By garnering in excess of five percent of votes in several statewide races, The Libertarian Party of Texas has guaranteed its candidates automatic spots on state election ballots throughout 2014. As Independent Political Report reports:
Libertarian candidates J Randall Stevens (Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 2), Dave Howard (Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 5), and Mary Ruwart (Comptroller of Public Accounts) significantly surpassed the qualification requirement to retain the party’s ballot status.
Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Kathie Glass also exceeded the two percent minimum needed to ensure automatic party presence on the 2014 governor’s election ballots.
While the Libertarian Party’s focus tends to be on minimal (if any) government intervention in all spheres of life, The Texas Observer has noticed some discrepancies in between Texan candidates’ stances and traditional Libertarian beliefs:
Kathie Glass who is running for Governor has a nativist platform and espouses deploying the state guard (whose mission is humanitarian, not military in nature) to the border. The more traditional stance on immigration in the Libertarian Party advocates "the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally". While this stance has shifted from an open border to a secure one, arming a humanitarian militia with an order from the governor hardly seems like a position that they would readily take.
While this may make the Libertarian Party come across as hypocritical, it is rare that a candidate unilaterally agrees with a political party on all issues, especially considering party philosophies change as quickly as the times themselves. Also to consider is given the Libertarian Party's brief existence (it started in 1971), the group may still be trying to out where it stands on geographically-tied issues such as immigration.