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Libertarian says he's sure of party's success this year
Two percent of vote will guarantee them a spot on the 2012 ballot
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Published: March 25, 2008
RALEIGH
Mike Munger is running for governor as a Libertarian, and he says he's confident in a victory.
It's all a matter of defining victory in the right terms.
"I'm going to win," Munger, a political scientist at Duke University, said last week. "All it takes to win is to get 2 percent."
Two percent of the popular vote in a general election might not sound impressive. But for North Carolina's Libertarian Party -- long hampered by some of the most restrictive ballot-access laws in the nation -- it would be a turning point.
If the party gets 2 percent of the vote in the 2008 governor's race, it will be guaranteed a spot on the 2012 ballot without having to petition for it.This year, and in the past, the party has had to collect tens of thousands of signatures to get on the ballot -- a long, expensive endeavor that Munger said makes it impossible for Libertarians to compete with the two major parties.
Munger, who is the chairman of Duke's political-science department, has never run for public office, and his ideology is difficult to pin down. He has been a Republican most of his life, and he said he expects to take votes away from the Republican candidate. But his support of same-sex marriage and a moratorium on the death penalty would appeal to many liberals.
"The Democrats in North Carolina are what the Republicans usually are, and the Republicans are the Taliban," Munger said, with characteristic brashness. "They look to scripture to decide what their positions should be."
Ballot access is Munger's main concern. This year, while the four Republicans and two major Democrats running for governor traveled the state for campaign functions and debates, Munger and other Libertarians have been carrying around clipboards to collect people's signatures.
They need to obtain about 70,000 signatures to get on the ballot in November. But because every signature must be verified by the State Board of Elections, the party estimates it actually needs to collect 100,000 signatures to make sure that there are enough valid ones.
After months of work and nearly $200,000 spent on the petition drive, the party is just a few thousand signatures short of its goal.
"It means that we will arrive breathless at the starting line," Munger said. "All the fundraising that I've done has just gone right down that rat hole."
Libertarians have long complained that North Carolina is one of the toughest states in the nation for third parties. Most other states require far fewer signatures to get on the ballot.
The establishment parties defend North Carolina's system.
"From my perspective," said Jerry Meek, the chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party, "whenever you have a plurality electoral system like we have, where the person with the most votes prevails, third parties simply have the tendency to distort the electoral process in ways that don't adequately represent the wishes of the voters."
Meek cited the Ralph Nader effect in the 2000 presidential election that many observers believe tilted the election to George W. Bush.
But Munger said he believes that limits on ballot access are inherently undemocratic, jokingly comparing North Carolina to Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
"I'm very worried that George Bush is going to try to invade North Carolina to restore democracy," he said.
In 2005, the Libertarian Party (later joined by the Green Party) filed a lawsuit trying to overturn state laws that regulate political parties. The lawsuit is still pending.
State legislators -- all of whom are either Democrats or Republicans -- have been reluctant to ease ballot access for other parties. In 2006, however, legislators did lower one hurdle.
They changed the number of votes that a third party must receive in order to hold onto a spot on the ballot. Under the previous law, a party had to receive 10 percent of the vote in the race for governor or president to remain on the ballot four years later.
That threshold was changed to 2 percent, and it gives Munger and other Libertarians hope that 2008 could be a landmark year.
Four years ago, the Libertarian candidate for governor, Barbara Howe, received 1.5 percent.
The last time a Libertarian candidate for governor received more than 2 percent was in 1992, when Scott McLaughlin got 4 percent of the vote.
If Munger reaches his goal of 2 percent, he says he believes that the Libertarian Party will be well positioned for 2012.
With an automatic spot on the ballot, the party will be able to concentrate on recruiting candidates for numerous races and running a strong campaign from the start.
"If we get over that 2 percent threshold, we can change the tenor of politics," he said.
n James Romoser can be reached at 919-210-6794 or at
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