Mike ter Maat

From Ballotpedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Mike ter Maat
Image of Mike ter Maat

Candidate, Vice President of the United States

Elections and appointments
Last election

November 5, 2024

Education

Bachelor's

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1982

Graduate

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1983

Ph.D

The George Washington University, 1992

Personal
Birthplace
Portland, Ore.
Religion
Christian
Profession
Law enforcement officer
Contact

Mike ter Maat (Libertarian Party) ran for election for Vice President of the United States. He was on the ballot in the general election on November 5, 2024.

Ter Maat also ran for election for President of the United States. He lost in the Libertarian Party convention on May 26, 2024.

Biography

Mike ter Maat was born in Portland, Oregon. He earned a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1982, an M.B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1983, and a Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University in 1992. Ter Maat's career experience includes working as a police officer in Broward County, Florida, an economist, an economics professor, and a substitute teacher.[1][2]

Elections

2024

Mike ter Maat was selected to serve as the Libertarian Party's 2024 vice presidential nominee at the Libertarian National Convention on May 26, 2024. Chase Oliver (L) was selected as the party's 2024 presidential nominee. Click the links below to read more about the 2024 presidential election:

2022

Special election

See also: Florida's 20th Congressional District special election, 2022

Florida's 20th Congressional District special election, 2022 (November 2, 2021, Democratic primary)

Florida's 20th Congressional District special election, 2022 (November 2, 2021, Republican primary)

General election

Special general election for U.S. House Florida District 20

The following candidates ran in the special general election for U.S. House Florida District 20 on January 11, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick
Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D)
 
79.0
 
44,707
Image of Jason Mariner
Jason Mariner (R) Candidate Connection
 
19.4
 
10,966
Image of Mike ter Maat
Mike ter Maat (L) Candidate Connection
 
0.7
 
395
Image of Jim Flynn
Jim Flynn (No Party Affiliation) Candidate Connection
 
0.5
 
265
Image of Leonard Serratore
Leonard Serratore (No Party Affiliation)
 
0.5
 
262
Image of Shelley Fain
Shelley Fain (No Party Affiliation) (Write-in) Candidate Connection
 
0.0
 
22

Total votes: 56,617
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Democratic primary election

Special Democratic primary for U.S. House Florida District 20

The following candidates ran in the special Democratic primary for U.S. House Florida District 20 on November 2, 2021.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick
Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick
 
23.8
 
11,662
Image of Dale Holness
Dale Holness
 
23.8
 
11,657
Image of Barbara Sharief
Barbara Sharief
 
17.7
 
8,684
Image of Perry Thurston
Perry Thurston
 
14.8
 
7,283
Image of Bobby DuBose
Bobby DuBose
 
7.0
 
3,458
Image of Omari Hardy
Omari Hardy
 
5.9
 
2,902
Silhouette Placeholder Image.png
Priscilla Taylor
 
3.4
 
1,677
Image of Elvin Dowling
Elvin Dowling Candidate Connection
 
1.3
 
646
Image of Emmanuel Morel
Emmanuel Morel
 
0.9
 
454
Image of Phil Jackson
Phil Jackson Candidate Connection
 
0.7
 
343
Silhouette Placeholder Image.png
Imran Siddiqui
 
0.6
 
316

Total votes: 49,082
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Republican primary election

Special Republican primary for U.S. House Florida District 20

Jason Mariner defeated Greg Musselwhite in the special Republican primary for U.S. House Florida District 20 on November 2, 2021.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Jason Mariner
Jason Mariner Candidate Connection
 
57.8
 
3,500
Image of Greg Musselwhite
Greg Musselwhite
 
42.2
 
2,553

Total votes: 6,053
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Campaign themes

2022

Video for Ballotpedia

Video submitted to Ballotpedia
Released April 17, 2021

Candidate Connection

Mike ter Maat completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by ter Maat's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Mike has been a police officer in Broward County, Florida, since 2010. His prior career in finance and economics included work with banks, the White House Office of Management and Budget, international development agencies, federal agencies, and trade associations.

