Gary Johnson’s Resume Not Good Enough for CNN, Says Supporter

While former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, arguably the only original thinker in the entire field of GOP presidential hopefuls, remains upset and demoralized by his exclusion from Monday’s Republican presidential debate in the Granite State — and rightly so — one of his supporters has placed full-page ads in New Hampshire newspapers passionately making the case that Johnson should be included in the debate.

Kerry Welsh, an entrepreneur from Rancho Palos Verdes, California, was outraged when he learned of Johnson’s exclusion and wanted to do something about it. Welsh’s full-page ads ran in the Manchester Union Leader yesterday and in today’s Concord Monitor, two of the state’s largest newspapers. It will also run again in Sunday’s Union Leader.

Johnson, 53, is being excluded from Monday’s debate because he failed to garner an average of 2 percent in national polls, or a similar percentage in state-specific polling conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. The debate is being sponsored by CNN, Manchester’s Union Leader, and WMUR radio.

The criteria of solely relying on public opinion polls completely ignores a candidate’s resume, as The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf eloquently pointed out last weekend.

Comparing the exclusive use of polling results to “teacher evaluations that only consider standardized tests,” the associate editor of The Atlantic argued that such a narrow criteria allows decision makers — in this case, the executives at CNN — “to absolve themselves of the responsibility to make difficult judgments in close cases. As a result, obviously relevant factors are ignored and self-evidently absurd outcomes result.”

Incredibly, Johnson’s name wasn’t even included in some of the national polls used in the debate criteria, including one conducted by CNN itself in the month of April.

“Governor Johnson’s exclusion is an affront to the intelligent and independent-minded voters of the ‘Live Free or Die’ state, who should reject attempts by media ‘kingmakers’ to dictate for them which candidates are or aren’t legitimate,” Welsh wrote forcefully in his full-page ad.

“I think the voters of New Hampshire and the United States lost an opportunity to hear an important voice,” Welsh told Uncovered Politics.

Johnson, who wears his libertarian philosophy on his sleeves, probably has the best attributes of anyone in the Republican field, said Welsh, who once ran for Congress on the Libertarian ticket. “Not only is he an accomplished entrepreneur, but he also has a much better gubernatorial track record than Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, the only other candidates in the field who served as chief executives of a state.”

When he left office in 2003, New Mexico had a billion dollar surplus, added Welsh, the CEO of WelCom Products.

In his own way, the fiscally conservative Johnson “combines the best qualities of all the Republican candidates in the race,” asserted Welsh. “His voice deserves to be heard.”

“Gary Johnson was the embodiment of the Tea Party long before there was a Tea Party movement,” said Welsh, who hopes enough pressure can be brought to bear on the debate sponsors between now and Monday to allow for the former governor’s inclusion.