You may know Glenn Jacobs as Kane, the longtime WWE wrestling star. His constituents in Knox County, Tenn., know him as their next mayor.
But Jacobs also represents something just as remarkable: He is a libertarian-leaning Republican who won an election in a climate dominated by populists on the Right and socialists on the Left. After experiencing some setbacks in federal elections recently, “liberty Republicans” are starting to look down-ballot for success.
“It’s very difficult to win higher office just because of the money involved and often fighting against that political establishment,” Jacobs told the Washington Examiner. “So I think local office is a great place to start… Local governments, they have a lot of power over our lives.”
Twelve-term congressman Ron Paul’s two Republican presidential campaigns encouraged others to follow him to Capitol Hill. But after some early successes — most notably the election of his son Rand Paul to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky — momentum has stalled.
If anything, the ranks of libertarian-leaning GOP lawmakers is thinning rather than expanding. The elder Paul retired after the 2014 midterm elections. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-Mich., lost in the primary that same year after a single term. Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., was defeated in his primary earlier this year. Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, like Sanford more quietly aligned with this faction, opted against re-election to run unsuccessfully for governor.
Last week, Austin Petersen finished third and failed to crack 10 percent of the vote in the Republican primary for Senate in Missouri. “The liberty movement is in retreat,” Petersen said in a message to supporters on Friday.
Nick Freitas narrowly lost the Republican nomination for Senate in Virginia earlier this year. Eric Brakey won it in Maine but faces an uphill battle against Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
But Freitas did manage to be elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, the lower house of the state legislature. Brakey is a state senator in Maine, telling the Washington Examiner last year, “[I]t’s a lot easier to run for mayor, or run for state senator and try to prove yourself before you run for Congress.”
“You look at somebody like Nick Freitas in Virginia and you say, ‘How did he come so close, how did he become a viable candidate?’” Young Americans for Liberty president Cliff Maloney said. “I would argue because he was elected to state office. [Michigan Congressman] Justin Amash, he was a state representative. [Kentucky Congressman] Thomas Massie was a judge executive. And I started to see this trend.”
“Of course, Ron and Rand Paul are kind of these outliers,” Maloney continued. “But that’s Ron Paul and Rand Paul. Not everybody can be Ron Paul’s son, that gives you a little bit of an advantage with the donor base.”
Maloney’s organization has started focusing on state legislative and other more local races, aiding candidates through training and a new initiative called Operation Win at the Door. Their goal is to endorse 30 state legislative candidates in 2018 and send young activists to knock on over 1 million doors to help get them elected.
Five of the nine candidates they endorsed have won their primaries. On Tuesday, this included Dirk Deaton, a candidate in Missouri who won by 43 points, and Steve Johnson, who ran in Michigan and won by 51 points. Young Americans for Liberty hopes to elect 250 like-minded state legislators by 2022.
“The math just very quickly showed us the impact we could have at the state legislative levels is just out of this world,” Maloney said. “You knock on 35,000 doors and quite literally you can win statehouse races because of the universe size.”
If successful, it could broaden the talent pool and keep activists engaged. “It gives excitement to the movement of actually constitutional conservative, liberty-minded, free-market individuals,” he added. “For a while, it was like, ‘Where are the short-term victories?’ Well, here they are.”
Rebekah Bydlak lost a Republican primary for Pensacola-area congressional seat. This year, she has turned her attention to the Florida legislature. Her candidacy is promising — Bydlak has raised more than three times as much money as the former state lawmaker who is her nearest opponent in the Aug. 28 primary.
“Everybody thinks, ‘Oh gosh, if we could just get more senators, more congressmen, a president who agreed with us, we could change everything!’ Well, not really,” Jacobs said. “Say you get even ten great liberty senators. That’s 10 percent of the Senate. That’s not many.”
Jacobs isn’t downplaying the significance of such victories. “You have a guy like Rand Paul, who’s awesome, a guy like [Utah Republican Sen.] Mike Lee, who’s awesome, guys like Justin Amash and Thomas Massie, who are awesome, but there’s just not that many of them,” he added. “And their voices unfortunately get drowned out.”
“People can make a lot of difference in local office,” said Jacobs. “Then you can say, not only do you have the ability to influence policy at that level, but you also have some political experience, you’re more well known, so if you do want to run for higher office, you have a much better chance of doing that.”
Local office-seeking also helps instill the retail political skills and personal connections that are often in short supply among big- and small-L libertarians. “We need to learn to listen more and talk a little less and build relationships,” Jacobs said. “We have to become persuaders instead of righteous, sanctimonious preachers.”
