Jo Jorgensen (born May 1, 1957) is an American

libertarian Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according ...

political activist and academic. Jorgensen was the Libertarian Party's nominee for

president of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...

in the 2020 election, in which she finished third in the popular vote with about 1.9 million votes, 1.2% of the national total. She was previously the party's nominee for

vice president A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...

in the 1996 election, as Harry Browne's

running mate A running mate is a person running together with another person on a joint ticket during an election. The term is most often used in reference to the person in the subordinate position (such as the vice presidential candidate running with a pre ...

. She is a full-time lecturer of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

Clemson University Clemson University () is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university near Clemson, South Carolina, United States. - The blue-shaded pattern denotes university property. This shows Clemson University is ''out ...

Early life and career

Jorgensen was born on May 1, 1957, in

Libertyville, Illinois Libertyville is a village in Libertyville Township, Lake County, Illinois, Libertyville Township, Lake County, Illinois, United States. It is located west of Lake Michigan, approximately 40 miles north of the Chicago Loop. As such, it is part o ...

, and raised in neighboring Grayslake. She is an alumna of Grayslake Central High School. Her grandparents were Danish immigrants. Jorgensen received a Bachelor of Science degree in

Baylor University Baylor University is a Private university, private Baptist research university in Waco, Texas, United States. It was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Te ...

in 1979 and a master's degree in

business administration Business administration is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. Overview The administration of a business includes the performance o ...

Southern Methodist University Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a Private university, private research university in Dallas, Texas, United States, with a satellite campus in Taos County, New Mexico. SMU was founded on April 17, 1911, by the Methodist Episcopal Church, ...

in 1980. She began her career at

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working with computer systems, leaving to become part owner and President of Digitech, Inc. She received a Ph.D. in

Industrial and Organizational Psychology Industrial and organizational psychology (I-O psychology) "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effec ...

from

in 2002. She has taught full-time at Clemson since 2006.

Political career

1992 U.S. House of Representatives campaign

Jorgensen first ran for office in the 1992 United States House of Representatives election. She ran as a Libertarian to represent SC-04, in northwest South Carolina, against incumbent Democrat Liz J. Patterson and Republican challenger Bob Inglis. Jorgensen placed third with 2.2% of the total vote.

1996 vice presidential campaign

Before the 1996 United States presidential election, the Libertarian Party nominated Jorgensen for vice president, as Harry Browne's running mate. She was nominated on the first ballot with 92% of the vote. She participated in a vice-presidential debate televised nationwide by

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on October 22, along with Herbert Titus of the Taxpayers Party and Mike Tompkins of the Natural Law Party. Browne and Jorgensen, who were on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C., received 485,759 votes, finishing in fifth place with 0.5% of the popular vote. This was the Libertarian Party's best performance since

1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a United States grain embargo against the Soviet Union, grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning Sys ...

2020 presidential campaign

On August 13, 2019, Jorgensen filed with the FEC to run for the Libertarian presidential nomination in the 2020 election. She formally launched her campaign at the November 2, 2019, Libertarian Party of South Carolina convention before participating in the South Carolina Libertarian presidential debate the same day. In the non-binding Libertarian primaries, Jorgensen was second in the cumulative popular vote, winning two of the 12 primaries. On May 23, 2020, Jorgensen became the Libertarian presidential nominee, making her the first woman to be the Libertarian nominee and the only female 2020 presidential candidate with ballot access to over 270 electoral votes. Spike Cohen, a mostly unknown figure in mainstream politics, was nominated for vice president. The same day, Jorgensen's supporters repurposed

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...

's unofficial 2016 campaign slogan, "I'm With Her". The slogan trended on Twitter that night and made national headlines. She registered minimal support in

opinion polling An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll, is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of que ...

. Jorgensen released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees in September 2020 in response to the vacancy on the Court created by Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; Bader; March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until Death and state funeral of Ruth Bader ...

's death. Jorgensen received more than 1.8 million votes in the general election, about 1.2% of the national total. After the election, several media outlets speculated that Jorgensen's candidacy resulted in

vote splitting In social choice theory and politics, a spoiler effect happens when a losing candidate affects the results of an election simply by participating. Voting rules that are not affected by spoilers are said to be spoilerproof. The frequency and se ...

significant enough to be decisive in Democrat

Joe Biden Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...

's victory over Republican

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

, pointing to Jorgensen's vote share being higher than Biden's margin of victory over Trump in multiple battleground states. While many pundits claimed that Trump would have won had she not run, others believed that many Jorgensen voters would have abstained from voting, as opposed to voting for Trump.

Political positions

Healthcare and social security

Jorgensen supports a free-market healthcare system financed by individual spending accounts that could keep any savings, which she believes would increase healthcare providers' incentive to compete by meeting consumer demand for low-cost services. She opposes

single-payer healthcare Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare, in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system (hence "single-payer"). Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from pr ...

, calling it "disastrous". Jorgensen supports replacing

Social Security Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance ...

with individual retirement accounts. In the final debate of the 2020 primaries, candidate Jacob Hornberger accused Jorgensen of "support ngthe

welfare state A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...

through

and Medicare". In response, she called Social Security a "

Ponzi scheme A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays Profit (accounting), profits to earlier investors with Funding, funds from more recent investors. Named after Italians, Italian confidence artist Charles Ponzi, this type of s ...

