Libertarian VP Candidate Spike Cohen Rallies Wichita Supporters Amidst a Hostile Electoral System
Monday, Aug. 24 – Wichita, Kansas
It is another hot August day in Kansas; a good day to be inside. But a crowd gathers in the (sadly only proverbial) shadow of the Keeper of the Plains to welcome Spike Cohen, the vice-presidential candidate of the third largest political party in the United States of America. If elections were the Olympics, the Libertarian Party would proudly climb on the medals stand every four years with a bronze medal around its neck. But in American politics, third place is almost always a distant finish.
“You can look around the country and see state or local legislative races where a third party or minority party candidate have won, but they are rare,” says Friends University political science professor (and Wichita Story columnist) Russell Arben Fox, “And the examples of them winning at a higher level…there is no evidence that could ever happen. The number of votes necessary to move the Electoral College in the direction of someone other than a Republican or Democrat are nonexistent,” he continues.
But hope springs eternal. Among the nearly 100 people in attendance are true believers like Rebekka Poole, a transplant to Wichita from Garden City.
“I grew up in a libertarian family and I’m very impressed with the candidate we have this year, so I’m out here supporting them,” she says.
That candidate is Spike Cohen, a 38 year old entrepreneur from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and the Robin to presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s Batman. In the Libertarian Party, vice-presidential candidates are selected at the party convention in a vote that is separate from the presidential nomination. Thus, the vice-presidential and presidential candidates may or may not be political allies before the general election race. Though Cohen’s candidacy was not associated with Jorgensen in the primaries, his remarks are full of praise for the party’s nominee. As he makes the case for her, he can’t help but include a jab at the major party nominees:
“Jo Jorgensen, a woman that you don’t have to worry about if she’ll pass her cognitive test,” Cohen says.
Before the Libertarian Party convention, Cohen was associated with the perennial candidate Vermin Supreme, a performance artist noted for wearing a boot on his head. There is no evidence at this event in Wichita of the tongue-in-cheek campaign promises involving free ponies and time-travel that marked Cohen’s primary campaign. Since then, Cohen has emphasized the satirical nature of that effort, one designed to draw attention to his campaign so he can then have a platform to promote the libertarian cause.
In Poole’s view that cause is bolstered by Cohen.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had someone young to represent the party. It’s nice to see some fresh faces. A lot of them are my parents age or older,” she says.
Though it is uncommon for an individual to encounter the open carrying of long guns in public, it no longer shocks the way it might once have. Images or video of armed civilians at political protests have become ubiquitous on social media. But if one were to imagine a place where the open display of firearms would rise beyond the mere “unsurprising” to just plain “expected,” it might be a gathering of libertarians. About 10 percent of the people in attendance are exercising their right to openly carry firearms, including 26 year old Jourdan Roberts. Her weapon of choice is an AR-15.
“I built it myself. … It’s nothing special, but the fact that I did it myself, I feel a lot of accomplishment there,” she says.
Her motivation for bringing the gun?
“To just show everybody else. I mean, look around! We’re pro-gun, pro-self-defense, pro-freedom,” she says.
Like Poole, Roberts is an enthusiastic libertarian. She directs her ire toward the two major parties’ support of the criminal justice system’s prosecution of victimless crimes.
“I think Trump has overreached by far. … Joe Biden has enforced the police state for 37 years or so. Why would him becoming president now make a difference? It would just be more bans and regulation…more people going to jail for not doing shit to other people,” Roberts says.
Besides Spike Cohen, speakers at the event included Mike Golden, founder of “Fire It Up Kansas,” an organization that, unsurprisingly, advocates for marijuana legalization, Kansas 33rd House district Libertarian candidate Rick Parsons, 103rd district candidate LJ Hermreck Jr., and the chair of the Kansas Libertarian Party, Ned Kelley. The libertarians at the event express particular interest in decreasing the size of the government and the extent of its regulation, which might well excite conservatives. Cohen’s stump speech also contains red meat for the Left, mixed in with sharp barbs aimed at Joe Biden.
