Libertarian candidate for Florida Governor 2014 Adrian Wyllie

[OrlandoChris]

None of those were by winning elections. They were all appointed to those positions.

Have any LP candidates ever in history won any statewide elections?

YES.

Gary Johnson, Governor of New Mexico

Jesse Ventura (even though not pure Libertarian) Governor of Minnesota.

Many other state positions by Libertarians, throughout the country.

The Libertarian party is the 3rd largest political party in the country, very close to being larger than the Republican party.

 

[CPUd]

Gary Johnson was elected as a Republican.

 

[OrlandoChris]

Thank you erowe1.
I have a friend that lives in his area that can vote for him and of course will. I can't because I'm in Orlando, but I certainly am cheering him on. The Jolly guy is NOT good at all and needs to be booted out for sure. Go Overby!!

 

[OrlandoChris]

Ron Paul ran on the Republican ticket. I think if you ask him he will say he is a Libertarian.

 

[OrlandoChris]

I agree with you on abortion. I don't like it either and would never do it, but it is one of those issues that can't be stopped by writing a law. We can outright ban abortion and it will still happen, just in more dangerous and hazardous conditions. Same as the war on drugs, a law will not stop it, so why throw massive amounts of money to something that is a huge failure? We have to come to a point of recognizing some things are purely individual choice and laws won't change it a bit, other than creating more problems and sucking more money from us in the meantime.

 

[erowe1]

YES.

Gary Johnson, Governor of New Mexico

Jesse Ventura (even though not pure Libertarian) Governor of Minnesota.

Many other state positions by Libertarians, throughout the country.

The Libertarian party is the 3rd largest political party in the country, very close to being larger than the Republican party.

So your "yes" is really a no. Gotcha.

 

[R.G]

We're all waiting with bated breath to see how this works out for you. Keep us posted.

erowe1, of course I will. I will tell you what happened. I told Lucas that our Senator Marco Rubio, some say a 2016 Presidential candidate, has on his website that he supports tax-free HSAs and that he wants to let insurance companies sell across state lines. Then I told Lucus that I talked to Marco's healthcare policy czar and said, "Hey, I can set under a palm tree here in Tampa Bay and sell to 43 states with one company, TIME Insurance Company, America's oldest health insurance company, by using my laptop. So what do you mean about selling across state lines? Of course Marco's czar didn't have a clue." Then Lucas gave me the answer, which I already knew, but it blew me away that Lucas did! This Lucas is a policy wonk!! Something you erowe1 are not, that's for sure.

I also talked to Andrew today for the 1st TIME, he runs Florida for TIME Insurance and their 3,000 agent's in the Sunshine State, and he was too easy to talk to. I just called Milwaukee and left a voice mail that said, "I enrolled America's 1st tax-free MSA with TIME would you please call me." BOOM, Andrew called me back pronto. You see at TIME, Assurant Health to most people, they know the tax-free HSA is a big deal with their 200,000 agents appointed across the USA. Andrew is 29 years old and I taught him stuff today that somebody else should have taught him already. That's the way those corporate guys are though.

When the Liberals said that the tax-free HSA was only for rich people the Bush Administration shot back, "Assurant Health reports that 40% of HSAs had no previous health insurance." That shut up those Liberals, that's for sure. You see erowe1, this is a coast to coast deal. I need a guy in DC and Lucas might work.

 

[erowe1]

Something you erowe1 are not, that's for sure

How do you know? And why does it matter?

 

[Wooden Indian]

That's great Wooden Indian - I'm in Tampa Bay, where do you live?

Just outside of Tampa, neighbor. lol

 

[helmuth_hubener]

It's not fair to say that somebody appointed to the New Hampshire liquor commission has won a statewide election.

That is why I did not say it. They won a "race". There was some sort of contest, some sort of selection criteria, and they won that contest and thereby succeeded in being a statewide official. The NH governor could have picked anyone to be on his efficiency commission, and the person he picked, the person who won the race called "get the governor to pick me" was John Babiarz. And, since I know you love this sort of insufferable technicality harping, I will mention that of course one could synonymously say that the winner of the race got the governor to elect him.

