A homeowner in Deer Valley who campaigned last year to be president is encouraging voters to oust all members of Congress.
“Vote every one of them out,” Wayne Allyn Root told The Park Record in a telephone interview from his part-time home at The Chateaux. “I’ve started a nationwide movement to vote against every incumbent in Congress.”
But Root stopped short of bad-mouthing Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican who represents Summit County in Washington, D.C.
“I just know that the U.S. Congress has failed us and we should throw them all out,” Root said. “The message is more important than your individual congressman.”
Root, who is a former Las Vegas oddsmaker, campaigned alongside Bob Barr as the Libertarian Party’s 2008 vice-presidential nominee. In 2012, Root said he plans to be the party’s pick for president.
“Thirty-nine percent of Americans now identify themselves as independent,” Root said.
He rejected notions that the views of Libertarians lie at the political fringe.
“All Libertarian really means is fiscally conservative, socially tolerant. All it is is the best of the right and best of the left, in my opinion.”
Most Americans describe themselves as conservatives, Root said.
“When it comes to money, they believe in more freedom and they believe in government getting out of our lives,” Root said.
Root, who recently closed his sports-handicapping business in Las Vegas, said his passion for politics could soon be on display five days a week should he land a job hosting a radio talk show.
“I’m very close to signing that deal,” Root said. “Right now, the best thing I could do for my campaign is building a giant national audience that knows who I am.”
Barr lacked the name recognition necessary to make a splash as the Libertarian presidential nominee last year, Root said.
“If we had a candidate who was on the radio five days a week with a Rush Limbaugh-like show with millions of listeners, that would have been a totally different thing,” Root said.
The Libertarian ticket didn’t even win one percent of the votes in 2008 and trailed Barack Obama by about 52 percentage points.
“I’m planning to be the Ross Perot of 2012,” Root said. “There has never been a better time because after Bush people can’t stand Republicans, and after Obama, I don’t believe they’ll be able to stand Democrats. That leaves not much choice except for a third-party candidate.”
Obama got elected by claiming he would lower taxes for some people, Root said.
“What [Obama] is doing is expanding government to a level that nobody’s ever dreamed of, except the communist Soviet Union,” Root said.
As a result, the president’s approval rating has dropped, he said.
“He underestimated the American public’s dislike for government,” Root said. “They didn’t vote for him because they thought he would expand government, and that’s the mistake he made.”
Root said he and Obama were classmates who graduated from Columbia University in 1983. But Root never met the future president.
“He had his own little click and crowd, and I guess we weren’t in it, what can I tell you,” Root said.
Root predicts Obama will lose the Democratic primary in four years to Hillary Clinton.
Mitt Romney is the 2012 GOP frontrunner, he said.
“Mitt Romney claims to be a conservative, but he’s the guy who introduced government-run universal health care in the state of Massachusetts,” Root said. “I don’t think government can ever do things right. Government fails at everything it has ever done.”