North Carolina is headed into a competitive gubernatorial race between Democrat Josh Stein and Mark Robinson in November. Although the race is hotly contested between them, there are two other candidates on the ballot: the Libertarian Party’s Mike Ross and the Green Party’s Wayne Turner. 

Ross, an investment advisor from the Charlotte area, secured the libertarian nomination in the March 5 primary election after receiving 2,910 votes statewide. Ross said he was encouraged to run for office after leading a campaign advocating for releasing body cam footage following a local police officer’s tasing of a service dog during an arrest.

Ross said the job of a third-party candidate is to disrupt the contest between Democrats and Republicans, as he sees their ultimate goals as the same. Ross’ campaign slogan is “Fire the uniparty,” which he said means the parties use certain issues to divide the population, while they profit off of the system from corporate lobbying.

“Ultimately, when you look at where the corporate donations are going, Raytheon and Boeing are funding every Republican and Democrat they can,” Ross said. “Why? Because it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge; what they want is what they’re gonna get. We’re still going to be going to war. We’re still going to be handing out billions in corporate welfare.”

Turner, an NC State graduate and a retired truck driver, professor at Wake Technical Community College and research engineer at Research Triangle Institute, is the Green Party’s gubernatorial candidate. He reflected Ross’s sentiment of the “uniparty,” instead calling it the “duopoly party.”

“They will agree that it is more important to keep the rich rich and the poor poor than to actually create a society that has true wealth equality, social equality, that is truly egalitarian,” Turner said. “So we felt like we need to be in these spaces and contest them so we continuously strive to get on the ballot.” 

Ross said politics have been breaking down in the United States, and it stems from a historical shift toward a centralized federal power, contrasting it with the more locally focused approach during the country’s founding and emphasizing the need to return to a system where politicians spend more time in their districts and power is distributed from the bottom up.

“I think that what has happened is, essentially we have a Republican candidate that is going to move in lockstep and do anything that Donald Trump wants to do with no resistance,” Ross said. “Then we have a candidate that is going to go lockstep with Joe Biden and do anything that Joe Biden wants to do.”

A party gets on the ballot if it received at least 2% of the entire vote cast for governor or for presidential electors in the last preceding general state election.

Turner said the Green Party is focused on getting 2% of the vote across the state to retain its ballot access and expressed optimism in achieving that goal. 

“That’s not an unmeetable goal,” Turner said. “But it’s not as easy as people would have it made out to be, given that third parties don’t have millions and millions of dollars to campaign.”

In North Carolina, a 37% plurality of voters are unaffiliated. Ross said unaffiliated voters are the key to swing-state elections, and could favor third-party candidates.

“That’s ultimately the largest group that I’m trying to reach out to, and pull into the polls,” Ross said. “Because I think that the platform that I’ve put together — whether it’s dealing with education, healthcare, the economy — I think that when people truly understand those solutions and compare that to Robinson and Stein, you’ll see that they’re kind of fighting the culture war, and I’m actually trying to put forward common-sense policies that will benefit regular people.”

North Carolina has never elected a third-party candidate as governor since the Democratic and Republican parties became mainstream. Ross said he recognizes his slim chances, and while running for the purpose of election, he sees opportunities for success in pushing the frontrunners to adopt libertarian policies.

“Larger opportunities to win is growing the party, growing the movement, getting the ideas out there,” Ross said. “But can we push Robinson and Stein to get better on liberty issues? … At the end of the day, I want this state to be freer and liberty to ring for all generations and all people.”

Turner said the North Carolina Green Party runs for many reasons. 

“We do run with the intention of winning; it’s not a fake campaign,” Turner said. “I go to as many places as I can. I talk to people. We distribute literature. We go to events.”

Turner said they can’t afford to buy media time and therefore rely heavily on in-person contact. 

“We also want our message to be made available to more people, the things we’re talking about that we feel like need to be inserted into the political dialogue in this country,” Turner said. “And that’s a second goal.” 

Ross said the basis of libertarian politics revolves around limited government and free-market capitalism. His campaigning points include improving transparency in the legislative process, eliminating the income tax, legalizing controlled substances, establishing a “free market” education system, reforming the policing system and stripping back the involvement of bureaucracy in healthcare.

Turner said the Green Party nationally is a federation of state parties and North Carolina’s Green Party has chosen to be an anti-capitalist, eco-socialist party. Turner said the basics of Green Party politics are grassroots democracy, environmental wisdom and social justice. 

“As socialists, we are very interested that decisions get made at the lowest level possible,” Turner said.  “We feel like decisions that affect people’s lives need to be made with the input of all the people involved.”

Turner said environmental wisdom means people must recognize the limitations of the planet they live on and not exceed those boundaries, or they will perish. 

“The Green Party early on began to recognize that it is very, very difficult to solve the environmental problems that we face if we do not also address the social issues,” Turner said. “People who don’t have good education, who have to struggle just to survive, to feed their children don’t have a lot of patience for environmental preaching.”