Sparks fly. The photo flashes across the screen on the website lucasoverby.com. A slogan appears in a black army font.
“Lucas Overby for Congress,” the site read. “Because we need someone who works as hard as we do.”
Twenty-eight-year-old Pinellas County native Lucas Overby is currently a commercial driver supervisor and more importantly, he was the Libertarian candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida’s 13th Congressional district this past midterm election on Nov. 4.
With no Democratic candidate running for congressman, Republican David Jolly won with 74 percent against Overby with a 24 percent vote.
Overby said as part of the Libertarian party, they ask the question “How do we allow you to live your life as free as possible?”
Although Overby did not win the election, he contributed to the growing Libertarian party. Libertarian governor candidate, Adrian Wyllie, was just shy of a 4 percent vote, a record for the Florida Libertarian party.
“Though tonight, we didn’t win the ultimate victory. We did more than any third party candidate has ever done in the history of Florida,” says Wyllie, quoted by Fox 13 News’ Haley Hinds.
Hind says Wyllie showed voters that there are more than the two parties, Republican and Democrat.
“One of my favorite aspects of being on the third party side, the way we present it, we can talk to anyone about anything and it’s not considered taboo. It’s not weird for me to be in a Democratic meeting one morning and be at a Republican meeting that afternoon,” says Overby.
Overby says his team consisted of a variety of viewpoints. “Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, you name it. They found common ground; they found common goals inside of our platform. To me, that’s more fun and more important.”
Prior to the election, Overby ran a youth outreach program, “Taking a District,” to get kids involved with politics. Overby says now that the election is over he will become involved with the program again.
“My passion really is youth engagement,” says Overby. “The good news on that was we tripled youth turnout, the bad news is 8 percent is tripling youth turnout.”
Overby says he teaches the youth how to affect change either in their neighborhood, city, in their state. The program educates the youth about how to protest, petition, read and write legislations and how to run for office at a local level.
“We need something different. We need something new,” says Overby.
