Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis questions political conventions

Wednesday, October, 16, 2013; 11:08 PM | | |

by Alex Koma, sports editor

Its easy to categorize the two major party candidates in Virginias race for governor.Democrat Terry McAuliffe has a reputation as an experienced businessman, while Republican and state Attorney General Ken Cucinelli is known as an experienced lawyer.

But Libertarian Robert Sarvis is an entirely different story.

The 36-year-old Fairfax County native has worked as a software engineer, teacher, lawyer and mobile app designer all before attempting a run for state senate two years ago.

While its safe to call the other two candidates career politicians, Sarvis has clearly positioned himself as an outsider that can provide an alternative for undecided voters.

Theres a lot of conventional wisdom in politics and some of its probably correct, and some of it is worth questioning, Sarvis said. One of those is the conventional wisdom that you cant speak to voters like theyre intelligent adults. Ive always thought it was strange that no one was really trying to do that and this is an opportunity to see what happens when you do.

When Sarvis first ran for office against Democrat Dick Saslaw in 2011, he ran as a Republican. But his experiences with politics and business quickly pushed him toward libertarianism, and he found that this election was the ideal path to express these views.

When we saw the way that the candidates were shaping up, that it was going to be Cucinelli and McAuliffe, it just became clear that there was nobody who was going to be talking about actual freedom and the rule of law, Sarvis said. It just became really clear that there was value, regardless of the outcome, in having someone who could articulate a lot of these issues that really matter.

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Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis questions political conventions