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Will Hammer awarded Libertarian Party’s top candidate award

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HAMMER1liteHard work helped two-time Libertarian candidate Will Hammer win record votes in his campaigns for public office.

That hard work was rewarded by the Libertarian Party at their National Convention in Orlando a few weeks ago. Hammer was awarded the Patrick Henry Candidate Award, which recognizes a very effective campaign for public office at the state or federal level, while communicating Libertarian ideas, principles, and values. The award is awarded to one or two candidates every two years. Notable past winners include 2013 Virginia Governor candidate Robert Sarvis and 2012 Illinois Governor candidate and reality show Survivor contestant Rupert Boneham.

A former Ron Paul supporter, Hammer tried to make the Republican Party more libertarian and got elected Treasurer of the Staunton Republican Committee. He determined that it was infeasible to change the GOP from within and later joined the LP after seeing a strong showing by Libertarian Robert Sarvis in the 2013 Virginia governor’s race, and responded to Sarvis’ call to run for office.

In his 2014 campaign for Virginia US House, District 6, against Bob Goodlatte, Hammer garnered 12.3% of the vote in a three-way race, the highest vote percentage for a Libertarian running for federal office in the state’s history.

Hammer used every spare moment he had outside of his full-time job to campaign. Along with volunteers, he gathered over 1700 signatures in six weeks to get on the ballot. He traveled his district to events, from a Tea Party rally and gun shows to Roanoke Pride and the Latino Festival.

He took election week off from work, and at one point, stayed awake for 40 hours to mount yard signs at poll locations from Lexington to Front Royal between speaking events in Lynchburg, Roanoke, and Staunton.

In 2015, Hammer campaigned hard again, this time in a two-way race for State House of Delegates District 20. He received 24.1% of the vote against Republican incumbent Richard Bell. In the previous two elections, Democrat challengers received just 29% against Bell. This result is one of the highest in Virginia for a Libertarian candidate, but highest in terms of percentage compared to previous major party challengers.

While in college, Hammer co-founded the first libertarian group on campus, the Hampden-Sydney Classical Liberals. In 2012, he founded Freedom Gulch, an online news magazine aimed at promoting free markets and free minds. Cointelegraph, one of the top Bitcoin news websites, called Hammer “perhaps the politician most engaged with digital currencies to have stood for election to date.”

Hammer is a REALTOR® and entrepreneur. Hammer is open to running again as a Libertarian in the future.

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