THE OTHER CANDIDATE

Sisyphus Has Got Nothing On This Redpath Guy

he Greek king Sisyphus, consigned to roll a stone forever up a hill only to
have it roll back down, would look at William Redpath and say to himself,
"Well, it could be worse." Redpath is the Libertarian candidate for
Governor this year, and he has about as much chance of scoring as a lounge
lizard in a lesbian bar. Some call him committed; others think he should be.

Consider the odds: His opponents, Mark Warner and Mark Earley, could raise
as much as $30 million in campaign contributions. Redpath hopes to raise
between $25,000 and $50,000. Nationwide, the Libertarian Party has almost
as many members as there are Hell's Angels at a performance of La Boheme.
Redpath will be listed on the ballot as an independent, because Virginia
does not recognize the Libertarians as a party - so the vast majority of
voters will not know his views on the issues.

Of those who do, many will scorn them. His campaign slogan - "Anything
That's Peaceful" - sounds like the recipe for an afternoon nap. Finally,
the statewide candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Gary Reams, has chosen to
run on a single issue: legalizing marijuana.

All right, things are not quite that bad. Libertarians hold more than 200
elected offices across the country (albeit most at the level of
dog-catcher), and three in Virginia. Last year's presidential candidate
received more than 15,000 votes here. Libertarians face obstacles the two
major parties don't: Restrictive ballot-access laws, exclusionary debate
rules, minuscule media coverage, the tendency of the major parties to
co-opt their issues, and their own refusal to take government funds.

When you make allowance for all those factors, the Libertarians can claim
some modest success.

So who is Redpath, and what does he believe?

Once a senior financial analyst for NBC in New York and now the vice
president of a financial consulting firm, he went to Indiana University and
received an MBA from the University of Chicago. He has been active in the
party, and has run twice before: once for the House of Delegates and once
for the Virginia Senate.

Spend much time around Libertarians and you get the sense some of them are
a trifle - well, nuts. They will speak of pie-in-the-sky schemes to
privatize all city streets and keep America safe by eliminating the
military and leaving other countries alone. (Hey, it worked for Poland in
1939.) Redpath is different. He calls himself "more of a Cato Libertarian"
- - referring to the Cato Institute in Washington.

The nation can't eliminate all taxation, he says, so the goal should be to
keep taxes as low as possible.

The right to keep and bear arms does not extend, say, to the private
ownership of nuclear weapons.

On most other issues he comes across as mainstream: He favors initiative
and referenda, supports a universal tuition tax credit, advocates
market-based approaches to transportation (peak-hour congestion pricing and
high-occupancy toll lanes), and opposes capital punishment (he would
substitute life imprisonment without the possibility of parole).

But what really jerks his chain is the dominance of the two-party system.

He says most elections in the state are uncompetitive (true enough). In the
1999 House of Delegates election, he writes in a position paper,
"Forty-nine of the 100 seats had only one candidate's name on the ballot,
while another 12 seats had no major-party challenger. Of the 39 remaining
seats with two major-party candidates, 18 were landslide victories (i.e.,
the winning margin was 20 percentage points or more)." Hence the voters
have no real choice, and no real interest in the political process. "Sports
teams play up to the competition. We're in a political depression. More
competitive races would increase participation."

HIS PRESCRIPTION: instant runoff voting and proportional representation -
the latter the same idea that helped derail the Justice Department
appointment of titanium-hard leftist Lani Guinier. Instant runoffs work
like this: Voters rank the several candidates for a single office in order
of preference. If a voter's first choice does not prevail, the vote goes to
the second choice.

If that candidate does not win, the two votes go to the third choice, until
one candidate has enough votes to win. (Think of the Florida recount under
such a system.)

Redpath also advocates "interactive representation" in the Senate. He would
do away with districts; voters would select 40 candidates through the
instant runoff, and each Senator would have different voting power based on
the number of votes each member had at the conclusion of the vote-transfer
process. (Think of the recent budget impasse under such a system.)

H.L. Mencken observed that "for every complex problem there is an answer
that is short, simple - and wrong." (Or something like that; a search in
Nexis and on the Internet found roughly 5,983 variations of the quote.)
Redpath, however, has produced an answer that is long, complex, and wrong.

And he assuredly has as much chance of seeing it enacted as he does of
winning the Governor's office.

Still, everyone needs a hobby.

Politics, where the results really matter - unlike, say, sports - helps to
pass the time, and is more fun than macrame. Besides, tilting at windmills
seems a loftier passion than joining the big boys to beat up the little
guy. Don Quixote might have been a tad off his nut, but he cut a fine
figure riding off into the sunset.