Kaiser Leib

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Kaiser Leib

Libertarian Party

Elections and appointments

Last election

November 5, 2024

Education

Bachelor's

The University of Montana, 2005

Personal

Birthplace

Kalispell, Mont.

Religion

Christian: Presbyterian

Profession

Software engineer

Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

Campaign Twitter

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Kaiser Leib (Libertarian Party) ran for election for Governor of Montana. He lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.

Leib completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Kaiser Leib was born in Kalispell, Montana. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Montana in 2005. His career experience includes working as a software engineer and comedy promotor and producer. He has been affiliated with the Montana Libertarian Party.

Elections

2024

See also: Montana gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2024

General election

General election for Governor of Montana

Incumbent Greg Gianforte defeated Ryan Busse and Kaiser Leib in the general election for Governor of Montana on November 5, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Greg Gianforte (R)	58.9	354,569
		Ryan Busse (D)	38.6	232,644
		Kaiser Leib (L)	2.5	15,191

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 602,404
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Governor of Montana

Ryan Busse defeated Jim Hunt in the Democratic primary for Governor of Montana on June 4, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Ryan Busse	71.0	70,857
	Submit photo	Jim Hunt	29.0	29,004

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 99,861
= 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.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Shawn White Wolf (D)

Republican primary election

Republican primary for Governor of Montana

Incumbent Greg Gianforte defeated Tanner Smith in the Republican primary for Governor of Montana on June 4, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Greg Gianforte	75.2	144,827
		Tanner Smith	24.8	47,713

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 192,540
= 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.

Libertarian primary election

The Libertarian primary election was canceled. Kaiser Leib advanced from the Libertarian primary for Governor of Montana.

Endorsements

Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Leib in this election.

Campaign themes

2024

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Kaiser Leib completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Leib's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I'm a stand-up comedian, a software engineer, and a failed startup founder. I was born in Kalispell, and I graduated from Thompson Falls High School and the University of Montana.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• I'm the only candidate who was born in Montana!
• The two major parties have offered us enmity and government overreach for decades. I want the government to leave us alone. I want lower taxes. I want more respect for all kinds of people, even the people one major party or another doesn't like.
• For my entire adult life, the federal government has stepped into one undeclared war after another. I support the Defend the Guard act, which would require a congressional declaration of war before sending our National Guard troops overseas.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I favor reducing and eliminating taxes and regulations, keeping the government out of our bedrooms and our bodies. What I like or don't like, or what my religion says that I must or mustn't do, should have no relevance to what the government can force you to do.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

Tadeusz Kosciuszko, hero of the American Revolution, who dedicated his life to the cause of liberty both here and back in Poland and lived as a pauper even though he was wealthy. In his will, Kosciuszko specified that his fortune should be used to free slaves in Virginia, but Thomas Jefferson failed to execute that will.

Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?

The 2005 movie "Serenity" is among my favorites, because it shows the dangers of well-intentioned government overreach.

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

Honesty and integrity

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

I'm too stupid to be corrupt, and I have no political alliances so I don't owe any favors.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

The governor is an executive whose duty is to carry out the laws in the best interest of the people - not to make laws, not to play political games and force the legislature into some party line. The governor must comply with the law (especially the constitution) as written by the legislature and interpreted by the court.

What legacy would you like to leave?

Whether people remember me or not isn't important. What's important is to live in accordance with my conscience and follow Christ's examples of self-sacrifice and charity.

What is the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember? How old were you at the time?

I remember the first Gulf War. I would've been about three or four years old. My dad was an oilfield worker, and so he was one of the people involved in putting out the burning wells in Kuwait in the aftermath of Saddam's withdrawal. He was on the front page of the Daily Inter Lake, and you can see him in the background of a few shots of the "Fires of Kuwait" documentary.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

I washed dishes at a pizza restaurant on Main Street in Thompson Falls for a few months before they closed. I don't think my dishwashing had anything to do with the closure.

What is your favorite book? Why?

Why is this so hard? "Dune." It's not a fun story about an adventure where the good guys win - it's a cautionary tale about the dangers of power and ambition.

If you could be any fictional character, who would you want to be?

Gandalf from "The Lord of the Rings." He gets to help and inspire the other heroes, and he doesn't have to make hard decisions about tax policy or competing interests between good people.

What was the last song that got stuck in your head?

Carli Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." Please don't judge me.