". She then expressed the desire to allow people to opt out of the program on her first day in office, while emphasizing the

constitutional A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

inability of a president to unilaterally end the program without

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

's support, as well as the need for the government to fulfill existing Social Security obligations. Under Jorgensen's plan, those who opt out would put 6.2% of their payroll taxes in individual retirement accounts and receive prorated Social Security benefits for existing contributions as zero-coupon bonds for retirement.

Criminal justice and drug policy

Jorgensen opposes federal civil asset forfeiture and

qualified immunity In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle of federal law that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from lawsuits for damages unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "c ...

. She opposes the war on drugs and supports abolishing drug laws, promising to pardon all nonviolent drug offenders. She has urged the demilitarization of police. Additionally, Jorgensen supports the Second Amendment.

Foreign policy and defense

Jorgensen opposes embargoes,

economic sanctions Economic sanctions or embargoes are Commerce, commercial and Finance, financial penalties applied by states or institutions against states, groups, or individuals. Economic sanctions are a form of Coercion (international relations), coercion tha ...

, and

foreign aid In international relations, aid (also known as international aid, overseas aid, foreign aid, economic aid or foreign assistance) is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another. The ...

; she supports

non-interventionism Non-interventionism or non-intervention is commonly understood as "a foreign policy of political or military non-involvement in foreign relations or in other countries' internal affairs". This is based on the grounds that a state should not inter ...

armed neutrality A neutral country is a state that is neutral towards belligerents in a specific war or holds itself as permanently neutral in all future conflicts (including avoiding entering into military alliances such as NATO, CSTO or the SCO). As a type ...

, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from abroad.

Immigration, economics, and trade

Jorgensen calls for

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

, arguing that it would reduce poverty. She supports cutting government spending to reduce taxes. Jorgensen supports the freedom of American citizens to travel and trade, calls for the elimination of

trade barrier Trade barriers are government-induced restrictions on international trade. According to the comparative advantage, theory of comparative advantage, trade barriers are detrimental to the world economy and decrease overall economic efficiency. Most ...

s and tariffs, and supports the repeal of quotas on the number of people who can legally enter the United States to work, visit, or reside. In a Libertarian presidential primary debate, Jorgensen said she would immediately stop construction on President

's border wall. During another primary debate she blamed anti-immigration sentiment on disproportionate media coverage of crimes by immigrants. She argued that immigration helps the economy and that the blending of cultures is beneficial.

COVID-19

Jorgensen has characterized the U.S. government's response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

as overly

bureaucratic Bureaucracy ( ) is a system of organization where laws or regulatory authority are implemented by civil servants or non-elected officials (most of the time). Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments ...

and

authoritarian Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and ...

, calling restrictions on individual behavior (such as

stay-at-home orders A stay-at-home order, safer-at-home order, movement control order – also referred to by loose use of the terms quarantine, isolation, or lockdown – is an order from a government authority that restricts movements of a population as a mass qu ...

) and corporate

bailout A bailout is the provision of financial help to a corporation or country which otherwise would be on the brink of bankruptcy. A bailout differs from the term ''bail-in'' (coined in 2010) under which the bondholders or depositors of global syst ...

s "the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime". Jorgensen opposes government mask mandates, considering mask-wearing a matter of personal choice. She argues that mask-wearing would be widely adopted without government intervention because

market competition In economics, competition is a scenario where different Economic agent, economic firmsThis article follows the general economic convention of referring to all actors as firms; examples in include individuals and brands or divisions within the s ...

would drive businesses to adopt either mask-required or mask-optional policies, allowing consumers the freedom to choose their preferred environment. Jorgensen has invoked the analogy of dollar voting to argue that consumer preferences would shape businesses' policies on face masks in the absence of a government mandate.

Personal life

Jorgensen is married and has two adult daughters and a grandson. She briefly paused her presidential campaign after her mother's death on September 3, 2020.

Electoral history

, - , , colspan=5 , Republican gain from Democratic , -

References

External links

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Issue Positions and quotes
at

On the Issues On the Issues or OnTheIssues is an American non-partisan, non-profit organization providing information to American voters on American candidates, primarily via their website. The organization was started in 1996, went non-profit in 2000, and is ...

Profile
at

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* * , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Jorgensen, Jo 1957 births Living people 1996 United States vice-presidential candidates 20th-century South Carolina politicians 20th-century American women politicians 21st-century American women politicians American libertarians American people of Danish descent American women academics American women business executives Baylor University alumni Businesspeople from Illinois Businesspeople from South Carolina Candidates in the 2020 United States presidential election Clemson University alumni Clemson University faculty Female candidates for President of the United States Female candidates for Vice President of the United States Libertarian Party (United States) presidential nominees Libertarian Party (United States) vice presidential nominees People from Lake County, Illinois Organizational psychologists South Carolina Libertarians Southern Methodist University alumni Women in South Carolina politics 21st-century South Carolina politicians