Michigan’s Scotty Boman Captures Libertarian Nod for U.S. Senate

Longtime party activist Scotty Boman of Detroit defeated Erwin Haas to capture the Libertarian Party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate in Michigan.

A physics and astronomy instructor who is certainly no stranger to third-party politics, Boman defeated Haas by a margin of 28 to 17 on the convention’s first and only ballot at the party’s state convention in Livonia on Saturday.  A number of delegates supported None of the Above (NOTA).

A semi-retired physician and economist and frequent contributor to Liberty Magazine and other libertarian publications, Haas is the communications director of the Libertarian Party of West Michigan.  He lives in Kentwood.

The 50-year-old Boman had only recently announced his candidacy for the Libertarian nomination, declaring on May 15 that he would seek his former party’s nomination after failing to gather a minimum of 15,000 signatures to appear on the Republican primary ballot for the U.S. Senate.

Drawn to the GOP by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and again this year, Boman had been an active candidate for the GOP’s U.S. Senate nomination since last September.

Boman, an activist in the Texas congressman’s Campaign for Liberty, made no apologies for belatedly seeking the Libertarian nomination.

“I have remained loyal to my principles throughout my political career,” he said in a statement announcing his party switch.

“Since the late 1980’s I have affirmed the right of individuals to live for their own sake, and have supported expanding individual liberty in a Constitutional context,” he continued.  “I am loyal to libertarian principles; political parties are a means to an end.  I feel no shame in placing principle before party.”

Detroit’s long-distance runner for liberty — one of the party’s all-time leading vote-getters in Michigan — has been a Libertarian candidate in every statewide partisan election over the past eighteen years. 

This time, he’s arguably waging the party’s highest-profile campaign for the U.S. Senate in Michigan since 1994 when Jon Coon raised more than $200,000 while polling an impressive 128,000 votes, or 4.5 percent, against Republican Spencer Abraham and Democrat Bob Carr.  Coon had hoped to become the country’s first Libertarian U.S. senator that year — a thought that undoubtedly also crosses Boman’s mind every now and then.

Campaigning on a platform critical of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, the Libertarian candidate garnered 76,347 votes in a previous bid for the U.S. Senate in 2008.  A former state chairman of the Libertarian Party, he also polled 58,044 votes for Secretary of State on the party’s ticket two years ago.

Boman has already debated every potential Republican opponent that he could possibly face in November and welcomes an opportunity to mix it up with incumbent Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow — one of only nine Democrats in the U.S. Senate who voted against the Wall Street bailout.