From 2002 to 2009, he started and ran a professional education business for bank executives which included conferences, webcasting, and strategic consulting. Mike has traveled in thirty-five countries, taught economics at three universities and substituted at dozens of public schools.

Mike holds a BS in Aeronautical Engineering and an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and MS and PhD degrees in Economics from The George Washington University.

  • Jobs & Wage Growth. Poverty is a political phenomenon, the result of bad public policy. There is nothing inherent in free markets that would naturally produce the persistent inter-generational poverty that we observe in so many American cities. Better schools as a result of open competition are the best way to interrupt the cycle of poverty.
  • Mask & Vaccine Mandates. A pandemic does not suspend the Bill of Rights. The government does not have the right to tell you what to wear, what not to wear, who to be with or in what size groups. The lockdowns were harmful government overreaches. We must avoid government vaccine passports.
  • Police & Justice Reform. Politicians must start negotiating for greater accountability and transparency in policework, not de-funding. Unions must allow for greater flexibility in the labor market for cops. Employers must stop hiding behind the doctrine of qualified immunity. The war on drugs must and the criminalization of victimless behaviors must end.

The number-one most damaging policy we have in America is requiring our children to go to terrible public schools that we protect from competition. Politicians refuse to make the money they collect for education available to anything but public schools – dollar for dollar the worst educational investment in the modern world. Poverty can persist as an inter-generational condition, when fed by continued bad policy made by politicians who mean well but who are utterly ill-equipped to make decisions about economics, much less about peoples’ lives.

Our government should no longer be in the business of criminalizing the behavior of consenting adults. Nor should our government be sentencing our family members to prison terms five times longer than those in the rest of the world. We must demand that when our municipalities negotiate with police unions, they negotiate for what we care about, not defunding, but greater accountability, more transparency, more ability to fire officers as well as the right to offer incentives for excellence, and more citizen involvement in both recruiting and training police officers. And we must put an end to the practice of police employers hiding behind the doctrine of qualified immunity. All of this would make police contracts more responsive to markets, and to citizens.

Thomas Sowell, arguably our most important living economist, who taught us to approach the issue of poverty and economics with the discipline of science. He had an open mind toward the effects on poverty of the interplay between government programs and culture, despite enormous pressure brought to bear on him personally by political forces since the 1970s.

Understanding that solving everybody's problems is not what the government is all about, that what the government does get right is not all about you, and that your career cannot be all about the government.

Stubborn. I don't mind people disliking me - I'll work for their liberty anyway.

To keep a check on the expansion of government's scale and scope.

Worked hard to make principle matter.

When Milton & Rose Friedman's "Free to Choose" was published in 1980, I had the good fortune of being old enough to understand it and young enough that my dad still felt sufficiently responsible for my education that he bought me the copy I still own.

Representatives have a sufficiently narrow political focus to appreciate challenges faced by local communities, but a policy scope broad enough to confer a responsibility for free-market thinking.

Experience in government or politics is nearly always a detriment to all but the few whose job it is to administer the mechanics of governance. Not only should representatives have little prior government experience, their terms in office should be limited.

To stand athwart Marxism's advance and tell the objective truth. Economic development does not result from the resolution of class conflict, whether that be defined as laborer against entrepreneur, poor against rich, race against race, or high-school-educated against college graduate. Growth - personal or societal - comes from the cooperation of self-interested individuals making decisions in an environment of freedom.

When interacting with kids in poor communities where I work as a patrol officer, I have been told many times that only one parent lives at home and the vocation of that one parent is being on government assistance. Clearly, the cycle of success prevalent elsewhere in America is broken in poor communities and that break is enabled by the government.

I would vote against any bill that did not set a timeline toward decreasing spending relative to national income.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.



Campaign website

Ter Maat's campaign website stated the following:

Jobs & Wage Growth

Poverty is a political construct; it is the result of bad public policy. There is nothing inherent in free markets that would naturally produce what we call poverty.

The number one bad policy we have in America is requiring our children to go to terrible public schools that we protect from competition. Politicians refuse to make the money they collect for education available to anything but public schools – dollar for dollar the worst educational investment in the modern world.

