Johnson formally announced his candidacy for the
2016 Libertarian presidential nomination, in an interview with
Neil Cavuto on the
Fox Business Network program
Coast to Coast, on January 6, 2016. He subsequently began participating in a series of debates with the other candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination, held at state LP conventions around the country leading up the
Libertarian National Convention over
Memorial Day weekend in Orlando, Florida. Johnson took a moderate position in a debate field of more hardline libertarian candidates, which led to an occasionally hostile reception from the audience when he spoke up in favor of certain government programs and regulations, including a moment that gained
viral notoriety where he was booed for expressing support for
testing and licensing drivers. On March 3, 2016, Johnson addressed the
Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., touting himself as the third-party option for anti-Trump Republicans, and saying that the Libertarian Party would be the only
third party able to place its nominee on the ballot in all 50 states in 2016 due to
ballot access hurdles. Johnson's campaign attracted increased attention as a possible vehicle for the
Stop Trump movement's votes in the general election, once
Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee. Johnson has branded Trump's political views as
authoritarian. On March 15, 2016, Johnson won the North Carolina Libertarian primary with 42% of the vote, ahead of "No Preference" at 35%, with other candidates all polling below 6%. Following
Ted Cruz's withdrawal from the
Republican primary elections and Trump becoming the
Republican Party's
presumptive nominee, it was widely reported that online searches for "Gary Johnson" and "Libertarian Party" spiked sharply on
Google. In early May, some commentators opined that Johnson was moderate enough to pull votes away from both
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump who were considered controversial and polarizing by many voters. Johnson also began to get time on national television, being invited on
ABC News,
NBC News,
CBS News,
CNN,
Fox News,
MSNBC,
Bloomberg, and many other networks.
Nomination On May 18, Johnson announced that he had chosen former Republican Massachusetts Governor
William Weld to be his running mate. On the first ballot of the
2016 Libertarian National Convention on May 29, 2016, Johnson earned 49.5% of the vote. On the second ballot, he won the nomination with 55.8% of the vote.
Post-nomination , August 2016
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and also a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said he would consider supporting the Johnson–Weld ticket. Romney remarked that, "if Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy" for him to do so. On June 22, Johnson and Weld participated in a nationally televised Town Hall hosted by
CNN. On August 3, Johnson and Weld returned to
CNN for a second nationally televised town hall. It was viewed by over 1.61 million people. Beginning on August 12, a pro-Johnson
political action committee, America Deserves Better PAC, began running television ads in
Maine. On August 17, Johnson and Weld attended a Libertarian town hall hosted by
Fusion. In August, Johnson's poll numbers began to approach the 15% threshold necessary to make him the first third-party candidate in recent history to participate in the broadcast, fall presidential debates. Johnson also began doing major rallies. On August 5, about 500 people turned out to a rally in
Reno, Nevada. The following day he attended an event at the
University of Utah. On August 17, Johnson and Weld attended a town hall, attended by about 600 people, at the
Wertheim Performing Arts Center in
Miami, Florida. The following day, Johnson and Weld held a
Las Vegas, Nevada, rally at The Foundry SLS Las Vegas. The campaign held events in
Burlington Vermont,
Concord, New Hampshire,
Lewiston, Maine, where pro-Johnson super-PAC ads were being aired, and
Boston, Massachusetts, home of Bill Weld. The campaign also added a brunch with Johnson and Weld in
Portland, Maine. Over the weekend, hundreds of people attended each of the rallies. In early September the Gary Johnson campaign began its first wave of paid TV ads. They were targeted at the Western states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington and the northeast state of New Hampshire. Purple PAC began airing pro-Johnson television ads in August. In early September, Americans Deserve Better super-PAC announced that support for Johnson has nearly doubled in
Maine's 2nd congressional district. In response to Johnson's growing poll numbers, the
Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic allies increased their criticism against Johnson in September 2016, warning that "a vote for a third party is a vote for Donald Trump" and deploying Senator
Bernie Sanders (Clinton's former primary rival and now-supporter) to win over voters who might be considering voting for Johnson or for Green Party candidate
Jill Stein. Democrats circulated "embarrassing videos of Johnson" and directed more resources toward winning "young voters and left-leaning independents" – a key Johnson demographic. On September 8, on
MSNBC's
Morning Joe, he was asked by panelist
Mike Barnicle, "What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?" (referring to the
war-torn city of Aleppo in Syria). Johnson responded, "And what is Aleppo?" When an "incredulous" Barnicle said "You're kidding... Aleppo is in Syria – it's the epicenter of the refugee crisis," Johnson responded by saying that "the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end." Johnson criticized U.S. support for the
Free Syrian Army and
Kurdish forces and stated that the "mess" in Syria was "the result of regime change that we end up supporting. And, inevitably, these regime changes have led to a less-safe world." Later that day, Johnson said that he had "blanked" and that he did "understand the dynamics of the Syrian conflict – I talk about them every day," Johnson's failure to identify a foreign leader that he admired attracted media attentionincluding a
New York Times article with the headline, "Gary Johnson Can't Name a Single Foreign Leader." Johnson later stood by his reluctance to "point out an elected leader, foreign leader that I admire," saying in a CNN interview, "I held a lot of people in this country on pedestals and then I get to meet them up front and personal and I find out that they're all about getting re-elected, that they're not about issues, a lot of empty suits that I held up on pedestals." In speaking about the
Syrian Civil War in an interview with
The New York Times in October 2016, Johnson drew a moral equivalence between the
Assad regime's
intentional killing of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians with the accidental killing of civilians by
U.S.-backed forces.
