Who is Chase Oliver and What Are Libertarian Candidate's Views?

Chase Oliver won the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination on Sunday, making him the latest figure to enter the 2024 race for the White House.

Oliver, 37, won with more than 60 percent of the vote after seven rounds of voting, knocking out other candidates including Robert F. Kennedy Jr at a convention in which former president Donald Trump made a speech and was booed.

"I am proud and honored to accept the Libertarian nomination for president," Oliver told Newsweek. "Voters across the country need a voice that is distant from the two-party system. In particular, Generation Z needs a voice that loudly and firmly opposes war around the world, and supports peace and individual rights both at home and abroad."

The Libertarian Party, which was formed in 1971 and supports capitalism free from government supervision and civil liberties, is the third-largest American political party by voter registration, but does not have a great deal of influence in American politics. It typically garners around 3 percent of the national vote and has few elected officials.

Oliver, who was born in Nashville, Tennessee, worked in the restaurant business before entering politics. He used to support the Democrats and Barack Obama and has said he joined the Libertarian Party after encountering them at the Atlanta Pride Festival in 2010.

He ran for the Georgia Senate in 2022 where he achieved 2 percent of the vote, forcing a runoff election between Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

He also ran for Congress in the state's 5th district in 2020 and also garnered around 2 percent of the vote.

On his campaign website, Oliver calls for cuts to the federal budget, the abolition of the death penalty and the end of military support to Israel and Ukraine. He also wants to decriminalize cannabis and repeal gun restrictions.

Posting on X, formerly Twitter, after he won, he wrote: "We did it! I am officially the presidential nominee."

He called on people to nominate his running mate, former Floridia police officer Mike ter Maat, and added: "There is no better unifying ticket in this party than this one. It's time to unify and move forward for liberty."

Oliver told Politico he plans to target young voters who are angry about the Israel-Hamas war.

"We were looking at who are the most likely populations to be ready to go outside of the two-party system, and we've identified young people, and in particular those who are upset with the war going on in Gaza, upset with the immigration crisis, and upset with cost of living," Oliver said. "Those are the young people that we're going to target."

He told CNN that he believes he can win 2 percent of the vote in the upcoming presidential election.

"I got 2.1 percent of the vote when I ran for the Senate in Georgia. I think that's a definite doable thing, and certainly we can improve upon that with a hard-run campaign that wakes people up," he said.

Update 05/31/24, 04:20 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Chase Oliver.