The students greeted the boyish-faced man in the charcoal suit as the stranger he is to Virginia politics.

Hi Rob Sarvis, running for governor, the Libertarian said, wading into an auditorium of seniors at a Northern Virginia high schools Meet the Candidates day.

Polite smiles. Handshakes. Giggles. Silence.

Sarvis sat alongside stand-ins for his opponents, Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who apparently had more important places to be than a gathering of teenagers, many of them not old enough to vote.

Libertarian candidates have never made much of a dent in Virginia politics. But Sarvis, a software developer and lawyer who also has masters degrees in math and economics, climbed as high as 10 percent in recent polls, causing no small amount of whiplash in Virginia political circles.

Because Sarvis is a virtual unknown, his rise is largely viewed as a reflection of voters disgust with McAuliffe and Cuccinelli, who have trashed each other in a flood of negative advertising.

A bit more than a third of Virginians viewed McAuliffe unfavorably in a recent Washington Post-Abt SRBI poll after a monthslong portrayal by Republicans as an untrustworthy huckster who is unqualified to run the state.

Nearly half of those polled 47 percent had a negative impression of Cuccinelli, the states attorney general, whom McAuliffe has spent millions branding as an anti-women, anti-gay, tea party extremist.

Sarvis, 37, has no paid staff and no headquarters, and he hosts meetings at a Tropical Smoothie cafe near his Annandale town house. Hes not complaining about being a choice of last resort.

Their awfulness creates all the opportunities, he said of his opponents.

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Libertarian gets some traction in governor’s race