Polling Libertarian primaries The Libertarian Party conducted presidential primaries in only a few states. All delegates to the Libertarian National Convention were unpledged, meaning that they could vote for the candidate of their choice. In pre-nomination preference polls conducted by state Libertarian Parties, Johnson won first place in most states preceding the Libertarian National Convention at the end of May. Of the states which conducted a non-binding Libertarian presidential primary, Johnson won in
North Carolina,
Nebraska, and in the
Minnesota caucuses. Due to early deadlines, he was not on the ballot in
Missouri, where 'Uncommitted' received the most votes.
General election , October 1, 2016 In late September 2016, Johnson's support was placed at 8.6% by the
RealClearPolitics average of presidential polls and at 7.9% by the
FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecasting model. Johnson's highest polling nationally in an individual poll was 13 percent against Clinton and Trump. A
Washington Post–
SurveyMonkey 50-state poll was conducted online between August 9 and September 1 found that Gary Johnson was polling at 10% or higher in 42 states, and at 15% or higher in 15 states (Johnson received 25% in his home state of
New Mexico and 23% in
Utah). A poll conducted in mid-August by the
Pew Research Center found that Johnson was supported by about 10% of registered voters. Of Johnson supporters, more than 60% identified as
independent and more than 70% were younger than fifty years old. Johnson's supporters were evenly divided between men and women.
Presidential debates A major goal of the Johnson campaign was to secure the necessary polling-support threshold of 15%, set by the
Commission on Presidential Debates, to be invited to participate in the televised presidential debates alongside Clinton and Trump. In late 2015, Johnson and
Green Party candidate
Jill Stein, both represented by attorney
Bruce Fein, filed a lawsuit in the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to compel their inclusion in the debates. The case was dismissed in August 2016, with Judge
Rosemary Collyer finding that the plaintiffs had no viable legal claim. The
Boston Herald followed on September 7. Former Governors
Mitt Romney,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, and
Mitch Daniels, without endorsing Johnson, called for him to be in the debates, as did commentator Joseph Steinberg. On September 16, the commission announced the official invitation of both Clinton and Trump to participate in the first debate to be held on September 26 at
Hofstra University, but Johnson did not meet the established criteria, and would not be a participant in the debate. It was also announced that
Mike Pence and
Tim Kaine would be participating in the only scheduled vice presidential debate, to take place at
Longwood University on October 4, and Weld did not reach the cutoff. According to journalist
Brian Doherty, editor of
Reason magazine, the project is intended to appeal to voters who, "while disliking both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, didn't want to feel that their third party vote helped make the one they hated more win." The video, promoted on Facebook by AlternativePAC at an initial cost of $330,000, soon went
viral, The video was produced by the
Harmon Brothers, four brothers who work together as comedy producers.