“Name a bad policy: the war on drugs, endless wars, the military-industrial complex, the school to prison pipeline, police brutality…name a policy that you hate…Obamacare. Name each policy and Joe Biden has either written it, sponsored it, voted for it, or overseen it in the White House. This is a man who is one of the architects of every bad policy to come out of government for nearly 50 years, when he hasn’t been busy sniffing children and making women feel uncomfortable in front of cameras,” Cohen says.
Cohen expertly spreads around the criticism across both slates of mainstream party candidates.
“It makes perfect sense that one of the architects of the militarized police state would choose as his running mate one of its most brutal enforcers: Kamala Harris, a woman who has locked up more people at the state level than any other person alive. Kamala Harris, someone who, at least twice, withheld exonerating evidence in capital murder cases. And why? So it wouldn’t mess up her conviction record,” Cohen says. He continues, “Donald Trump, a life-long crony, who has used the power of government to enrich himself at the expense of everyone else, even widowers who didn’t want to give away their land he’d use to build another casino. Donald Trump, who said he’d drain the swamp, only to become the king of the swamp creatures.”
Not everyone here is a convinced true believer. 66 year old Richard Swisher of Wichita rejects both Biden and Trump, but has yet to decide what candidate he can positively endorse.
“It might be Jorgensen-Cohen. I don’t know,” he says.
Swisher is concerned that neither major party is committed to protecting civil liberties, an issue that is very important to him.
“Both the Republicans and Democrats sometimes meander down that road, because of the issue of the day, want to take a freedom away. I consider myself middle of the road. I’m conservative on fiscal issues and a little more liberal on social issues. Nobody seems to address how I feel, nationally,” he says.
Professor Fox is skeptical that voters like Swisher will end up voting for a third party.
“We know that the overwhelming majority of people who say, ‘I’m going to vote independent or third party,’ do one of two things: a) they don’t actually vote; or b) they cave and vote for a Republican or a Democrat,” Professor Fox says.
Every four years, supporters of the major parties exert pressure on undecided voters to avoid the third parties out of fear that those votes will hurt their respective candidate. This year is no exception. The popular belief this year is that votes for the Libertarian candidate will make it more likely that President Trump will be reelected. The message from many Democrats is that a vote for Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen is a vote for Donald Trump.
“There are a handful of states where the polling suggests it will be close. In those states, like Ohio or Florida, there is a good argument to be made that if you are voting primarily because you are in opposition to Trump and you are choosing to voice that opposition through a third party candidate, and you live in one of these swing states, by not voting for Biden, you have voted for Trump, even if you voted for a third party candidate. And the reason is that your vote could have gone to the anti-Trump candidate that actually had a chance of winning and you didn’t do that,”Professor Fox says.
But for voters in states like Kansas, Oklahoma, California or Vermont, it’s a different story.
“…I would be hard-pressed saying to somebody [in Kansas] who wanted to vote for the Libertarian candidate, ‘Oh, you are helping to elect Trump.’ Because they’re not. They live in a state that’s going to give their Electoral College votes to Trump,” Professor Fox says.
Libertarians bristle at the arguments about the consequences of their vote.
“I’ve never appreciated it. It’s a bully tactic. We’re supposed to live in this free country where we get to vote for who we want to lead us. Our founding fathers didn’t mean for this to become a two-party system. Honestly, throwing my vote toward a third party solidifies that…The only way we can get there is to vote third party,” Poole says.
Swisher agrees.
“…The only way I can make a statement is to add a vote to all those that aren’t voting for either party,” he says.
Though the American electoral system makes it next to impossible for a third party to succeed, the Libertarian Party continues to push forward with candidates in elections across the country at various levels of government and power. It is a quixotic quest. But from Spike Cohen’s perspective, it is not a wasted vote.
“A wasted vote is voting for the same people and the same parties that created all of these problems and who every single election cycle, say, ‘…I’ve got to apologize. I know I created all these problems, but if you give me one more chance, in this election cycle, I swear that this time, I’m going to fix all these problems that I’m still actively working to make worse, as we speak. But if you vote for me one more time, all that ends.’ … That’s wasting your vote,” Cohen says.