The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate

NH Governor's race

I saw John Babiarz, the LP Gubernatorial candidate in New Hampshire, in a debate today. I've been catching debates on C-Span most nights, at least when they look interesting.

Babiarz was one of the best LP candidates I've seen in a debate this season. His voice isn't great, and he had kind of a stilted, nervous way of talking. I guess the easiest way to convey it is that he seemed a little "nerdy". But the stuff he was saying sounded good. He didn't sound wild and extreme like some Libertarian candidates I've seen. Partly this was because he was slightly less than pure in his libertarianism, but a lot of it was just due to his reasonable-sounding manner. He didn't say "I'm going to abolish the state Department of Education", he said, "I'm going to concentrate on local control for our schools." And so on with other issues. He talked about abolishing the state property tax, and sounded really compassionate about it.

He handled himself very well on most of his answers, and he turned both of the questions that the other candidates asked him to his advantage. He also got to do the last final statement, and he used it well. He asked voters if they wanted to have a state that was ruled by the two parties, or whether they wanted to have a tripartisan state, "with me acting as a referee between the Democrats and Republicans," pledging fiscal restraint and stuff. I thought that was a really cool way for a third-party executive office candidate to frame the choice. I'm not getting the exact phrasing right enough to make it sound as cool as he did, but the referee analogy was the core of it. It seemed appropriate too, because the two main candidates seemed more extreme and kind of jacked up on themselves...and I assume the NH Statehouse is loaded with bipartisan shenanigans. Bipartisans is the craziest peoples!

One of the other things that distinguishes him from some other Libertarian candidates is that he didn't sound, for lack of a better word, obsessed with freedom. I can't pin it down exactly, but he didn't sound as one-track-minded as Libertarians sometimes can. Though as far as I can recall he opted on the side of freedom in every answer, it didn't feel like he was beating you over the head with it. He didn't sound like a radical, a conspiracy theorist, or anything like that. He seemed like a reasonable, compassionate, intelligent, kinda nervous guy.

BTW, you can watch any of the debates that C-Span has shown so far, on their Campaign 2002 Debates page. This one's not up there yet, but it looks like maybe they go up on the site the day after they air on TV, so it'll probably be on there tomorrow. I'm going to watch it again, because I think John Babiarz has something to teach me -- and other Libertarian candidates -- about presentation.