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 |  Subject: Pulse of the Voters: Libertarian candidate finds fault all around  Sun Mar 29, 2020 9:16 pm | |
| Maryland resident Tim O’Connor is a father, husband, owner of TMO Construction and a strident Libertarian seeking a seat in the New York State Senate, representing District 51.
O’Connor, 53, said his libertarianism was spurred by dissatisfaction with major political parties.
“I am a Libertarian because we are not being served by Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “Those folks, with all due respect to our local elected officials, are two sides of the same coin. They have us fighting over nonsense and they are literally creating dissent where there doesn’t need to be any.
“I’ve never been a member of a political party until approximately a year ago,” O’Connor said. “I had become aware of Larry Sharpe’s campaign for governor and he’s an excellent communicator and Libertarian, so I found his message appealing and similar to mine: that there exists a Democratic versus Republican government, at the expense of us and that is not serving society at all.”
At the time of our interview, O’Connor said he was unsure of his voting plans for November, but expects to vote within his party.
“I don’t know, because the Libertarian Party hasn’t officially endorsed a candidate yet,” he said. “Of the two obvious (candidates), Trump and Biden, one thing Trump has done through his outrageousness, and being what he is, is show everyone what I’m talking about: that Democrats and Republicans are not that different. Based on that, I might give Trump a nod, but most likely I will support the Libertarian candidate.
“If Trump is re-elected,” he said, “I would only say, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, the whole mega-machine and that these parties are actually registered, for-profit corporations that are not serving us. They create arguing among us and are taking rights away from us.”
O’Connor pointed to Second Amendment and economic rights as examples.
“There’s a pretty active desire to lose the Second Amendment and a dedicated notion that we should always be paying more taxes all the time,” he said, “and those two things drastically limit everyone’s freedom. Every time taxes go up, economic freedom is abridged, and that’s the only quantifiable way to measure your freedom.”
O’Connor said he considers Trump’s impeachment hearings further proof of inter-government ineptitude.
“I can say for a fact that the Democrats cheapened the notion of what evidence is to all of us and manipulated us emotionally to achieve a desired result. The concept of evidence and what is real was absolutely abused by the Democrats in the House to campaign against Trump,” he said. “It was embarrassing.”
O’Connor said he believes such alleged manipulation has become inherent to the Democratic Party.
“I would pick Trump over whomever the Democrats put up, because even the democratic process is corrupt,” he said. “They’ve repeatedly denied the will of their voters. They violated their own process and cheated and changed their rules to accommodate their candidate (in the 2016 election) and the concept of superdelegates is poison to the democratic process.”
O’Connor said this voting cycle marks his first time seeking public office and, at the time of the interview, said he had “over 50% of the required signatures” to get his name on the ballot.
“I have not tried in other cycles, but the need exists and it’s becoming more obvious every day,” he said. “Because the Democrats and Republicans basically end up doing the same thing — abridging our rights and ignoring us — as a Libertarian, my focus would be and is us. When we’re living in upstate New York and witnessing government-first economics devastating this state and ignoring it, that can no longer make sense and we can no longer continue on the path that got us here.
“We have to reorganize back to our communities,” he said. “The system is failing that was created by the Democrats and Republicans and we’re all being overtaxed and over-harassed. That’s the reality and we’re losing something we used to have. I think we can fix it, but we’ve got to change.”
https://www.thedailystar.com/news/local_news/pulse-of-the-voters-libertarian-candidate-finds-fault-all-around/article_fee5dfc8-0848-5b37-bffa-27d8d04b2c93.html
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