For Immediate Release Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Rob Sarvis,
LP Virginia
Candidate for Governor
Robert Sarvis won 6.5 percent of the vote in a hotly contested three-way race for governor of Virginia, easily surpassing the previous high won by a Libertarian for governor (0.8 percent in 2001) in the state.
It was the third-highest vote total for a Libertarian in a governor’s race in the party’s history, in any state.
In 1982, Libertarian state representative Dick Randolph won 15 percent of the vote for governor in Alaska. In 2002, Ed Thompson, brother of former George W. Bush cabinet member and Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, won 11 percent of the vote in the state.
Robert Sarvis campaigned full-time across Virginia for months, with the support of a dedicated campaign team, volunteers, and his wife Astrid Sarvis.
The Sarvis campaign was especially attractive to young voters. An exit poll conducted by Edison Research shows that Sarvis won 15 percent of voters age 18 – 29.
Sarvis’s success was aided by Cuccinelli’s social conservative agenda, unpopular among most Virginia voters, which stood in stark contrast to Sarvis’s advocacy for personal freedoms.
Purple PAC, a super PAC which spent more than $300,000 for TV ads supporting Sarvis, also boosted the campaign, which raised and spent more than $200,000 on its own.
Chuck Moulton, chairman for the Libertarian Party of Virginia said, “A record-breaking number of Virginia voters have sent a message that they prefer the open-minded and open-for-business libertarianism of Robert Sarvis to the crazy social agenda of the Republicans and the crony capitalism of the Democrats. The Libertarian Party of Virginia is excited to build on this success by expanding its membership and running ever more highly qualified candidates in 2014 and beyond.”
