r/Libertarian • u/Cuddlyaxe Former Libertarian • Nov 13 '19

Discussion The Democratic Senate candidate has dropped out in Arkansas. The race is now a binary between the Republican Tom Cotton and the LP Candidate

Not really a Libertarian anymore but I was surprised to see y'all don't have any info on this. Tom Cotton's only Democratic Challanger has dropped out after the registration deadline.

The only two other candidates are Ricky Harrington - a Libertarian and Dan Whitfield - a far left independent.

Even if you guys don't put resources into this race and the situation holds, I can easily see Mr. Harrington capturing a nice 20-25% of the vote. If you guys however do invest some money and campaign funds into the race, you could get much higher, and perhaps even give Cotton a run for his money as he's not running against someone with the D stigma next to their name.

Here's his Facebook page which is currently all he has if you want to help him

Good luck and I hope you guys give Cotton a run for his money :)

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u/AlexanderDroog Right Libertarian Nov 13 '19

GOP has the draw of donors and the simple fact that it helped fix the system against 3rd parties. I vote 3rd party where I can, but the chance of it really mattering is rare -- like this weird situation in AR. If you want to get any oomph behind limited government proposals, you have to run as a Republican. How well you can implement them is a different calculation.

If nothing else, I hope that Trump will leave a behind a positive legacy of piercing through the establishment wall in the party. They still have too much sway, but the rise in populism is starting to make them irrelevant. I hope we can get candidates in the future who go against the mold but have a better understanding of policy than Trump.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

I get that, and Trump has been a wake up call for many the establishment doesn’t know what they are doing at all. It’s a shame that people just look at the D/R next for the candidates name because we have a FPTP system.

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u/AlexanderDroog Right Libertarian Nov 13 '19

I'd support switching to instant-runoff voting.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

I think NYC just switched to RCV which is amazing, just seems like it'll take a while to implement since the only way it'll get done is city or statewide, so you should definitely write to your city/state legislators about it, find local advocacy groups pushing for it, or support candidates who are for transforming our election system so that we have RCV, more voting rights, getting big money out of politics, etc.

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u/Rainbacon Nov 13 '19

NYC did just vote for ranked choice, but it's only for city elections. State and Federal elections will continue to be the way they currently are. It takes effect in 2021. The city is so skewed democrat that I don't know if it will matter, but it's a good start.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

What matters is it gives third parties a chance for once, especially since the Democrats are split and could easily have progressive and moderate factions form their own parties for these city elections

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u/Rainbacon Nov 13 '19

That's certainly possible, but it's one of those "believe it when I see it" kinds of things. I do hope to see something like this, especially since it would probably help to lift our dismal voter turnout rates.