This Presidential Candidate Wants You to Be Able to Get an Abortion and Buy a Rocket Launcher
Meet Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party’s 2024 candidate who says he’s no “spoiler”
September 10, 2024
Chase Oliver is not everybody’s cup of tea. The 39-year-old presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party has ideas that are by turns attractive, and grotesque, to nearly anyone on the traditional, left-right political spectrum.
Libertarians want to radically downsize the federal government and entrust individuals (and corporations) with self-regulation, believing that the magic of the marketplace will resolve prickly problems of racial discrimination, air pollution, and corporate greed — perhaps with an occasional assist from the courts. This belief system leads Oliver to political positions that cut against the partisan grain, supporting both abortion rights and unchecked gun rights, or calling for an end to both the Environmental Protection Agency and mandatory minimum sentences.
The hardline economic conservatism of Libertarians tends to draw more crossover from GOP-aligned voters, particularly small-government types who are discontent with MAGA populism. Trump was roundly booed when he spoke at the Libertarian convention in May. Oliver has secured a place on the ballot in about 45 states, including every significant swing state — positioning him as a potential spoiler. This is particularly true in his home state of Georgia, where Oliver is better known to voters, having previously run for Senate in 2022, helping force the Raphael Warnock/Herschel Walker contest into a runoff.The video player is currently playing an ad.
Rolling Stone spoke to Oliver at length on Monday. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.
You’re not going to be on the debate stage, but give us your opening statement.
First and foremost, the two-party system is broken. One of the reasons why so many people are so dissatisfied with our political system is the lack of choice. That leads us to further division and further polarization.
Unlike my two opponents, who focus on using the power of government to solve the problems — which ends up creating more problems — or using the power of government to push their viewpoints onto others, Libertarians are different. We seek to reduce the power of government and empower individual people to make their own choices in life, with regards to the education their kids receive and the medical choices they make. We want to remove government’s impact on our lives as much as possible.
At the end of the day, if you’re not hurting anybody, your life should be your life. Your body should be your body, your business should be your business, and your property should be your property. Not mine, and not the federal government’s. So if I were on that debate stage, I would be showing that we can have a very different path that leads us away from partisanship and polarization, and towards a future that’s filled with possibility and prosperity.
Why is Trump the wrong guy, from your perspective?
Look at his governing style, which is quite erratic, and chaotic. This is because he doesn’t stand on any one principled position. The last idea that gets whispered into his ear is the next idea that Trump comes up with. This is why you have erratic foreign policy. And you have economic protectionism. Take these tariffs, which he claims are a tax on China or others. The truth is that tariffs will always be a tax on the American consumer and the American businesses. I cannot stand somebody who makes false promises. Trump promised he was going to cut the debt in half in eight years. In his four years, he ran the deficits up more than any other president in a four year period. He is inherently dishonest. And that’s not good in a leader.
And why, in your perspective, is Kamala Harris’s vision not right for America?
I find much of Kamala Harris’ economic policies to be backward thinking. Things like price controls, which will always inevitably lead to shortages.
She’s talking about outlawing price gouging.
That is its own form of price control. But regardless, the economic policies of the Democratic Party are rooted in the same old, “Hey, we’ll just tax billionaires, and we’ll fund everything we need from that.” The math just doesn’t math there. It still adds to the debts and deficits that are the primary driver of inflation. I find the Democrats to be just as much a part of this divisive system as the Republicans are. There are states where Democrats have been suing to keep candidates off the ballot. To claim that you’re wanting to preserve democracy, while at the same time trying to knock candidates off state ballots, rings hollow to me.
People will call you a spoiler. How do you think about your role in presenting a third choice in what’s set up to be a binary election?
If you’re not running to try and win, you’re not doing it right. Absent a win, my role in this race is to provide voters an honest choice, to bring more voters in the process who just haven’t felt represented by Democrats and Republicans. In the long term, this is a stepping stone towards building up a true third party that can challenge the two-party system.
I’m an advocate for things like ranked-choice voting. But I can’t give that to the voters because I’m just Chase Oliver the Libertarian candidate. But Republicans and Democrats in state houses all over the country could provide a better way for people to vote, which would remove the spoiler effect that Democrats and Republicans like to blame Libertarians for. Don’t blame us for the system that we have. Blame the people who are in power for the system that they provide us to vote — and then demand better.
How much would you downsize federal government? You want to get rid of the Department of Education, for example. Are there any departments or agencies you would keep?
If I could wave a magic wand, I would bring us to the minarchist ideal.