The Libertarian party is... very close to being larger than the Republican party.

Inaccurate.

 

[R.G]

Just outside of Tampa, neighbor. lol

Nice, so you are here where it's safe. Those Floridians 4 hours to the east are on the hurricane coast.

When we take over with the Governor's Election where do you want to celebrate? I like Capt'n Jacks in Tarpon Springs - because it's so close to drive home. I won't be moving back to Iowa any time soon. Snows till June there.

 

[R.G]

How do you know? And why does it matter?

How do I know you are not talking policy or a candidate's position on issues? Because you don't, maybe you will in the future.

Why does it matter that you don't discuss a candidate's position on issues? It doesn't matter to you. You want to talk about history of other Libertarian candidates, as if that matters.

 

[R.G]

Democrats are swarming in Florida today trying to win this Governors race. Bring'n in the big guns.

DEMOCRATS OVER THE MOON

Then a Republican U.S. Senate candidate (incumbent Democrat Bob Graham cleaned his clock that year), Crist called on Clinton to step down because he (Clinton) had “shattered the confidence and trust of the American people…the best thing he could do for the country would be to step down from the office of president.” So, who says Charlie has always been wrong?

Crist was crooning a different tune when announcing the Clinton visit this week. “President Clinton’s been fighting on the front lines for years on the issues we care about: equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage, expanding health care to everyone who needs it, and making sure that everyone has a fair shot at success. He’s better than anyone at explaining why what we're doing matters. I’m looking forward to kicking off the final two months of this campaign with him.”

Another slick pivot and dismount by the most fluid politician in the lower 48.

No one should be surprised that Charlie has changed his mind about Clinton. He’s changed his mind about everything else, so why should he not evolve on Billy-Bob? And surely Crist recognizes a soul mate in Slick Willie. Perhaps these two old hustlers, after rousing and shaking down the marks on Friday, can reminisce about the bad-old days. They’re a matched pair. They’re both so slick you could make rides of them at a water park. They’re both so oily, if either of them campaign in your home you’ll have to get the carpets cleaned afterward.

 

[R.G]

Who is Adrian Wyllie?
BY MARGIE MENZELTHE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
TALLAHASSEE – Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Adrian Wyllie has just completed a statewide tour of 30 brew pubs, discussing issues over craft beer. His campaign accepts Bitcoin. In other words, he’s running a vastly different campaign than Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic former Gov. Charlie Crist.

Adrian Wyllie, right, selects insurance professional Greg Roe as his lieutenant governor pick. The campaign’s brew pub tours around the state have attracted a lot of attention.
(COURTESY OF WYLLIEFORGOVERNOR.COM)
​