What is something that has been a struggle in your life?

I have a very hard time saying "no" or standing up for my own interests, which leads to conflict later on when I try to set boundaries.

A governor is the top executive authority in his or her state. What does that mean do you?

An executive's job is to carry out the will of the people as expressed by their elected legislators and interpreted by the courts. That means the governor shouldn't be creating legislation or forcing the legislature down one path or another.

Governors have many responsibilities, which vary from state to state. Which of those do you personally consider the most important in your state?

The most important duty is to see that the laws are faithfully executed. The governor is also responsible for appointing leadership to many executive agencies, and those appointments ought to be made based on qualifications rather than political partisanship. Finally, the governor presents a budget to the legislature, and that budget should be as small as possible.

Different states require governors to have different degrees of responsibility for the state budgeting process. If it were your choice, what do you believe is the appropriate degree of gubernatorial involvement with this process in your state?

The executive sends a budget to the legislature, and the legislature amends that budget, in line with Montana's constitution. That's how we do it today, and that's how we'd do it under my administration.

In most states, governors have the power to make line-item vetoes. If that is true in your state, what would be your philosophy for how and when to use this power?

In Montana, line-item vetoes apply only to distinct appropriations within the same bill. Briefly, this means that the governor can veto one spending measure within a bill while leaving the rest of the bill intact. A line-item veto should be used carefully to eliminate spending, but shouldn't leave other frivolous appropriations intact.

What do you believe is the ideal relationship between the governor and state legislature?

The legislature should be the governor's boss, not the other way around.

What do you love most about your state?

We're the kindest, friendliest, and most charitable people in any state. We've got great mountains and a strong history of civil liberties, fiscal responsibility, and wildly different beliefs, even within groups of friends.

What do you perceive to be your state's greatest challenges over the next decade?

Our single greatest challenge will be maintaining Montana's unique diversity of ideas in the face of rising partisanship and out-of-state propaganda.

Tell us your favorite joke.

The first part of Jesus to come back from the dead was actually his lower jaw. That’s right, it’s his resurrec-chin.

Under what circumstances should the governor of your state be able to use emergency powers?

The governor's office should only use emergency powers in actual emergencies. We do not have very many emergencies.

What are your views on financial transparency and government accountability?

Full transparency from the government is mandatory, even when it's inconvenient. When the branches of government fail to hold themselves accountable, it falls to the people to do so - ideally with peaceful assembly, but in the courts if they must.

Do you support or oppose changes to the current state ballot initiative process? If so, what kind of changes would you consider?

The current process strikes an appropriate balance between allowing voters direct input to the Constitution and preventing special interests from overwhelming us with misleading initiatives.

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

Leib’s campaign website stated the following:

“	Platform Information about Kaiser's stance on various issues. Guns Yes. Kaiser taught rifle marksmanship with Project Appleseed for many years, and was briefly the state coordinator. Further restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms are unnecessary, and many existing restrictions do not serve the public interest. Reproductive rights Pro-choice. This one's actually harder to resolve philosophically because you've got the unstoppable force (hypothetical human baby life) versus the immovable object (mother's right to her own body). In this case, the mother's right to control her own body wins out. Drugs I don't like drugs. Whether I like drugs or not is irrelevant to whether or not there ought to be restrictions on their use. Property taxes Governor Gianforte and the Republicans in the legislature spent the entire session trying to be as cruel as possible to trans people instead of fixing property taxes. Fundamentally taxes should be abolished; it'd be impractical to do that tomorrow, but working within the existing framework to reduce property taxes is certainly the purview of the Governor's office and the legislature. Trans rights Trans rights are human rights. Stop being mean to trans people. Gay rights See above. Immigration If people want to come to this country to get jobs, why would you want to stop that? If people want to come to this country to take advantage of social programs, maybe getting rid of the social programs is a better way to prevent any negative externalities associated with immigration than putting troops on the border. Israel Israel is a nation on the other side of the world and is not the purview of the office of Governor. Ukraine Ukraine is some distance north of Israel, but it does not fall within the borders of the state of Montana.	”
—Kaiser Leib’s campaign website (2024)

Campaign finance summary

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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.

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Kaiser Leib campaign contribution history

Year	Office	Status	Contributions	Expenditures
2024*	Governor of Montana	Lost general	$2,237	$0
Grand total			$2,237	$0
Sources: OpenSecrets,  Federal 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

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