Brandon Phinney
Until tonight, Brandon Phinney was a model for one genre of elected Libertarian: The party-switcher.
The New Hampshire state representative, elected to the 400-member body in 2016 as a Republican, switched to Libertarian in
June 2017 after watching the machinery of allegedly small-government Republicanism up close. "I saw how they wanted to spend all of our money," he recalled to me in an
interview this summer, "and that immediately set off every red flag imaginable." He targeted archaic laws to be stricken from the books, helped effectively
legalize visiting bands drinking beer on stage, and prepped for his first election wearing the "L" right there on his sweater.
With a win tonight, Phinney could demonstrate that the most libertarian among Republicans can safely switch to the more ideologically sympatico smaller party, and still protect a seat. Other major-party politicians, surely, would take note in these polarizing times.
Phinney did not win. He got trounced.
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