TAMPA Gary Johnson is still the longest of long shots to become president. <\/p>\n
But now that the former two-term Republican governor is running as a Libertarian, he says success starts with just one number: 15. <\/p>\n
If Johnson can snag 15 percent in national polls, the man known as New Mexico's \"Governor Veto\" can appear in debates alongside President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. <\/p>\n
So he took the somewhat strange step of urging a group of 30 people Friday in Ybor City to support him simply by calling polling companies. <\/p>\n
\"Just ask them to include my name,\" he said from the stage of Gaspar's Grotto. <\/p>\n
Johnson's party affiliation has changed, but his positions haven't. As he describes it, he's \"pro-choice with regard to everything.\" <\/p>\n
What hurts his chances is that Americans really have become accustomed to just two choices for president. Libertarian Party candidates have surpassed 1 percent of the vote in national elections just once. If Johnson gets 5 percent of the vote in November, though, the party gets public funding in 2016. <\/p>\n
Johnson's name was included in a Gallup poll, taken June 7 to 10, along with Obama, Romney and two other lesser-known candidates. He polled at 3 percent. <\/p>\n
Johnson says \"entrenched interests\" are to blame for the dominance of the two-party system. Then there's the media, and particularly CNN, which he blames for arbitrarily shutting him out of GOP debates last year and cutting audio of an endorsement from independent politician Jesse Ventura. His supporters plan to protest at CNN's Atlanta headquarters this month. <\/p>\n
For his third-party platform to survive, Johnson will need the grass roots people who are proud to tell their family and friends that they voted for someone out of the norm. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson asks Tampa supporters to help him get on presidential polls<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TAMPA Gary Johnson is still the longest of long shots to become president. But now that the former two-term Republican governor is running as a Libertarian, he says success starts with just one number: 15 Continue reading