This from the Augusta Free Press

Positive press boosts Libertarian candidate

Notes from the Press

One thing that has surprised Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik to date: the positive coverage from the news media for his campaign.

"I've been very pleased with the attention that the campaign has been getting so far," Badnarik told The Augusta Free Press.

"I would say that the media coverage has been very favorable to the campaign, which has been most interesting, because the tendency in the past was to treat the Libertarian Party as being more on the fringes of the political spectrum, an oddity, if you will.

"That has changed this year, for some reason," Badnarik said. "The questions that are being asked of me are the kinds of questions that one would expect a candidate to be fielding, about the issues."

One result of the favorable attention has been a bit of a spike in the polls.

The early numbers had the party and Badnarik barely registering nationally. Over the past couple of months, though, the campaign has seen some successes in locations like New Mexico, where internal polling suggests that Badnarik has the support of 5 percent of the electorate, with another 5 percent leaning toward pulling the lever for him.

Just who those voters might be - and what impact that might have on the final outcome of the 2004 presidential election - remains to be seen.

"I don't know how they see themselves fitting into this," James Madison University political-science professor Bob Roberts told the AFP.

"It would seem that the argument could be made that they would draw votes from Republican voters and from Democratic voters. They would seem to appeal more to Republican-leaning individuals because of their stance on the tax issue. Their appeal to Democratic voters would come because the positions of the two parties on many social issues are very similar.

"If you had to make a call one way or the other, I would say that they would tend to pull more votes from Republicans," Roberts said.

That could mean something in a state like New Mexico, which has been a Badnarik campaign target - and which was won in 2000 by Al Gore by a 366-vote margin over George W. Bush.

And then there's New Hampshire, which Roberts thinks could be Badnarik territory in November, relatively speaking.

The damper - as may also be the case with independent Ralph Nader, who received 22,198 votes in New Hampshire in 2000 in a state race that Bush won over Gore by 7,211 votes, Badnarik will have to pile up the votes in New Hampshire by running a write-in campaign.