Libertarian candidate brings presidential campaign to SF

Libertarian candidate brings presidential campaign to SF

The Libertarian Party’s nominee for president visited San Francisco on Thursday, extolling the virtues of small government and saying 2016 might be the year his minor party plays a major role in the national campaign.

[...] Johnson, 63, has faced larger audiences of late — he and his vice-presidential running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, have appeared on a CNN “town hall” and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

In terms of issues, Johnson emphasized libertarian positions likely to resonate with the crowd at the event organized by the Lincoln Initiative, which bills itself as working to bridge “the generational gap between the conservative political community and the technology community.”

“I think we really need to be open to a debate and a discussion about how we keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, and of terrorists,” he said before criticizing measures proposed by Democrats that would ban gun sales to people on no-fly lists, or restrict certain types of ammunition.

In his conversation on-stage with Politico’s Carla Marinucci, Johnson was most comfortable applying Libertarian critiques to a domestic scene where, he suggested, governments at all scales are too eager to intervene.

The burden of college debts on young adults? “The main reason for high tuition is guaranteed government loans,” Johnson said.

If San Francisco were serious about this issue, it would take a six-acre site and build 30,000 units on that site,” Johnson said afterwards, hearkening back to a scenario he laid out during his talk: “Without rules, regulations, zoning, what they come up with — there wouldn’t be a need for rent control because housing would be so incredibly affordable.