ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 16, 1996 TAG: 9607160058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
VOTERS WILL HAVE a three-way choice in the race for Congress this fall.
Libertarian candidate Jay Rutledge will be on the ballot this fall in the 6th District race for Congress.
The Roanoke software developer will run against the Republican incumbent, Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Roanoke, and Democratic nominee Jeff Grey of Rockbridge County.
Rutledge gained notoriety this spring by suing Roanoke's Festival in the Park for forbidding him from passing out campaign literature at the privately run event. Now he's cranking up his campaign after getting word from the state Board of Elections that he has qualified for the ballot after turning in more than 2,000 voters' nominating signatures.
As a Libertarian, Rutledge believes government too often encroaches on citizens' lives. He says government is "inherently anti-social" but "is useful as a lesser evil" to enforce contracts and resolve disputes among citizens.
The Libertarian Party, founded in 1971, bills itself as the nation's third-largest political party. It has run candidates for president without success, but has managed to get some of its members elected to local offices and state legislatures around the nation.
Rutledge says some people get the wrong impression that Libertarians want to do away with government. "Libertarians are not opposed to government," he says. "Libertarians are opposed to bad government. You can't have liberty without law."
Rutledge, a Colorado native, grew up in Tennessee and Northern Virginia and earned degrees from the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia in the mid-1960s.
He writes in a campaign biography that the ferment of that era affected him deeply: "I am proud of my modest contribution as an anti-draft, anti-war 'activist' who helped to end the evil of conscription in America.''
Rutledge, who believes government shouldn't police citizens' private lives, also alludes to President Clinton's statement that he tried marijuana but didn't inhale: "And, yes," Rutledge writes, "I inhaled."
An experience with the American health care system also had an impact on his thinking. He was hospitalized repeatedly for stomach pains, but refused surgery. "The doctors became irritated that I would not yield to their authority," but, he says, it turned out their diagnosis was wrong. Rutledge says he thinks about that when he considers "managed health care" proposals; he believes he wouldn't have been able to refuse the surgery "in a society where health care is only available in government controlled hospitals staffed by government controlled physicians."
After selling insurance and doing other odd jobs, he moved from Richmond to Roanoke in 1971 to work with the AT&T Bell System. Now he works as a self-employed software developer.
He says that during the 1970s "my belief in the Democrat-Republican 'system' evaporated in disillusionment."
By joining the Libertarian Party, he says, he's gained a chance to make a difference. "I do not regard my lack of elective office credentials as a drawback. To the contrary, it is one the factors which most qualifies me. Anyone who has those credentials has helped create today's morass of debt, taxation, overregulation, moral and social decay, political correctness, and legalism."
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB