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TALLAHASSEE If the race for governor were a popularity contest, Adrian Wyllie would feel good about his odds.

Wyllie, 44, a former radio host and IT consultant from Palm Harbor, is taking the longest of long shots by running on the Libertarian Party ticket. But by virtue of a Florida's scorched-earth gubernatorial contest, he may just have a chance to swing the outcome.

The two major-party candidates current Gov. Rick Scott and former Gov. Charlie Crist are beating themselves silly with a barrage of negative commercials. Surveys have shown voters don't really care for either.

"People are so disgusted by the Republican-Democrat duopoly right now. People don't like either of these guys," Wyllie said.

Florida witnessed a historically close gubernatorial election in 2010 when Scott inched out a victory over Democrat Alex Sink by 1.2 percent of the vote. This year, the electorate remains divided and disgruntled.

"Anybody that can pull 1 or 2 percent in either direction can affect the outcome," said University of South Florida political scientist Susan MacManus.

Wyllie gregarious, confident and quick to crack jokes decided to skip the business and school photo ops to barnstorm through three dozen microbreweries last month.

Inspired by breweries standing up to legislative efforts to increase regulations last spring, Wyllie drew stout crowds and hearty applause with his pledge to "get government out of your wallet, out of your bedroom and out of your business."

But Florida politics isn't a beer-hall popularity contest. It's a mega-money-fueled, statistically modeled, head-butting, art-of-war affair between major political institutions and interests.

It is doctors and insurers vs. trial lawyers. It is Big Sugar vs. environmentalist million- and billionaires. It is a media orgy of attack ads burning through millions of dollars a week in Florida's 10 television markets.

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Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Adrian Wyllie tries to get noticed

Breaking the Banks and Government with Libertarian Populism
Conn Carroll explains the case for libertarian populism to Glenn Reynolds. Carroll thinks there are small fixes needed for healthy banking and government. Is America ready to reject crony capitalis...

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Breaking the Banks and Government with Libertarian Populism - Video

U.S. Senate candidate David Patterson said what he likes about the Libertarian Party is that it holds that individuals should be able to live their lives the way they see fit.

Speaking to members of the Bowling Green Southern Kentucky Tea Party on Thursday, the Harrodsburg police officer said he is a Christian, and that informs how he lives his life.

I dont expect anyone to tell me how to live my life, and Im not going to tell anyone how to live theirs, Patterson said.

Patterson is a third-party candidate in a Senate race that has garnered national attention as Democratic candidate and Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes challenges Minority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

He said the the rise of a third party will encourage compromise in politics.

The two-party system is broken, Patterson said.

The whole thing doesnt work anymore, he said.

Patterson said he really started paying attention to political issues during the 2012 presidential election and getting both Republican and Democrat perspectives on issues.

As I became painfully aware that Ron Paul was getting pushed out of the election, I knew that I was not going to vote for Mitt Romney, he said.

Instead, he decided to vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate.

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Libertarian candidate comes to Bowling Green

Adrian Wyllie Libertarian Candidate for Florida Governor Town Hall
Online Town Hall on Wednesday, September 17th at 7pm at the Datex Center in Clearwater, FL . He will be taking questions from Twitter and Google as well as from the audience in attendance....

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Adrian Wyllie Libertarian Candidate for Florida Governor Town Hall - Video

The Republican Party's libertarian tide, which waxed strongly over the last four years, has begun to recede in the face of growing public fears about Islamic militancy in the Mideast.

The latest evidence of the shift comes from a Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday that shows, among other things, fewer conservatives are worried that government anti-terrorism activities will lead to violations of civil liberties. Concern over the tradeoff between civil liberties and security had risen sharply after Edward Snowden's revelations of the widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency, for which he had been a contractor.

Just a little more than a year ago, 47% of Americans said they were more concerned that government anti-terrorism policies had gone "too far in restricting the average person's civil liberties" compared with 35% who said they were more concerned those policies "have not gone far enough to adequately protect the country." A second Pew poll later in the fall found a similar result.

Now, however, only 35% say they are concerned that anti-terrorism policies have gone "too far" and 50% say their greater worry is that the policies will not go "far enough."

The Pew survey, conducted Sept. 2-9, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

The shift in public opinion comes mostly from the GOP side. Republicans went from an almost even division in November, 43% "too far" and 41% "not far enough," to a lopsided 24% "too far," 64% "not far enough" response in the current survey. Among Republicans, the shift was particularly strong among those who said they identify with the tea party movement.

Democrats remain closely divided on the issue, with self-identified liberals more likely to say they fear the government has gone "too far."

The split among Democrats has been notable in Congress, where a group of mostly western Democratic senators, led by Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have been prominent critics of the NSA and the Obama administration's continuation of some surveillance policies adopted during the George W. Bush administration.

Among Republicans, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has led the critics of the NSA. His denunciations of government surveillance, highlighted by a 13-hour filibuster against the nomination of CIA Director John Brennan in March 2013, catapulted him into the first ranks of Republican presidential prospects.

But if the shift in the Republican mood persists, with growing support for the use of military force overseas and declining concern over civil liberties, Paul's appeal could wane. Notably, the senator has appeared to shift ground in recent days. Wednesday night, after Obama's speech, he said in an interview on Fox News that he was "all in for saying we have to combat ISIS.

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Libertarian mood in GOP wanes as Mideast concern rises