I’m sorry, the what ideal?
The minarchist ideal. So you know anarchy? Minarchy is the minimum amount of government. In that ideal, you would have a military to protect citizens from invasion of their liberty from beyond the borders. You would have courts to adjudicate disputes between individuals, and you would have a law enforcement apparatus to secure civil liberties and protect people at home. That is the ideal. But I don’t think, even if I were president for 20 years, we would get to it. So I just want to cut government down as much as possible, as quickly as possible, so at least we’re having a balanced budget or actually creating a surplus. I would like to wholesale get rid of a lot of departments. What would I keep? The Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of State. Not much else, really.
The EPA?
No, I don’t think you need to have an EPA. A lot of the things the federal government does should either be done by the states or local governments, or are something that can be better facilitated through a private marketplace or through privatization. There’s nothing in the Constitution that empowers an EPA. If pollution wants to be checked, it has to be by government at a state or local level.
Don’t I have a liberty interest in having my neighbors not pollute?
Oh, there’s absolutely a need to have clean air, clean water, and stop pollution. One of the best ways to facilitate that is to remove tort caps [i.e. limitations on damages in lawsuits], so that way, when citizens do sue these companies for polluting, a citizen jury can bankrupt those entities that are poisoning the air, poisoning the water. Instead of giving them a slap on the wrist — boom — give them metaphorical punch to the face.
You’re in Georgia. And the state just had a school shooting. What is your policy solution to addressing that?
We need to address two things. One, we need to make our schools more secure by hardening the target. Secondly, we need to address what are the root causes of mass violence that cause people to shoot up schools? We’ve had guns in our society for a long period of time. Guns are nothing new to the American experience. But mass shootings at schools? Columbine — that’s when we really started seeing the growth of this. Much of this is a mental health issue that is really under addressed, particularly with young men in this country. Part of it is the dehumanization that has come about due to the rise of social media, anecdotally speaking, that you can just go online as a faceless avatar and spout all sorts of bile, and cruelty that you would never say in polite company — and the mental health effects that has on particularly young people who are committing these acts.
So gun regulation is not part of your menu?
No. I do believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in being a responsible parent. There’s some responsibility there for parents to have better purview over their kids. But no I don’t think there’s a need for outright gun bans because of this.
Are there limits to the Second Amendment, or is it absolute? Like if I can get a rocket launcher, is that cool with you?
Hey as long as you’re not shooting people with it, yeah.
What about if I could get a pocket nuke?
I get asked all the time about nuclear weapons. And I don’t think government should have nuclear weapons. So I don’t think people should either.
Is there no theoretical upper limit, is what I’m getting at. Can get my hands on an Abrams tank?
As long as it’s not used to harm anybody. That’s the thing. The action comes when you harm people with it. Owning it, having it, merely, that does not necessitate a harm against somebody. The language of “shall not be infringed” has been stretched quite thin by some of the regulation that already exists. And any further regulation, you would have to amend the Constitution.
You mentioned that the federal government shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, but you’re a big booster of nuclear power. Why champion an energy source that’s expensive and at times dangerous? Take Fukushima as a recent example.
We have to examine why nuclear is so expensive. It’s due to the regulatory red tape that’s been put around it. As far as safety, nuclear power is far safer than coal, natural gas, or oil. It has far less environmental damage. Modern nuclear power plants have a much smaller footprint in terms of land usage than, say, solar panels or wind farms. Or look at the environmental damage of mining lithium to create batteries that is extremely harmful, not only to the earth, but to the individuals who are having to mine it. And so there’s a lot of areas where I find nuclear to be a really great alternative.
If you look at the market economics behind renewables, they’re incredibly cheap and getting cheaper. I’m just curious why it is that the Libertarian of all people would be picking winners and losers by championing nukes?
I’m not championing one over the other.
Your platform quotes you as saying, “Nuclear power is what we need to power the 21st century.” That seems like a championing.
What we do is we want to remove the undue regulatory hurdles around nuclear powers that can actually compete openly in the marketplace. Nuclear right now is under the thumb of the government regulatory agencies, making it artificially more expensive in a free marketplace. But may the best technology win.
You’ve blamed inflation on the federal money machine going whir. But we’ve recently learned that Kroger was using supply chain disruptions to gouge customers on basic goods. Don’t consumers deserve some protection, and shouldn’t that come from their government?
