SPOILER OR NON-ENTITY? Rep. Justin Amash, a Michigan congressman who changed his party affiliation from Republican to independent last summer, reportedly is mulling a Libertarian presidential run.
Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a billionaire investor who appears on TV's Shark Tank, suggested last week that he might seek the presidency as an independent candidate.
Is he serious, or suffering from COVID cabin fever? You be the judge.
In 2016, Cuban played footsie with #nevertrumpers desperately in search of a third-party candidate to keep Donald Trump out of the White House (eventually, he endorsed Hillary Clinton, but only after he'd previously endorsed Trump, calling the developer's unorthodox campaign "probably the best thing to happen to politics in a long, long time" — and joking that he'd be available as a running mate).
A year later, Cuban said he'd run as a third-party candidate 2020 if, Shark Tank-style, he could sell the idea to his spouse. Cuban also suggested he'd do so with a Republican appeal ("socially a centrist . . . but very fiscally conservative").
Why's Cuban making noise now, with the election only six-plus months away? Simple: he and Trump are frenemies in the best of times — and in these worst of times he thinks there's a leadership void in the nation's capital.
Cuban's toying with a third-party run does raise the question of potential spoilers in the 2020 election. That in turn, leads to the question of whether Justin Amash, the Republican-turned-independent congressman from Michigan, will seek the Libertarian Party's nomination.
In mid-April, Amash said he's mulling a bid. However, the clock is ticking on that decision, as the Libertarian convention is scheduled to begin, on May 21, in Austin, Texas.
What affect would an Amash candidacy have on the race?
Fans of disruption might point to a poll from nearly a year ago showing Amash collecting 10% of his home-state vote, with Joe Biden leading Trump by six points (45%-395). Curiously, without Amash among the choice, the same survey had Biden ahead by 12 points.
However, this poll from just a month ago has more sobering news for the possible Libertarian standard-bearer: nationally, Amash received just 1% support (with or without his presence in the race, Biden enjoyed a four-point lead over Trump).
Still, even a 1% performance in Michigan is worth noting given the 2016 results in that state — Trump winning by 10,704 votes, a difference of 0.23% (the narrowest margin of victory in the history of Michigan presidential votes). In that election, 1% of the statewide tally equaled nearly 48,000 votes — a number topped by both Libertarian Gary Johnson (172,136 votes) and the Green Party's Jill Stein (51,463 votes).
But that's not the only state where the third-party take was larger than Trump's or Hillary Clinton's margins of victory. In Minnesota, Clinton was the victor by almost 45,000 votes; Johnson, the Libertarian, received nearly 113,000 votes. Clinton also carried New Hampshire by a little over 2,700 votes; Johnson received nearly 31,000 votes.
Other states impacted by the Libertarian include two that, like Michigan, are pivotal to Trump's re-election chances: Wisconsin (Trump prevailed by 22,748 votes; Johnson received nearly 106,700 votes); and Pennsylvania (Trump won by almost 44,300 votes; Johnson received 146,715 votes). By the way, reverse those states' outcomes — handing Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan to Trump, while depriving Clinton of Minnesota and New Hampshire — and he still wins the election, albeit with a razor-thin 274 electoral votes.
Of course, that's predicated on the notion that libertarian voters are monolithic either in their dislike of Democrats who are too progressive or Republicans who aren't sufficiently skeptical of government interference in everyday life.
In this regard, 2016 was the stuff of academic debates with no clear resolution. The narrative that the third-party delivered the election to Trump isn't provable. Yes, Jill Stein's run complicated matters for Clinton in the Upper Midwest. But if one were to assume that every Green Party vote otherwise would have gone to Clinton, how then to read the impact of Johnson's stronger Libertarian showing? Running on a platform more Republican than Democratic in its substance, he received three times more votes that Stein.
As for the Libertarian impact in 2020, we'll have a better read on it a month from now, after the party has held its convention (or some COVID-acceptable version depending on Texas' willingness to allow large assemblies).
Maybe Amash seeks the nomination and gets it. Or, the nod goes to a different Libertarian hopeful — say, Dan Berhman, a video producer, software engineer and self-professed "digital nomad" running his campaign out of Cancun, Mexico.
Berhman's slogan: "taxation is theft."
Which comes as welcome relief from the insistence that third-party candidacies "stole" the last election in Trump's favor.
Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.