Libertarians on Aug. 28 ballot

Libertarians are making history next week in Louisiana, holding their first primary election in the state after two candidates aligned with the party signed up for the Senate race.

Anthony “Tony G” Gentile, an oil refinery supervisor from the New Orleans suburb of Mandeville, will face off in the Aug. 28 primary against Randall Todd Hayes, a stock trader from the small central Louisiana town of Atlanta.

They are vying for the seat of Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter, the incumbent who is seeking re-election. The primary winner advances to the Nov. 2 general election against the Republican, Democratic and independent party candidates.

Now the question is: How many people are going to show up to vote in the party’s primary?

The two candidates have done little fundraising and no radio or TV advertising to drum up interest in their primary, and their immediate base of support is tiny in the state.

Fewer than 3,500 of Louisiana’s 2.9 million voters are registered Libertarians.

However, another 665,000 voters who are independents or who aren’t registered with a state-recognized party can cast ballots in the Libertarian primary if they choose, giving the party a potential pool of voters that includes 23 percent of those registered statewide.

Secretary of State Jay Dardenne isn’t offering any turnout predictions. The chairman of the Libertarian Party of Louisiana, T. Lee Horne, said the party is hoping to boost participation by attracting independents and other voters who aren’t Republicans and Democrats.

“The independents and the non-recognized parties are allowed to participate, and we’re doing everything we can to put out the word that if they want to vote in the Libertarian primary, we’d love to have them,” Horne said.

The Libertarian primary is the state’s first third-party primary in a century, said Jacques Berry, a spokesman for Dardenne’s office.

And the Libertarian primary is expected to be the state’s last third-party primary as well, after lawmakers agreed to return to an open primary system – where all candidates regardless of party run against each other _ for the 2012 congressional races. State and local elections already are run on an open primary system.

Horne said he was surprised when two Libertarian candidates signed up for the Senate race last month. The party had endorsed Gentile before learning that Hayes intended to compete for the seat as well.

“We have two very, very good candidates running. The party central committee likes both candidates quite well, and we encourage people to go to their respective websites and do their research and determine which of those two the voters would like the best,” Horne said.

Both Gentile and Hayes are running on platforms advocating a smaller, less powerful federal government. They favor an end to the U.S. involvement in the current wars and a return of troops from foreign conflict. They’ve both run unsuccessfully for office before, Gentile for governor in 2007 and a congressional seat in 2008 and Hayes for a congressional seat in 2008.

Hayes is supporting the legalization of drugs, with a regulated drug market and drug abuse treated in a similar fashion as alcohol abuse.

Because the state already had Democratic and Republican party primaries in the Senate race, the extra costs for adding a Libertarian primary are minimal, just the costs for a longer ballot and extra training for poll commissioners, Berry said.