If a firm like Kroger is using supply chain interruptions to artificially raise their prices higher than market value, and we can know that as consumers, then you have other options to shop at. That’s why there’s Publix, that’s why there’s Walmart, that’s why there’s Amazon, that’s why there’s Trader Joe’s. True free markets would facilitate the lowest cost and most efficiency, and those who try to gouge prices would be met with competitors.
But the understanding is this behavior was pervasive. CEOs even bragged about it on their earnings calls. Customers have been hit with greed-flation in the extreme over the last several years.
That’s the brilliance of a marketplace, that if people are abusing the consumer, there’s going to be an opportunity for others to create space in the marketplace, to enter into it. We don’t need to be having government setting price controls, which is what anti-price gouging laws are. Anti-gouging laws lead to shortages in emergencies. That’s just the plain truth whenever we interject ourselves we create problems in the marketplace. I would like to keep the government’s hand out of it as much as possible. If you can prove a conspiracy to defraud consumers, there’s a legal avenue for that, but that is not something the government needs to be regulating via the heavy hand of central planning.
Talk to me about your criminal justice platform.
So myself, and even my running mate, Mike Ter Maat, who’s an ex-police officer, recognize there’s a severe need for criminal justice reform. It starts with things like ending qualified immunity for police. I believe that law enforcement should have to hold liability insurance. In a local instance, this would mean, the lawsuit money would come from a private insurance policy. This has a free market incentive to get bad cops off the streets, because you become uninsurable if you commit too many offenses. It takes the politics completely out of it. Just, “Hey, you’re uninsurable, you can’t be a cop anymore.” This would create much better policing.
I want to end mandatory minimums that tie the hands of judges, which often has defendants pleading down even if they haven’t done anything wrong out of fear of a lengthy prison sentence. We need to join most of the rest of the world, and outlaw the death penalty. It’s like us, China, North Korea, and a few other nations. We want to be on the list of the nations that don’t have a death penalty.
What’s your view about how people should relate to their government in terms of their health?
I’m a big supporter of medical freedom. Obviously, as a Libertarian, that should be no surprise. You should be able to control the vaccines you take that you have your children take. I am pro-choice, with regards to abortion, to the point of viability. Post viability, there’s the standard of health or life of the mother that should be honored and respected.
In general we need to deregulate the health care marketplace. Things like being able to buy health insurance across state lines. Removal of caps for health savings accounts. Right now it’s at $4,500 for an individual, when we spend almost 15 grand a year on health care. Things like being able to buy drugs across international boundaries — that would lower the cost of drugs. Or if you were able to allow generics to come online, you would see the cost drastically reduced. I want people to have as much agency as possible, but also find steps in the marketplace to reduce the cost of health care, so more and more people can access it without the need of heavy handed government controls.
Your platform says “every state should have the right to exit from its present constitutional subjugation.” Is that an allowance for Texas to become its own country?
That is what I mean. I do believe that if the state wanted to leave, they should be allowed to voluntarily do so. I don’t think it’s really a good idea, personally, in most cases. But we do reserve the rights for states to exit out of the agreement if they want. So that’s not something that I really think most voters are really stressing about in 2024.
You also say that “every state should have the right to nullify any federal legislation that is not directly supported by the Constitution.” Sounds a little bit like Alabama could go back to Jim Crow if it wanted.
That’s not true. There are definitely civil rights being violated under Jim Crow. There’s a reason why it doesn’t exist anymore.
Explain what you mean about nullifying federal legislation. If you were the governor of Georgia, what federal legislation would you nullify?
Again, not something most voters are super concerned about.
It’s on your platform and honestly it’s the most concerning idea in there.
The Libertarian platform, correct?
It’s on your website. Is it not your idea? [Editor’s note: The call for nullification of federal laws appears as a bullet point in a document titled “What Chase Stands For.”]
If I were governor of Georgia I would want to nullify things like unconstitutional invasions of privacy. If federal law enforcement tries to come into Georgia and execute unconstitutional orders of search and seizure, we should be able to nullify that immediately. There are areas certainly where we have to use the power of government to nullify when the federal government is trying to abuse us.
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You’re the youngest person of the three primary parties running for office. What does your generational perspective afford you that a candidate that’s 20 years older, like Harris, or 40 years older like Trump, not have?
I’ve grown up during the War on Terror years. My worldview has been informed by how the government has been acting, mostly, since 2001. The candidates who are older are still living in the Cold War mindset. What makes it generationally different is that I’m going to be here for the next 30 or 40 years, God willing. Maybe I’m thinking more long term than some of our politicians today, who are just thinking about what they need to do to get through the next two years, the next four years to get reelected.