John Perry Barlow - Politics

Politics

Barlow is a former chairman of the Sublette County Republican Party and served as western Wyoming campaign coordinator for Dick Cheney during his 1978 Congressional campaign. By the early 2000s, Barlow was unable to reconcile his ardent libertarianism with the prevailing neoconservative movement and "didn't feel tempted to vote for Bush"; after an arrest for possession of a small quantity of marijuana while traveling, he joined the Democratic Party and publicly committed himself to outright political activism for the first time since his spell with the Republican Party. Barlow has subsequently declared that he is a Republican. He has also claimed on many occasions to be an anarchist. Barlow has said he voted for Natural Law Party Presidential candidate John Hagelin in 2000 after discovering in the voting booth that his friend Nat Goldhaber was Hagelin's running mate. He said in 2004: "I'm embarrassed for my country that in my entire voting life, there has never been a major-party candidate whom I felt I could vote for. All of my presidential votes, whether for George Wallace, Dick Gregory, or John Hagelin, have been protest votes." Barlow said that year he was "voting for John Kerry, though with little enthusiasm."

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