OZY.com takes a look at the man behind the Libertarian Party of Georgia. We are proud to have Doug Craig as chairman of this movement.
Enter Doug Craig’s office.
Or rather, his warehouse. This sheet-metal manufacturing plant in Atlanta’s poor, urban Southside might seem like a strange place to find the architect of a third-party uprising, a spoiler of potentially national proportions. Yet here is Craig, wearing a black “Freedom” T-shirt hastily tucked into cargo shorts, warning me to avoid the close-by glass shards from a shattered television.
“I didn’t think of dressing up,” he says against the backdrop of whirrs and clangs and booms. “I’ve never been the type of politician to wear a suit and tie anyway.”
As the first-year chairman of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, Craig is understated: a portly man with an easy air and a large goatee. But he shouldn’t be underestimated. This year he’s anointed two candidates who stand a fair chance of spoiling two high-profile races and turning Georgia into a high-stakes battleground. Now, no one expects Andrew Hunt to become Georgia’s next governor, or Amanda Swafford to make it to the U.S. Senate. But should they live up to their poll numbers — between five and seven percent, regularly — they’ll likely force runoffs. (In Georgia, statewide races go into overtime if one candidate doesn’t capture 50 percent of the vote.)
