Sen. Rand Paul and Reps. Justin Amash and Thomas Massie have long been leading lights for libertarianism in Congress and within the Republican Party. After leaving the GOP in July, Amash chose not to seek reelection.
Yet, there will still be more libertarian-leaning Republicans added to Congress in January when new members are sworn in.
South Carolina State Rep. Nancy Mace defeated incumbent Democrat Rep. Joe Cunningham to win the state’s 1st Congressional District by just 1.4 percentage points (disclosure: I gave minor unpaid voluntary assistance to her campaign). Mace, a 42-year-old mother of two, is the first woman to graduate from The Citadel military college.
A hallmark achievement for her as a state legislator was sponsoring a prison reform bill that outlawed the shackling of pregnant inmates. “Today, there are over 1,000 female inmates in South Carolina’s correctional system,” Mace said in May. “Prior to my legislation, if they were pregnant, their health and that of their child was potentially in danger due to restrictive and archaic laws.”
Before working for President Trump’s campaign in 2016, she was an early backer of Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential bid that year and also supported his father Ron Paul’s White House run in 2012. Mace unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Lindsey Graham for his U.S. Senate seat in the 2014 Republican primary as a libertarian taking on one of the most reliably hawkish members of Congress.
Described by OZY as a “Republican state representative sporting a fierce libertarian streak,” the outlet noted that “she opposes unnecessary licensing requirements for small business owners and contractors that need more help than ever as unemployment claims soar” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “She says such licensing holds back medical providers who must prove to the state that there’s a local need before setting up shop, potentially leaving gaps in a pandemic that the free market could have helped fill.”
“You have to have a license to hang wallpaper in South Carolina. It’s sort of like, WTF?” Mace told OZY. “I’m hoping once we get through this [pandemic] that the silver lining will be that we can all acknowledge government is too big, and costs too much, and it’s to our detriment.”
Mace’s seat was formerly held by another libertarian Republican, former Rep. Mark Sanford, until Sanford lost in the 2018 Republican primary. By defeating Cunningham on Tuesday, Mace returns her district to libertarian Republican hands.
Over in Wyoming, former Rep. Cynthia Lummis easily defeated her Democratic opponent in the race for that state’s open Senate seat, with about 73% of the vote. As I wrote for the Washington Examiner in May 2019, “A few years ago, I asked Liberty Caucus founder Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., which member of the House might have a more libertarian record than many realize. He didn’t hesitate: Rep. Cynthia Lummis.”
Lummis represented Wyoming’s at-large district in the House from 2009 before retiring for the 2016 election cycle. When her replacement, Rep. Liz Cheney, decided not to run for the Senate seat left behind by a retiring Mike Enzi, Lummis announced that she would enter the race. Not only did Rand Paul endorse Lummis early in the GOP primary, but much of this race has been considered a proxy war between the libertarian Paul and neoconservative Cheney, who many believe has her eye on becoming a future House Speaker.
Lummis is the polar opposite of Cheney on many issues, particularly the unrepentant hawkish foreign policy Cheney shares with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Wyoming’s Star Tribune noted in May 2019, “On foreign policy, Lummis expressed a willingness to draw down troop numbers and the United States’ presence in places like the Middle East, adding that she supports President Trump in his negotiations with the sometimes despotic leaders of nations like Iran and North Korea.”
On the budget, the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney noticed way back in 2011 that Lummis made a habit of bucking the GOP establishment on large spending bills.
Lummis will now join Rand Paul and Mike Lee as another staunch constitutionalist in the Senate.
Small-l libertarians serving in government as Republicans were once rare beyond Rep. Ron Paul, who served his Texas district for decades. But his popular 2008 and 2012 GOP presidential campaigns built a movement that would help usher in future congressmen, such as Amash and Massie, and his own son, Sen. Rand Paul.
Before becoming congressmen or senators, members typically serve in state government, similar to Mace and Lummis. Notably, on Tuesday night, activist group Young Americans for Liberty (formerly “Students for Ron Paul,” which over a decade has grown to be the largest center-right youth organization) helped get 105 state representatives elected.
Not bad.
While Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s results Tuesday showed that her party might be growing in strength, libertarian Republicans grew in numbers not seen since the election of Amash and Massie nearly a decade ago. Plus, staunch libertarian Republican Nick Freitas seems set to lose his Virginia congressional race only narrowly to incumbent Democrat Abigail Spanberger in a state that went blue for Biden in this presidential election (prompting Spanberger to rant to her House Democratic colleagues about the damage that socialism is doing to her party).
There are always the 2022 congressional elections, and there is always room for more libertarian leaders, as 2020 proved for libertarian Republicans.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
