Libertarian Candidate for NYC Mayor Once Attempted to Hijack Airplane

Aaron Commey, a Libertarian Party candidate running for New York City Mayor, was once convicted of aircraft piracy, among other crimes. 17 years ago, as a paranoid schizophrenic, Commey had rampaged into the cockpit of an airplane at the JFK airport. Having been armed, he was threatening the pilot to rid the plane of it’s 150 passengers and “requested” to be flown to Antarctica or Argentina to supposedly battle forces of evil.

Commey had clearly been mentally deluded as he himself admits that he didn’t know what he was thinking those many years ago. He was 22, grew up in the Bronx, fought and suffered a delusion of an evil ‘Cabal’ and took it to the extreme that day. Law enforcement arrived to de-escalate the situation and ultimately, nobody was injured and the plane never left the ground.

Why is this relevant you ask? Well recently in a series of interviews and his latest attempt to campaign for himself, this story came out. Commey hopes that voters an overlook his insane past and focus on the value he will be able to bring to the forefront. Commey claims he is not the same person he was, and he knows that people will find it hard to trust him, rightly so.

What’s to be made of this? Well it shows that the LP has a very lenient drafting process. I’m not sure what it takes to garner a name and reputation in the Libertarian Party or politics in general, but surely you couldn’t run for Mayor of New York if you’ve literally attempted to steal a plane before. Alas, though it has been many years and it appears his schizophrenia has repressed itself and he can function quite well, as odd as he maybe. The only question is, why would the LP endorse this?

Is it because they have hope that his supposed drive to fight “injustice” as Commey’s seen in his own experience is real? Or because they don’t have any standards of excellence? Commey said, related to his experienced injustice by not being released from his mental institution as early as he wanted:

“It showed me a side of government a lot of people think of in the abstract, but feeling it up close and personal made it all that more real to me, there was really only one party I saw that was tackling that aspect of government.”

This is his reasoning to become a Libertarian. Sure, not a lot of us become Libertarians by reading Rothbard, Hoppe, or Mises firstly, but sometimes you have a personal experience that changes your perspective, and then you’re able to learn more from there. But if there is going to be a Libertarian candidate running, myself and I’m sure many others would hope that they weren’t paranoid schizophrenics once, and that they a lot more schooled on what Libertarianism really was.

This is why Libertarians nationwide only ever get 0.5% of the American vote. this why in New York last year the Libertarian candidate got only 0.16% of the vote, and why the Libertarian Party continues to look like a joke.