But a July poll by Quinnipiac University showed Wyllie with 9 percent of the vote in a three-way race, while Crist got 39 percent and Scott had 37 percent.
“Virtually no one knows much about Wyllie, but there are a lot of Floridians who aren’t keen on either of the major party candidates,” Peter Brown, the poll’s assistant director, said at the time.
A few facts
Wyllie lives in Palm Harbor. He and his wife, Dawn, have been married 22 years and have two sons. He attended Dunedin High School and served in the U.S. Army and Florida National Guard.
A small-business owner, Wyllie is president of an IT consulting firm and co-founder of the 1787 Radio Network, which calls itself “Florida’s Voice of Liberty.” He’s also been chairman of the Libertarian Party of Florida.
The News Service of Florida has the following questions for Adrian Wyllie:
On Common Core
Q: You’ve said if elected, you’ll fight to repeal Common Core. Talk about why.
WYLLIE: Well, I firmly believe in the United States Constitution. And the federal government only has the authority to do those things which are specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Education is not one of them. Education is the realm of the state and local government. And one of the problems I see with the Common Core curriculum is that it’s coming down from upon high. And parents and teachers and students lose input when that happens.
Right now, it’s very easy for someone to get their school board member on the phone and tell them their concerns or make suggestions about curriculum. But with Common Core, everything is being flowed down from the national level, and it really takes away the local community’s ability to steer the direction of their local schools.
So my objective is to repeal Common Core and to give local school boards more authority over the curriculum and the course of their schools. And also work to ensure that the funding is directed locally to the correct places. Right now we’re spending a ton of money on education, and it’s not making it to the classrooms. We need to fix that.
On cronyism
Q: You’re also running against cronyism. But you’ve only raised about $62,000, while Scott and his supporters are on track to raise $100 million and Crist about half that. Is it possible to be elected governor without contributions from cronies who’ll expect a return?
WYLLIE: (Laughs.) The reason that you see such a large gap in fundraising between our campaign and the campaigns of Scott and Crist is exactly because of the cronyism.
We don’t have special interests or large corporations trying to buy favors from us because they know that we’re not going to be granting those special favors. We’re not going to be granting those single-source no-bid contracts at three times the market value. That’s the kind of influence that the big-money campaign financing buys. And we’re not for sale.
Yes, that is one of my highest priorities: to go after the cronyism, to go after the corruption and the waste and, in a lot of cases, fraud. And that’s how we can cut the state budget. We are very pro-business, but we’re not pro-business in the way that Republicans or Democrats think of it. They think of it as giving special favors to the corporations that came to the table. We think of it as leveling the playing field for everyone and making sure that nobody has any special barriers to entry or hurdles in their way – but by the same token, making sure no businesses have any special advantages. That’s the difference in the Libertarian free-market concept.
On personal liberty
Q: You’re also against intrusive government. Both your opponents have been governor – how would you rate their records in terms of respect for personal liberty?
WYLLIE: Horrendous. We’ve seen over both these administrations a growing encroachment in our individual freedom. We’ve seen it in the decimation of the Fourth Amendment here in the state of Florida. We’ve seen it to some degree in the seeming increase in the militarization of our local law enforcement.
We’ve seen it in the form of REAL ID (federal identification law) and government delving into our medical records to do things like prevent people from owning firearms or prevent people from potentially using a certain type of drug.
And it really has to stop. We have to stop being afraid, and we have to stand up for our freedoms, because if we continue down this path, we’re going to lose many of them forever.
On winning the race
Q: Growing numbers of independent voters, disgusted with the tone of the campaign, low turnout in a mid-year election – are you feeling you could win an unprecedented share of the vote?
WYLLIE: Oh, absolutely. I wouldn’t be in this race if I didn’t think that we had a legitimate shot to win this election. Is it a long shot? Yes. But I do believe that we have a chance to get to that 33.4 percent that it will take to win. In the mainstream polls, I’m currently polling anywhere between four and nine percent. However, our internal polling data puts us at around 15 percent.
I think what a lot of the pollsters are not taking into account is the influx of people who are not your typical super-voters or not even your typical likely voters. There’s a lot of things that are going to be drawing people to the polls this November. One of them, for instance, is Amendment 2 (a proposal to legalize medical marijuana) being on the ballot. We know that is going to be energizing, specifically, a base of young people that in no way, shape or form have any interest in voting for Crist or Scott.
So I would say that our realistic standings right now are somewhere in the teens. So that’s what we’re looking at. And if we can continue to build that momentum, which we have been, and with a solid debate performance, I really think we can change the course of this election – and we can win.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Cool, good interview. Thanks!

 

[Anti-Neocon]

With growing discontent with the two-party system and Congressional approval ratings at rock bottom, this could be the perfect storm to getting some 3rd party candidates elected. I don't know if a Libertarian in the state of Florida is exactly the guy who's going to do it, but his loss is a self-fulfilling prophecy if the actual libertarians who can help are defeatists from the start. If I was in Florida, I'd be trying to help this guy's campaign out, at least by word of mouth, not trying to shut down his supporters.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

His supporters here made some ill-advised, over-the-top, clearly unrealistic statements. It was predictable that the experienced, knowledgeable, and truth-loving crowd at RPF would shoot down those statements.

Had they come and, say, posted the interview at post 94 as the opening post instead, this thread would have gone very differently. Because he actually is polling remarkably high for a gubernatorial candidate. If Wyllie got 9%, it would be huge! An astounding success! And if he got even more? 15% would be a bomb shell. Ed Thompson in Wisconsin got 10% and changed the outcome of the race; changed Wisconsin politics.

If Wyllie gets 10%, which is in my sober and calm opinion entirely possible, that would be a wonderful thing and a big victory. And in Florida, no less!

So yes, this is an excellent campaign for us to support. It would be good if R.G. and OrlandoChris were honest with themselves and with others, however, about the actual chances of winning. Acknowledge, like Wyllie, that winning is a long shot. But realize also that even getting 10% would be a great victory and very exciting.

 

[Anti-Neocon]

I'm pretty sure that there are certain posters here who have a conflict of interest here regarding their ties to the GOP, so I doubt how they presented the guy would've made much of a difference. I prefer the GOP strategy over the LP strategy too myself, but I really think the 3rd party strategy can work on some fronts if libertarian and libertarian-leaners stop looking at it as being futile, which may actually be a bigger obstacle to overcome than getting media exposure and the like.

 

[R.G]

His supporters here made some ill-advised, over-the-top, clearly unrealistic statements. It was predictable that the experienced, knowledgeable, and truth-loving crowd at RPF would shoot down those statements.

Had they come and, say, posted the interview at post 94 as the opening post instead, this thread would have gone very differently. Because he actually is polling remarkably high for a gubernatorial candidate. If Wyllie got 9%, it would be huge! An astounding success! And if he got even more? 15% would be a bomb shell. Ed Thompson in Wisconsin got 10% and changed the outcome of the race; changed Wisconsin politics.

If Wyllie gets 10%, which is in my sober and calm opinion entirely possible, that would be a wonderful thing and a big victory. And in Florida, no less!

So yes, this is an excellent campaign for us to support. It would be good if R.G. and OrlandoChris were honest with themselves and with others, however, about the actual chances of winning. Acknowledge, like Wyllie, that winning is a long shot. But realize also that even getting 10% would be a great victory and very exciting.

I just saw this interview today and had it posted in 12 minutes. But you are right, we have to get Wyllie to be a bit more confident. I have a team of people doing opposition research and my team can't understand how anybody could lose to the clueless Rick Scott and Charlie Crist. You should see all the stuff we have uncovered, it's mind boggling. I just got off the phone with Greg Roe, Wyllie's running mate and insurance agent, and informed him on the newest thing today.

I will explain to you. In 2008 Governor Crist dumped $1 million into a corporation to go into competition with the private sector selling insurance. So they have been spending money hand over fist for 6 years now. Paying this babe $120,000 per year to run it. Rick Scott has taken over and keeps dumping more money into this goofy program that after 6 years has sold 37 discount dental plans and 7 of those have cancelled. So after millions of dollars they have 30 discount dental plans that cost $9 a month each. But, it's totally against the law, I kid you not and can prove it to you. First of all, I know the law. At the link below click on - Insurance Plans - and then click on the green button that says - Join Now - go down to the bottom above TERMS AND CONDITIONS - and tell me what it says. When my guy Lee told me he had me rolling on the floor with laughter. You should hear the whole story.

Florida Health Insurance Marketplace

 

[R.G]

Lee just sent me this email addressed to me and Greg Roe:

Well to summarize, they have spent over $1,000,000 to design a website to sell insurance that isn't insurance. The target market is people between 100% to 138% of the federal poverty level who do not qualify for Medicaid or Federal tax credits. In the last 30 days they have had over 900,000 advertised impressions with over 300,000 people reached with over 5,000 paid clicks that resulted in 0 sales. They have 0 actual insurance products available on a non-functioning website that is costing $1,500 a month to maintain. The only products available are vision and dental discount programs that are sold by an agency in Frisco Texas. They have 30 active policies on the books generating an income of about $8 a month with cash in the bank in excess of $1,000,000. Someone needs to stop these people before they waste another $1,000,000 of tax payers money!

How on earth did Crist or Scott even win a primary let alone a general election is beyond me. If Wyllie loses we have no one to blame but ourselves. The incompetence or corruption of these two are bewildering.