Third-party candidate prefers liberty to taxes

WASILLA — Libertarianism is easy to distill but deceptively hard to apply to specific situations.

In a nutshell, the party supports policies that increase personal freedom and opposes policies that reduce it. So, something like the upcoming state initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use should be a no-brainer, right?

Actually, it’s not so cut-and-dried. The party’s candidate for governor, Care Clift, said there’s a debate within the party because the initiative proclaims as its goal to regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol. Libertarians are against regulations. Clift, though, is in favor of the initiative.

“It’s a step closer to liberty,” she said.

Clift spoke Wednesday during a stop at the Frontiersman. She said it’s hard to be a third-party candidate. Each organization putting on debates seems to have different rules regarding who can participate and usually she is excluded.

One group told her she needed to have secured 16 percent of the vote in a poll or an election. Another group told her she needs $10,000 in her campaign account to participate. She said she’s been fundraising based on that requirement so she can go back to the group and say, “I do have 10 grand. Now what’s the excuse?”

Clift also has trouble with labels in the election. She bristles at being called a conservative — while they may agree on taxation and regulation issues, on social issues Libertarians are a world away from Republicans — and also doesn’t consider herself a liberal.

“We don’t really fit in either one of those categories,” she said.

Still, she said she thinks people are excited that she’s running, especially this year when the Democrat in the race — Byron Mallott — dropped out to instead run for Lt. Gov. on a unity ticket with independent candidate Bill Walker.

“Forty thousand people voted for Mallott, and those people are totally disenfranchised,” she said.

The state is left with a Republican — Sean Parnell — running against a former Republican — Walker.

“They realize that there isn’t a lot of difference between them, which is disturbing because people want a choice,” Clift said.

She said that, if elected, she would start out by slashing the budget. She would give department heads their marching orders: look for things to cut. Items that are provided for in the state’s constitution would get priority over items that are not.

She said she would have to, “scale back a half a billion a year for the next eight years to get back to a sustainable government.”

And, since she only has one term in mind, that means she’d need to scale back at $1 billion per year.

She said that as a Libertarian, she doesn’t even like the idea of oil taxes, she’d prefer instead to have state revenue come in the form of royalty payments.

“If it’s our oil then we should be selling that oil to the oil companies,” she said. “Royalties should have been he whole thing.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.