With the presidential election less than a month away, candidates from the Libertarian Party were in Mississippi over the weekend to try to reach more voters in a state that has never elected a Libertarian to a statewide position much less to represent it in the Oval Office.
Mike ter Maat, the running mate of Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver, stopped at the Mississippi State Fair in Jackson before heading south to Cruisin’ the Coast, an annual car show held in 12 cities along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. While spreading the word about another option on the ballot – outside of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump – ter Maat said many residents were all ears when it came to hearing about a pair of candidates not on the traditional left-right political scale.
“It was wonderful. We were shaking hands, passing out literature, and learning that a lot of Mississippians have a Libertarian streak in them,” ter Maat said.
A former White House financial economist turned police officer in Florida, ter Maat has been a registered Libertarian for decades and even ran unsuccessfully during a special Congressional election in his home state in January 2022. His potential boss, the younger Oliver, is known mostly for garnering a couple of points that same year to force Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock into a runoff for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia.
Together, Oliver and ter Maat are running on an idea that centers around downsizing the federal government, limiting government overreach on all levels, and trusting individuals and businesses with self-regulation.
“As Libertarians, we believe in a government that stands for your civil liberties but does very little else,” ter Maat explained. “We don’t expect much from our government, we don’t ask much of our government, and we prefer that the government do a better job of leaving us alone.”
Ter Maat said two specific examples in which Mississippians he spoke to connected with were the state government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal government’s handling of international affairs such as military aid.
“We’re the party that would stand up in 2020 and 2021 for your right to decide on your own whether you wanted to be vaccinated, wear a mask, or shut down your business,” he said. “We believe Mississippians would have been better off making most of those decisions by themselves.
“It was also interesting to find that a lot of Mississippians agree with us that we need a foreign policy that’s less militaristic and less interventionalist.”
Other platform ideas Oliver and ter Maat are running on include an elimination of foreign tariffs, free markets to further encourage practices such as fracking and nuclear, acceleration of legal vetting on the southern border, and implementation of term limits in Congress.
The Libertarian Party will be on the ballot in 48 states – including Mississippi – come Nov. 5. The only states in which Oliver and ter Maat will not be available to voters are New York and Illinois.
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