Josh Barro, Columnist

Why Is Gary Johnson Being Ignored?

August 28, 2012 at 5:29 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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Yesterday, I met with former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson at a gluten-free pizzeria just outside the secure zone for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. Johnson, who served two terms as a Republican, is now the Libertarian Party's nominee for president, and so he doesn't have credentials to enter the convention grounds.

Johnson’s candidacy hasn’t caught fire. Johnson started running for president as a Republican but quit the party after getting little traction and failing to gain entry to most debates. As the Libertarian nominee, he's often excluded from polling, but a Rasmussen poll last week had him at 1 percent.