made real gains in attracting the support of libertarian voters in recent years, partially as the result of good candidate-recruitment out West and partially because the Republican Party has done so much to trash its reputation for fiscal responsibility.
Whereas the roughly 13% of the American electorate that could be described as libertarian supported George W. Bush over Al Gore by 72% to 20% percent in 2000, by 2004, Mr. Bush’s margin among these voters had dropped to just 59% to 38% over Senator Kerry.
More significantly, according to Cato, between the 2002 and 2006 mid-term elections, libertarian voters went from favoring Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 47 percentage points to favoring them by just 23 percentage points. In other words, Democrats are winning in part because they’ve been gaining ground with libertarians.
While Mair isn’t happy with the front runners, there is one candidate that interests her: (more…)
