Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Nominee Stumps For Ticket In New Hampshire: Watch
CONCORD, NH — The Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee was campaigning in New Hampshire this week, attending the annual Porcfest Freedom Festival and stopping in Concord before heading to Pennsylvania.
Mike ter Maat, a former Florida police officer, professor, and economist in President George H.W. Bush’s administration, was nominated by the party on the second ballot last month. He placed third during five rounds of voting for the presidential nomination. Chase Oliver, a former Senate candidate from Georgia, eventually won the nomination for president on the seventh ballot. Both former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at the party’s convention, making a play for their voters. RFK Jr. was eliminated in the first round of voting.
ter Maat said he was campaigning to support the ticket in places where he could meet the most people and discuss the campaign’s libertarian values. Earlier this month, ter Maat was in Georgia; he headed to Pennsylvania after stopping in Concord. Next month, he’ll be in Nevada. Some of the issues the ticket was promoting were changes to monetary policy, addressing the massive federal government debt, police reform with a market solution, and drug reform. He said he was pleased by the response at Porcfest, which is not surprising since it is a libertarian-Free State Project event.
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After earning several degrees, ter Maat worked in the private sector and took a police exam in 1989 but “put it off, put it off, put it off.” He was an economist for the White House in the late 1980s through 1992. He also worked on the Bush’s reelection campaign, he said, when he was an active Republican. ter Maat also formed a private company and worked as a professor.
At 49, ter Maat attended the police academy while living in Florida and was an officer with the Hallandale Police Department. He said it was something he always wanted to do as a child and while growing up, even if, later in life, some of his beliefs did not fit in with each law or things he personally considered “stupid.” Hallandale, where he spent 12 years before retirement, was a good agency, he said.
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“I’ve always been a big believer in public service,” he said. “Police work, done right, of course, is very consistent with what we, as libertarians, believe the government should be allowed to do and no more. It’s what we expect from government — to keep us safe and protect our liberty and protect our rights, from each other, but also government agencies themselves.”
The city, ter Maat said, had a separate vice unit and traffic unit, so he did not have to deal with drug cases or write ticket quotas to raise the city revenue. He called it “an excellent experience” in a busy county.
One issue ter Maat and the campaign are facing is the rejection last week of Oliver by the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.
In a tersely worded press release, which did not mention him by name, state party officials said they were rejecting his nomination and a national strategy by the party to compete across 50 states.
“Many of us believe this so strongly that we moved to New Hampshire from other states as part of the Free State movement,” the June 14 statement said. “We believe our strategy for concentrating libertarians in New Hampshire to be the course most likely to achieve liberty in our lifetime and that, given the present disposition of the Nation, a national strategy is wholly inadequate to that task.”
Oliver was also chastised for not acting very libertarian by cheering critical race theory and “other divisive ideologies,” refusing to debate or engage with anyone who disagrees with his “progressive ideology and, instead, just calls them racists or bigots,” and someone who “supported restrictions on speech, our party and our members have faced job losses, harassment, and deplatforming for advancing the values of liberty.” He was also criticized for having a masked and distanced Thanksgiving dinner in 2020 instead of rejecting the coronavirus lockdowns and subservience. Officials said Oliver was not someone they would want as a neighbor and, therefore, could not support him.
ter Maat, however, said he thought party members, supporters, and leaders were coming together to support the ticket, and he saw some of that support at Porcfest this week. Like any party or primary, activists have their favorite candidates and fight to win. But, at the end of the day, ter Maat fully expected the state party and its activists to back him and Oliver and gain ballot access in the Granite State.
“I’m really gratified to see that,” he said.
While there is a pretty good chance the Libertarian Party ticket will not win the 2024 election, ter Maat hoped they could “interrupt politics as usual” and put both major political parties on notice. He said the parties should not “blithely disregard” the party’s ideas, ethics, or voters. ter Maat hoped the attention commanded by the party, whether via votes or another metric and say, “Wow, I better take that into consideration; I better adjust my attitude, my policies … we want to force them to take into consideration libertarianism.” He said libertarianism was, at its core, embedded in American political thought and belief. It was not just governance principals, “but principals that drive our culture” or have traditionally.
“Change the way they do business,” he said.
Ultimately, getting Libertarians elected nationally was the first focus, “but that is obviously a lift. But it’s not impossible.” ter Maat said a tipping point would need to be reached. RFK Jr., he said, was coming close to that point where people were or had to pay attention to him.
The media, too, was playing into the problems of the nation, creating a divide between the supporters of the major parties and profiting from it, he said.
ter Maat said voters should know they have a third choice on the ballot in November and that the candidates align with their values and principles. Most Americans, he said, at one point in their lives, supported Democrats or Republicans. But both parties had abandoned their cores and gone in different directions. Republicans once believed in free trade, free markets, fiscal conservativism, and deregulated businesses, he said, while most Democrats supported free speech, civil liberties, and some sense of social liberalism.
“It’s important to recognize that if you believe in those principals, in those goals, your natural home is the Libertarian Party,” ter Maat said.
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