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Holtz to Oppose Incumbent Eshoo Again

I'm Brian Holtz, a Libertarian running for Congress against 8-term incumbent Democrat Anna Eshoo in Silicon Valley. I've been a software engineer here on the Peninsula since 1990, first at Sun Microsystems and now at Yahoo. My wife Melisse is a California native and a financial analyst at Genentech. We have two daughters living at home here in San Carlos: Zoe b. May 2000, and Shannon b. Aug 2003.

I've been an advocate of free markets ever since I read Milton Friedman's Free to Choose in 1980. Even before renouncing religion while in college, I had never been comfortable with the religious moralizing of the Republican Party. My policy had been to register and vote Libertarian at the state and local level to signal my principles, but vote Republican in federal elections to try to limit the harms caused by Democrats in D.C. My theory was that the Republicans almost never implement their worst ideas (restraints on personal liberty), whereas the Democrats almost always implement theirs (restraints on economic liberty). When the Republicans took complete control in Washington in 2001 for the first time since 1955, I was confident that they would implement entitlement reform, spending cuts, and free trade. Instead, they gave us a bloating of Medicare, more corporate welfare, and steel tariffs. I could no longer blame just the Democrats for Washington's massive special-interest drag on the economy, and started to become active in Libertarian politics.

I advocate the moderate brand of libertarianism that the Cato Institute calls "market liberalism". It holds that the government should prevent aggression, protect the environment, provide a safety net, and regulate basic infrastructure, but otherwise recognize the freedom and responsibility of peaceful honest adults to control their own bodies, actions, speech, and property, and work and play together as they see fit. I'm reaching out to voters who are fed up with Democrats who don't understand market dynamics and Republicans who don't respect civil liberties. I'm asking voters to cast a clear and unambiguous vote for the policies of the 21st century: personal freedom and responsibility, free and fair markets, and smart environmentalism.

On my website I predict I'll again get just under 4% of the vote, which is only slightly better than Eshoo's last few Libertarian opponents. I'm too honest and realistic to claim I have a serious chance of winning. My campaign strategy is to promote the idea of liberty to opinion leaders -- activists, academics, journalists, and voters who seriously analyze the positions of the candidates. My campaign website (marketliberal.org) will feature an exhaustively detailed platform backed up by thoughtful policy analysis.

I will campaign primarily by promoting marketliberal.org, answering candidate questionaires and media inquiries, and participating in public forums. I doubt I'll kiss many babies or knock on many doors. I don't want people to vote for me because of my handshake or smile. I don't fundamentally care whether people vote for me, since I care more about spreading the idea of market liberalism than about getting votes. Getting votes is only a means to the end of spreading the message of free minds and free markets. I'd rather have someone hear the full message and vote against me than ignore the message while voting for me, because the message will eventually win even though I won't. What's true and right always wins in the long run.