Experienced Libertarian ticket becomes a tough sell in Orlando
By David Weigel
May 28 at 12:42 PM
ORLANDO — Upstairs, Bill Weld was the presumptive vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, powering through interview after interview. Downstairs, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts found himself arguing about whether Mexico was a threat to the economic life of the United States.
“We can’t allow Mexico to continue to be dysfunctional and pass on the costs to us,” said a Libertarian delegate from Arizona.
Weld, who would have been ambassador to Mexico had antiabortion Republicans not rejected him, waited out the lecture. He paused for a picture with a camera-challenged delegate — “I can only hold this smile for 45 minutes” — then offered his solution.
“What they really need is to extend the highways,” said Weld, “to get the traffic going more easily further south.”
It was not every day that a Libertarian candidate talked about building superhighways. “The Birchers are paranoid about that,” said Ernest Hancock, another Arizona activist.
“The Birchers? They do?” asked Weld, miming the act of folding up a piece of paper. “Oh, I’d better hide this newsletter!”
Just one week ago, Weld agreed to join former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson on the Libertarian Party’s ticket. The likely nomination of unpopular major-party candidates had already spiked interest in the 40-year-old party: A chart displayed to delegates showed Web searches on the party quintupling after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) conceded the Republican race to Donald Trump. The Weld-Johnson ticket, socially liberal and economically conservative, looked to offer a historic challenge to the two-party system. But first, the ticket has to get through the Libertarian Party’s weekend gauntlet.
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