Fundraising and campaign expenditures By the Johnson campaign From January to June 2016, Johnson raised a total of $1.4 million, far surpassing Johnson's fundraising in his 2012 run. (Johnson's 2012 presidential campaign remains about $1.9 million in debt.) After announcing him as his running mate, Johnson stated that much of the tasks of fundraising would be delegated to Gov. Weld (who has stronger fundraising experience than Johnson). May 18, Johnson told the
Associated Press that his campaign had just $35,000 in the bank at the end of March, and that he hoped his newly announced running mate, Gov. Weld, would, "be a huge influence when it comes to fundraising." When asked by
CNN's
Victor Blackwell on June 11 if the campaign was on track to raise the 20 to 30 million dollars believed to be necessary for him to have a competitive presidential bid, Johnson said, Talking with reporters at the
2016 Democratic National Convention, William Weld stated that he believed that some very large potential donors were waiting to see Johnson hit 15% in the polls before they donated to the campaign. In July the comedian
Drew Carey hosted a Johnson fundraiser at his home, which 150 guests attended. Organizers of Carey's fundraiser expected to raise $100,000 in support of Johnson's campaign. On August 3, Johnson announced that his campaign had raised more than $1,000,000 from in a two-week period, with contributions coming from over 20,000 individual donors. He also announced the launch of the campaign's
#15for15 fundraising initiative. During an online "
money bomb" fundraising effort in the first two weeks of August, the campaign stated that over 90,000 people contributed, and that the average contribution was $32. From January to late May 2016, the Johnson campaign had spent about $334,000; more than 70% of expenditures were paid to the Utah-based Liberty Consulting Service, the consulting firm of Ron Nielson, Johnson's campaign manager. The Johnson campaign's expenditures in August 2016 totaled $3.7 million, bringing its cash-on-hand to about $2.5 million. Some 49% of August expenditures ($1.8 million) were made to the Utah-based advertising agency Evan Twede, Inc.; $550,000 to Liberty Consulting, and slightly more than $250,000 for
Facebook advertisements. July 18, 2016, the campaign released an ad announcing a fundraising initiative dubbed the
Johnson–Weld Money Comet. Donations for the initiative were submitted through a webpage that was created specifically for the initiative. On July 18, 2016, Johnson announced another fundraising initiative, “Today, we are announcing a #15for15 money bomb campaign to get in the debates,"... "Our goal: raise $1.5 million on August 15th to get to 15% in the polls.” The initiative managed to surpass its goal and raised 1.7 million dollars on August 15. There were reports that Johnson was managing to raise more than $1,300 per minute, a rate not seen since
Ron Paul's grassroots money bomb efforts.
By Libertarian-aligned super PACs Johnson received the support of two Libertarian-aligned
super PACs, Purple PAC (founded by
Ed Crane) and Americans Deserve Better (chiefly funded by
Jeff Yass). As of August 2016, the super PACs combined spent about $100,000 on advertising in support of the Johnson/Weld campaign After Johnson's nomination,
Matt Kibbe announced the formation of the "AlternativePAC" in support of Johnson's campaign. Kibbe previously headed "Concerned American Voters", a Super PAC that had supported
Rand Paul’s
presidential campaign. It had earlier been reported that Rufer had pledged to give at least 1 million dollars to outside groups supporting Johnson's campaign. June 30 Kenneth Peterson, founder and CEO of the Columbia Ventures Corporation, gave $30,000 to the PAC. Americans Deserve Better is a PAC created to support Johnson's campaign. Its web domain is . The Group was led by
Geoff Neale, former National Chair of the
Libertarian National Committee. In the second week of August 2016 it began running television and radio ads supporting Johnson in
Maine's 2nd congressional district with the intention of running them for two weeks before conducting polls to determine if the ads they ran proved to be effective. The group was reported to have reserved nearly $62,000 worth of TV time in the
Bangor and
Presque Isle markets (including ad-buys on
WAGM and
WVII totaling more than $20,000 as well as cable ads). The group has also said that it will run radio ads. Shortly after Johnson secured the party nomination,
Cato Institute founder
Ed Crane announced that he would be rebooting "Purple PAC", a super-PAC that had previously supported
Rand Paul’s
presidential campaign, to serve as a pro-Johnson organization. The "Purple PAC" previously had raised $3 million. Many of these funds still remained unspent, as Paul suspended his campaign early-on in
the Republican primaries. April 15, 2016, Purple PAC had reported having $363,252 on-hand. After being rebooted to support Johnson, Purple PAC received 25 individual contributions of more than $200. June 12, 2016
The Boston Globe reported on Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative PAC, a newly founded SuperPAC that would both assist in the campaign's fundraising efforts and make ad-buys in the future. The PAC was founded by R.J. Lyman, an executive at ML Strategies (William Weld's former firm). Major advisors to the PAC include
Trevor Potter and
Matt Sanderson. Both Potter and Sanderson previously worked as counsels to
John McCain's
2008 presidential campaign, and worked with
Stephen Colbert on his
Colbert Super PAC in 2012. Sanderson also was involved in
Romney-supporting PACs in 2012, and worked as a counsel to Rand Paul's presidential campaign earlier in the 2016 election cycle. ==The "spoiler" controversy==