In fact, our schools are so bad, that many teenagers decide to drop out altogether, either for a low paying job with no future, or to work in the illicit drug trade, itself an enticing opportunity created entirely by bad public policy.

Poverty can persist as an inter-generational condition, when fed by continued bad policy made by politicians who mean well but who are utterly ill-equipped to make decisions about economics, much less about peoples’ lives.

If you are no longer satisfied with Democratic politicians protecting bad schools and hanging to the tried-and-failed 1960s welfare programs that discourage work, if you are no longer satisfied with Republican politicians acting like it’s all your own fault, you might be a Libertarian. If you’re looking for a fresh new approach to protecting your liberty, an equal shot in a growing economy, and an equal shot at justice, you’re not just a Libertarian, you’re a part of this campaign.

Mask & Vaccine Mandates

If you believe – after considering all the evidence and advice available to us – that you should wear a mask, keep socially distanced, wash your hands, and get vaccinated, then you should. That’s what I’ve done. But just because we are in the midst of a pandemic, and we are, that doesn’t mean the United States Constitution has been suspended, it doesn’t mean the government has the right to shut down our economy, take away your right to earn a living, or to go to church or anywhere else. It doesn’t mean the government has the right to tell you what to wear, what not to wear, who to be with or in what size groups.

I don’t like it when the government infringes on my rights, and neither should you, whether that be the result of authoritarian city ordinances, a condescending federal government, or a rogue police officer. Now there is a movement within our government to require you to carry a vaccine passport. This ultimately means deepening the divisions between us, between people who have complied with our overseers and those who have not. Just one more vehicle used by our government to intrude into our everyday lives.

If you’re looking for a fresh new approach to protecting your liberty, your right to an equal shot in a growing economy, and an equal shot at justice, you’re not just a Libertarian, you’re a part of this campaign.

Police & Justice Reform

Our government should no longer be in the business of criminalizing the behavior of consenting adults. Nor should our government be sentencing our family members to prison terms five times longer than those in the rest of the world.

The state’s heavy-handed approach to controlling us has driven a wedge between communities and police. Backing off the nanny-state attitude would allow people to solve real problems like drug addiction and community violence.

We must demand that when our municipalities negotiate with police unions, they negotiate for what we care about, not defunding, but greater accountability, more transparency, more ability to fire officers as well as the right to offer incentives for excellence, and more citizen involvement in both recruiting and training police officers. And we must put an end to the practice of police employers hiding behind the doctrine of qualified immunity. All of this would make police contracts more responsive to markets, and to citizens.

If you are no longer satisfied with Democratic politicians protecting bad laws and Republican politicians protecting bad cops, you might be a Libertarian. If you’re looking for a fresh new approach to protecting your liberty, an equal shot in a growing economy, and an equal shot at justice, you’re not just a Libertarian, you’re a part of this campaign.[3]

—Mike ter Maat's campaign website (2022)[4]

Campaign finance summary


Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.


Mike ter Maat campaign contribution history
YearOfficeStatusContributionsExpenditures
2024* President of the United StatesLost convention$368,840 $358,743
2022U.S. House Florida District 20Lost general$50,470 $50,470
Grand total$419,310 $409,213
Sources: OpenSecretsFederal Elections Commission ***This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
* Data from this year may not be complete

See also


External links

Footnotes

  1. Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on May 31, 2021.
  2. Mike Ter Maat For US Congress, "About Mike Ter Taat," accessed January 8, 2022
  3. Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
  4. Mike Ter Maat For US Congress, “Issues,” accessed January 8, 2022


Senators
Representatives
District 1
Vacant
District 2
Neal Dunn (R)
District 3
District 4
District 5
District 6
District 7
District 8
District 9
District 10
District 11
District 12
District 13
Anna Luna (R)
District 14
District 15
District 16
District 17
District 18
District 19
District 20
District 21
District 22
District 23
District 24
District 25
District 26
District 27
District 28
Republican Party (21)
Democratic Party (8)
Vacancies (1)