Reader Report: Libertarians snub Newport’s Jim Gray

Jim Gray, a longtime Newport Beach resident, retired Orange County judge, former Daily Pilot columnist and 2012 Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate, had hoped his party would nominate him again to run for the same spot in the general election this fall.

But it was not to be.

The Libertarians instead chose former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld as their vice presidential pick. Weld will be running on a ticket with presidential nominee Gary Johnson, an ex-governor of New Mexico who also was the party’s presidential candidate four years ago.

“I was crestfallen. I was greatly disappointed I lost the nomination,” said Gray, 71, a former Republican and one of the 900-plus delegates to the Libertarians’ national convention that was held over Memorial Day weekend in Orlando, Fla.

“But I was chosen to give the nominating speech for Bill Weld,” added Gray during an interview at the Bayshores home he shares with his wife, Grace, and their golden retriever “Nyxie,” which is named for the Greek word meaning mischievous. “He was a great, two-term governor and is better known nationally than I am. He will make a fine vice president.”

He expected better results for his party this election, given the obvious voter unrest.

“The Libertarian Party in 2012 got 1,275,951 votes, or about 1.1% of the national vote, and we’ll do infinitely better his coming November,” he said. “Our party is on the move. We’ll be on the ballot in all 50 states. The American public is highly dissatisfied with both the Republican and Democratic parties.”

In Orange County in 2012, the Libertarian Party received 12,773 votes, or 1.3% of the total. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, received, respectively, 541,592 votes (53%) and 457,077 votes (44.8%) in the county that year.

“Our party will do much better this year because we also are winning greater national respect, recognition and publicity,” Gray said. “Our Orlando convention was covered by all the national newspapers, television and cable networks and international news services. CNN has reported that we were the top-ranked story in the social media.”

Gray has a bachelor’s in history from UCLA, a law degree from USC, served as a Navy legal officer in the Pacific, was a prosecutor in the U.S. District Court, practiced law in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, and was, for 25 years, a judge in the Orange County Municipal and Superior courts.

“The two major U.S. political parties are one in the same,” he said.

“They have been unable to capture the voters’ confidence and they offer virtually nothing to those voters. Hillary Clinton is scandal-laden. She doesn’t care about people; she cares only about power. Donald Trump is attempting to capture the public’s anger, but he is divisive and scares people. He believes in waterboarding and torturing our enemies in the Middle East. He is basically a bully and a loose cannon.”

He believes his party is the answer.

“The Libertarian Party has a set of values and solutions to the problems facing our nation,” he said. “Instead of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, for example, we would issue work visas for Mexicans and others in Latin America desiring to work in the United States. But before those people could come here, they would be required to undergo strict background searches for potential terrorist and criminal histories. And those workers, although would not be provided welfare payments and would have to pay taxes, would be allowed to obtain driver’s licenses and identity cards.”

Libertarians also believe that parents must have a choice as to where they send their children to school, and that these parents should receive government vouchers to place their kids in either public, charter or religious schools. This would foster competition and better teaching, Gray stated.

And Libertarians believe that competition also would help alleviate the escalating cost of medical care by the issuing of vouchers to patients that would enable them to choose their own doctors, hospitals and insurance companies.

Libertarians, as well, are wary of the Patriot Act, secret government surveillance of civilians and other invasive actions “that intrude into one’s personal and private life,” Gray said.

And his party is equally concerned with the nation’s overseas “military adventures” that are costly in terms of American lives, are prohibitively expensive and are not particularly effective.”

Gray, whose interest in international affairs was heightened by his service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, taught at a remote, rural high school. During his travels in the Pacific and Southeast Asia while serving as a Navy officer.

On a temporary Navy assignment in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Gray adopted a 13-month Vietnamese boy from an orphanage in Da Nang, who today is 43 years old and one of Gray’s four children.

Gray said that one of his party’s most immediate and pressing challenges it to have its two national candidates included in the upcoming three presidential and single vice presidential debates with Trump, Clinton and their respective vice presidential choices.

Who appears on these nationally televised debates is determined by the U.S. Commission on Presidential Debates, which is comprised of five Republicans and five Democrats.

Believing that the Libertarian candidates might be excluded because the commission’s decision could be “rigged,” Gray stated that the Libertarian Party has filed a federal lawsuit against the commission, and that he will be one of the lawyers charged with writing his party’s legal briefs which support the Libertarians’ inclusion in the debates.

“If a decision favoring us is issued before the Nov. 8 election, our candidates will be permitted to appear in the debates and we would then be in a position of winning many millions of votes in November,” Gray said.

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A longtime Newport Beach resident, DAVID C. HENLEY is a member of the board of trustees of Chapman University and a former foreign correspondent.