Left, right or some other direction

Hector Roos wants to be the next governor of Florida. Dennis Misigoy is representing Florida in the running for the U.S. Senate. 

But you may not have heard their names as much as those running against them, because these two don’t fall into a traditional category in the two party system. They’re both running third party as Libertarians. 

Born and raised in Miami-Dade county as a Cuban-American, and now residing in Osceola county, Misigoy has not always been a politician, but he has always been for “freedom.” 

The traditional route for someone with his background was to vote Republican, he said, and he did that for a couple of election cycles in the early 2000s. His opinion started to shift, though, when he found himself unsatisfied by the direction the country was heading under the Bush administration.

“I kind of look back on the eight years that Bush was president, and about six of those eight years we had Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and instead of delivering on promises of fiscal responsibility and smaller government the debt had doubled or more,” Misigoy said. “The government grew.”

That’s when he also first became aware of prominent Libertarians at that point, and started considering a different direction.

“There was a guy running in the Republican primary named Ron Paul, who's a congressman from Texas, but he had also been the Libertarian Party nominee back in 1988,” Misigoy said. “Basically, his platform was by and large, with a couple of exceptions, standard full on libertarianism. 

“And he was a great example in the sense of, you know, sticking to principles and even when certain things were particularly not popular at the time. That really helped me crystallize my viewpoint on politics and what the role of government should be.”

So, in 2016, he got engaged with the Miami-Dade county Libertarian affiliate, and has been active in local politics on and off since. 

His decision to run for this race came in part from looking at the 2018 election cycle, where there were no state-wide Libertarian candidates in the mix.

“If I’m going to tell you ‘Gosh, Republicans suck’ or ‘Democrats suck,’ I really should give you an alternative,” Misigoy said.

Roos, also from Miami-Dade county and a state board member for the Libertarian Party of Florida, got his start in the party in recent years.

“So a few years ago, I had never been anything but a registered Republican and it turned out that really I'd gotten tired of a lot of talking points that sounded good to me, but were never enacted on,” Roos said.

“You hear a lot of proponents for limited government, and this whole idea of lower taxes, but really none of it's really taken any seriously in the Republican party anymore.”

Roos said that he believes there are a lot of Libertarians in Florida who may not know they identify with the Libertarian party yet, or may not be registered that way because of Florida’s closed primary voting style, where only voters who are registered members of political parties may vote for their respective party.

On the issues

Roos is an advocate for people and businesses making their own choices when it comes to their health and wellbeing. 

He cited issues he felt he saw from earlier in the pandemic, such as feeling like the statewide lockdowns did not work, and he made a claim that urban hospitals were allegedly vaccinating people who came into the hospital unconscious without their consent, (which is unlikely, as according to the CDC and State of Florida Executive Order 21-81, the COVID-19 vaccine is not allowed to be mandatory in the state of Florida.)

Both candidates were vocal about their dislike of the “war on drugs,” with Misigoy saying he believed people should be able to do, within reason, what they want in their own homes if they are not harming themselves or others. 

Misigoy also said one of his main issues is the amount of spending that goes to war and the current foreign policies.

“We've continued the quote unquote ‘War on Terror’ for another decade since then, more than a decade,” he said. “I thought it was important to give people a serious alternative because right now what you get from Republicans and Democrats is more of the same, they are on autopilot with rubber stamping the Federal Reserve, and with the foreign interventions and sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine, and helping Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and all this terrible stuff.”

And in addition to that, Misigoy also felt most passionate about the impacts of inflation due to government spending, which he said caused inflation to rise above 9%.

“But the fact is, we've created trillions of dollars out of the last few years to do all this kind of crazy spending, and additional crazy spending,” he said. “It has an impact and has a real negative impact on people.”

Roos said one thing he thinks may appeal to Democrats about the Libertarian party is the core principles the Libertarian party believes in. 

“Obviously our appeal to Democrats, our focus is very practical. We believe in the Non-Aggression Principle, that people should be allowed to act as they will, as long as you're not hurting in the process of destroying somebody else's property.”

Roos also said he wants to tell Democrats the Libertarian party believes in restorative justice, that people should have a second, third or fourth chance if they will take it. 

“We don't believe that America's values are represented by our prison system,” he said. And for the most part, me as governor, I would certainly expunge and give people a second chance in that way. Release the people in the prison system who are only there because of a nonviolent victimless crime. 

“And certainly, you know, we want to respect people's people's personal expression.”

His appeal to Republicans was that of freedom of self expression, specifically citing the last years of the pandemic, where they may not have felt as free.

“People should have the right to express themselves, however they like, even in a religious context,” he said. “And what we lived through in the last two years have demonstrated that no matter what your persuasion is, politicians should not use government to impose their values, tell you what is right or what is wrong, or to make you better, or to say that you shouldn't do something unless it's hurting somebody else.”

Growing the Libertarian party 

The party got its start in 1971, and has become the third-largest political party in the United States after the Democratic and Republican parties. According to the Libertarian Party's website, "Libertarians strongly oppose any government interference into their personal, family and business decisions.

Ask Misigoy and Roos, and both of their answers center around freedom. 

Misigoy said he understands that the party still has a lot of growing to do, and he is realistic about his chances of winning being slim. 

But that's not really the point of running for him.

If he doesn’t win this election, he said, he wants to get back to supporting the party locally and statewide, and he hopes his campaign now will work to help grow the party over time, as he does not seem himself running campaign after campaign after campaign. 

“It's difficult. I want to do what I can right now and see if I can help to build things up towards the future for other folks within the party, if nothing else,” he said. “Ideally, the dream is still (to win), but I'm not naive about the odds.

“Obviously I understand that as angry as people are about Republicans and Democrats, as dissatisfied as they may be, there's still so much inertia,” he said. “The unwillingness, and the fear of change for people to take that risk and to vote third party.” 

Roos spoke to the same issue, saying he felt people often put too much pressure on the voting for one or the other.

“The most common lie told by politicians is that good people are obligated to vote for the lesser evil,” he said. “So in other words, just because people look at all these elections between a Republican or Democrat, and they think about the brinkmanship at that end of the world, that it is the end of the world if that person wins, and why are we arguing about the end of the world? 

“At the end of the day, this isn't actually that difficult,” Roos said. “It's just politicians who refuse to do their jobs for some time, and continue to kick the can down the road. And rather than continue to vote for one or the other, choose something that will actually pledge to do the job and has a reasonable presentation about how to get there.”

One of the main concerns typically cited with voting third seems to be the idea that voting for a third party that may not have a high chance of winning would take away from the candidate that is similar in views in the traditional Republican or Democratic party, (like it may split the conservative vote), but Misigoy said that doesn’t concern him.

“I think look, if we all recognize that there's some big problems here, you're not happy with what you're getting out of the status quo, what is it you’re really sacrificing?” he asked. “And on the other hand, how do we really break out of this rut? You know, we've been kind of going with the flow and accepting what the two party system has given us for more than a century at this point. So it does take courage.”

At the end of the day, Misigoy said that just one Libertarian elected now won’t be able to realistically make waves in the political atmosphere, but he hopes the party can continue to grow to something that can actually make change.

“That's the message I hope people will have. I hope people will be willing to say, ‘Okay, I can't vote Republican or Democratic in good conscience. I'm gonna vote Libertarian,” he said. “We need to really break down the two party system to get out of this rut and that begins with electing people from other parties into positions of power.”

For more information on the candidates views, visit their websites, https://www.misigoy.com/issues and http://www.roosforflorida.com/.

“We need to really break down the two-party system, and that begins with electing people from other parties into positions of power.”

—DENNIS MISIGOY