Senatorial candidate Brannon McMorris visited the University’s College Libertarian club Monday night, saying he wanted to help stop the United States from continuing down its current path.
“We’re all on a train going into the ocean and instead of stopping the train, we keep laying down track,” McMorris said.
McMorris is running in the U.S. Senate race for incumbent Mary Landrieu’s seat, facing off against Democrat Landrieu and Republicans Bill Cassidy, Rob Maness and Paul Hollis. The election is set for Nov. 4.
The University alumnus told the 14 students in attendance that he believed in empowering the individual rather than the state or federal government and said he doesn’t think anything at a centralized level is cost effective.
“My wife and I were sitting on the couch one night, and I said, ‘I think I’m going to run for Senate,’” McMorris, who works as an engineering consultant, said. “I started this campaign because I was pissed off.”
Compared to other parties, Libertarianism gets a bad rap because people think they are all pot smokers and anarchists, McMorris said.
“The difference between the Tea Party and the Libertarian Party is [we believe] we shouldn’t be paying for other people’s stuff,” McMorris said, using flood
insurance subsidization as
an example.
According to the Libertarian Party website, there are currently no party members in federal office, which McMorris attributes to the nation’s two-party system.
“When you run as a third party candidate, you’re not going to be as popular,” McMorris said.
McMorris cited former U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul as a key factor in his running because Paul brought the party into the mainstream.
The Libertarian Party was founded in 1971 in Colorado Springs, Colo., and held its first party convention the next year. The party’s platform is based on civil liberties and personal freedom, free trade and a free market economy, peace and nonintervention.
Chris Ambrogio, co-founder of the University’s College Libertarian club, said it was great to hear McMorris’ point of view.
“I think it’s important to have a third party opinion, we have a duopoly that’s dominated by two parties,” Ambrogio said. “You’re not just red or blue, there are lots of different opinions.”
McMorris said the United States should repeal the Controlled Substances Act, leaving the states to define what drugs are legal because it would save the federal government the funding used to enforce drug prohibition.
He said he believes in ending all intellectual property rights because it would raise the affordability of drugs, and even without patents, innovations would be profitable. McMorris also said he believes in a free market with little government regulation.
McMorris supports tax reform, by means of simplifying the 70,000 page U.S. tax codes and abolishing income tax. He told students he supports marriage equality but believes abortion to be murder.
“I wouldn’t be for changing [abortion laws] because it would take a constitutional amendment, and I don’t think they should be written that narrowly,”
McMorris said.

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Brannon McMorris