A 38-year-old Atlanta man has been nominated to run for president by the Libertarian Party.
Chase Oliver’s name may be familiar to some Georgians from his campaign for US Senate in 2022, where he earned some 2% of the vote in a race against Democratic Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. Still, Oliver’s 81,000 votes were possibly the difference-maker that forced a runoff between Warnock and Walker.
Following his loss in 2022, Oliver formed an exploratory committee for president, and formally declared his candidacy in April 2023. He won six of the country’s ten Libertarian primaries, mostly in Midwestern states, but fell far short of Louisiana’s Charles Ballay in the total number of votes earned. Oliver continued his campaign through last weekend’s Libertarian National Convention, where he was nominated on the seventh ballot. Economist and former law enforcement officer Mike ter Maat of Virginia will be Oliver’s running mate.
Speaking to Forbes Breaking News last week, Oliver said he sees the 2024 election as an opportunity for his party.
"Particularly Gen Z and millennial voters, who just are not seeing what they want from either Biden nor Trump, nor even RFK in many cases," Oliver told Forbes Newsroom's Cat Oriel. "There's an open field to get these young people into the tent and to help grow our party foundationally."
In 2020, the Libertarian nominee for president, Jo Jorgensen, earned 1.8 million votes across the country, just over 1% of the total votes cast. In Georgia, Jorgensen got around 62,000 votes, 1.24% of the state’s voters.
