07/06/06
Libertarians brush themselves off after losing high-profile candidate; replacement aims to reopen 9/11 investigation
John Clifton became active in the Libertarian Party soon after the ’94 debacle that was the Howard Stern candidacy. The party chose Stern for its gubernatorial candidate for the obvious reasons: He had name recognition; he seemed to share some libertarian beliefs (he was, at least by default, an advocate of free speech); and he could pretty much bankroll his own campaign. The goal was to use Stern’s celebrity to draw the 50,000 votes needed to gain the libertarians a guaranteed line on the ballot for four years. But the King of All Media bowed out early, after only four months, leaving the libertarians high and dry.
And now, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld has done it again. “We nominate a high-profile person,” Clifton said, “and they step out.” The Republican, who also had the Libertarian Party nomination, called it quits in the race for New York governor after losing the GOP nomination to John Faso.
So Clifton, a 47-year-old social worker from Jamaica, Queens, stepped in, taking up the Libertarian candidacy for governor. He said he hopes to grab those 50,000 votes “the traditional way,” through a grassroots groundswell. It is possible, he added, pointing to the Green Party in New York state as an example.
The Greens gained ballot status in the late ’90s with only a couple hundred active members, he said, and four years later, their numbers swelled to more than 30,000. “And I think we will have the potential for a greater growth pattern,” he said, claiming that, according to a Gallup Poll report, more than 20 percent of voters hold libertarian beliefs.
These beliefs range from the far left—legalized drugs and abortions, open immigration—to the extreme right—‘free’ markets with zero regulations, hefty tax cuts—with a prevailing antiwar sentiment. It is his stance on the smoking ban (he is against it), the Rockefeller Drug Laws (he is against them), and the abuse of eminent domain that separates him from the rest of the candidates and, he hopes, will win him support with the voters. Clifton offered an example of his “unique vision” for New York state: If elected, he will reopen the investigation into the events of 9/11.
“There are a lot of people that just don’t believe in the official version of the story that is presented by the 9/11 Commission’s investigation,” he said. He has talked to many people who say the events of the day do not add up. His sister was evacuated that morning from the World Trade Center and she saw things that did not compute with the official story.
“There was evidence that there was damage to the lobby independent to whatever was going on with the plane that crashed into the building,” he said. “According to statements of first responders, there is a case to be made that there were demolition charges, as if it was an inside job, a controlled demolition. There are questions to the way everything rolled out that day.”
If he becomes governor, he said, every 9/11 question that relates to New York state could be reexamined. Why was the air-defense system at stand-down at the time? How did Building Seven fall? Why it was understood that there were toxins in the air in the following days and yet the workers at the site weren’t informed?
“Were we actually attacked?” he asked. Considering the Patriot Act and the intervention in Iraq and possibly Iran, was somebody actually manipulating events to justify having an expensive, civil-liberties-destroying, empire-building war? An investigation, he said, would help clear up these questions once and for all. Of course, he said, he knows that reopening the investigation would be unpopular with certain people.
“If something happens to me mysteriously,” he joked, “it wasn’t an accident.”
Clifton is unique among the other candidates, too, he said, because of his commitment to small government. Republican Faso and Democrat Eliot Spitzer, he argued, are two sides of the same coin. They are both authoritarians. They are statists who use government to enforce their ideologies. Libertarians would remove government from this position of power.
“I believe in the five freedoms,” he said: the freedom to bear arms, the freedom from taxation, personal freedoms of privacy and choice, the freedom to live peacefully, and drug freedoms.
“The notion that we have to use force to intrude in people’s decision making,” Clifton said, “must be avoided. I don’t think force is a solution.”
—Chet Hardin
chardin@metroland.net
originally published at http://www.metroland.net/newsfront.html
