US Senate candidate and pizza delivery man reflects on campaign

The 53-year-old pizza-delivering Libertarian candidate running for U.S. Senate against Thom Tillis and Kay Hagan says he doesn’t want any part of the campaign’s negativity and attack ads.

In light of a recent analysis that found North Carolina’s Senate race has featured more negative ads than any other state, Sean Haugh said in an interview on Friday that his campaign has focused on the positive reasons N.C. residents should vote for him.

Haugh, a Durham resident, thinks Tillis’s and Hagan’s negative ads will help him in the race.

“People look at that, and they’re just so disgusted by it, and then they find out they have a third choice on the ballot,” he said. “I’ve been getting a tremendous response from people who are turned off by all that negativity.”

It is Haugh’s sixth time running for political office. He said he has always stood for Libertarian views.

“We need to balance the budget at a much lower level, get out in front of this debt and let people keep more of the money that they earn,” he said.

Although Haugh has garnered at most 8 percent of the vote in polls this fall, he said the people who vote for him send a strong message to Democrats and Republicans that they’re going to have to start holding more Libertarian views.

He said he ran on an act of conscience because neither Hagan nor Tillis would try to curb war.

“I wanted to vote for something other than more war and more debt. It got to a point in February during the filing period that if I wanted to have that option, it would have to be me,” Haugh said.

Mitch Kokai, political analyst from the right-leaning John Locke Foundation, said Haugh’s campaign has been primarily an effort to get visibility for Libertarian ideas and Libertarian alternatives to the major parties.

“People have paid attention to him as a candidate,” Kokai said. “He has — through his one official debate appearance and through the ads he’s put up online — spelled out the ways in which he is different from Kay Hagan or Thom Tillis.”

Still, the Libertarian candidate hasn’t had a completely smooth-sailing campaign. A conservative group called the American Futures Fund recently began running $225,000 worth of ads implying that a vote for Haugh would be a vote in favor of marijuana legalization.

Haugh said at the time that he was surprised by the ads, but he admitted to smoking marijuana shortly afterward. He said on Friday that he didn’t feel the need to defend his comments.

“Now a majority of Americans want to see marijuana legalized,” he said. “I am really gratified to find that public response has been generally that it agrees with me, that it’s not a big deal.”

Kokai said it doesn’t affect Haugh’s image because the legalization of marijuana is a common Libertarian view.

The possibility of Haugh’s election aside, Brian Irving, spokesman for the N.C. Libertarian Party, said he could see one of the major parties fading.

“The Libertarian Party will eventually grow to the point that it will become a major party in most states,” Irving said.

Haugh said Libertarian ideas are on the rise.

“In this election in particular, more and more people are willing to break free from the Democrats and Republicans and make a positive choice.”

state@dailytarheel.com