The responses to these questions were edited for length and clarity by the Georgia Decides team. Each candidate was allotted 150 words for each answer and some answers were trimmed in order to abide by that length requirement. Other edits were made to make sure readers can fully follow and understand the candidate responses.

Campaigning for: Lieutenant Governor

What role should government have in the lives of Georgians? How would you apply that philosophy to the job you are seeking?

The only moral use of government is the protection of natural rights. The role in the lives of Georgians should be as minimal as possible, restricted to only those activities that protect natural rights. Efforts would be made to eliminate Georgia code that doesn’t serve that purpose. I will work to eliminate any law that criminalizes peaceful behavior. I will also work to get the government out of our classrooms. No more mandatory or banned curriculums. I want to empower teachers to innovate in their classrooms and not worry about what some politician in Atlanta thinks.

If you are elected (or re-elected), what problems will you spend the most time solving and why?

Being the only Libertarian in the Senate is going to be a massive problem. But I think it’s a unique position to help bridge the partisan divide that seems to be growing every day. Partisans in the two traditional political parties will need to work with me on areas where we agree. There will be good incentives for everyone to work together.

Georgia is a politically diverse state. How will you work to represent Georgians whose political views differ from your own?

Every bit of the Libertarian platform is about empowering individuals. We don’t much care about what way someone voluntarily decides to organize, so long as it’s done through consent and not coercion.

Who has been the biggest influence on how you view state government and politics? What have you learned from this person?

My dad. While growing up we found ourselves talking on long car rides quite a bit about politics and social issues. Most of our discussions ended up boiling down to “live and let live.” Basically, if those people over there are doing something peacefully, why does anyone have a right to stop it? My dad pointed me to Gary Johnson (2012 Libertarian presidential candidate). I found the Libertarian Party after having not feeling completely comfortable calling myself either a Republican or a Democrat. I never looked back and that has defined my political career.

Georgia has a lot to offer current and potential residents, but many parts of the state are becoming increasingly unaffordable. Please explain your proposed approach to address housing affordability through legislation and executive actions?

The solutions are not to be found at the state level. Getting into city and county codes and amending them to allow fewer restrictions on housing would go a long way. When supply increases and demand stays the same, prices decrease. Affordable housing schemes generally have a side effect of increasing the price of the normal housing to offset the affordable housing.

Politics is often about compromise. How do you decide when to compromise and take small, incremental wins, and when to refuse compromise?

I will support any legislation that gets the government out of peaceful people’s lives. I don’t think that requires compromise. It requires finding common ground with people who largely disagree with you. It’s difficult, but it can be done.

There were politicians who questioned the outcomes of Georgia elections in 2018 and 2020. Do you think Georgia’s elections are secure and will you stand by the results?

There are problems with Georgia’s election systems. They have been compromised at least once by an outside party and there is already a pretty long list of vulnerabilities to these systems that have been reported to the secretary of state. I don’t believe there were any disparities that would have changed the outcome of those elections, but I do believe vulnerabilities exist where that could be the case in the future. And with our current voting system, it would be incredibly difficult to detect. I would stand by the results of the 2022 election with the caveat that I also support implementing a more secure, transparent voting system in the future.

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, state law and local enforcement authority will determine access to abortion. If elected, how will you use your authority to influence abortion access or enforcement of abortion restrictions?

I believe a woman is sovereign over her own body and that the government has no power to stop a woman from exercising that sovereignty. I would support any bill that says as much. I would also fight to ensure that state resources were not used to prosecute women who exercised that sovereignty.

Under what circumstances would you expand Medicaid in Georgia? What would factor into your decision-making process?

While I do agree that access to health care is a problem, I do not support Medicaid expansion as the solution. Medicaid and other policies like it are partially to blame for rising health care costs for everyone. As the government negotiates deep discounts in costs for patients on Medicaid, the rest of us pay more to make up the difference. Free markets are the only tried and true method of decreasing costs and increasing quality of a product. Healthc are in this country hasn’t been part of any type of free market for quite some time. I’d like to see that change, freeing up health care to be between doctors and their patients instead of injecting government scrutiny into the process.