Libertarian candidate for governor, Eric Cooper, will begin touring Iowa this week with lieutenant governor nominee Nick Weltha, making stops in Cedar Falls and Waterloo on Saturday.

Cooper, also an ISU associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, openly admits he will not win the gubernatorial race.

“Our goal in this election is to get at least 2 percent of the vote which would give the Libertarian Party major party status under Iowa law,” Cooper said in a news release. “We also hope to draw enough support away from the major parties to encourage them to poach our issues in order to steal our voters.”

Cooper cites movements of the Populist Party and the Socialist Party a century ago to validate his candidacy. The Populists, he said on his website, wanted direct election of U.S. senators rather than the state legislature electing them, which was achieved. Socialists sought and were successful in improved labor laws, establishing a minimum wage and the Department of Education.

“We seek to popularize the Jeffersonian notion of a small, limited government among Iowa citizens, and give citizens who would like to see a reduction in the size of Iowa government an option at the voting both,” Cooper said.

Cooper is currently the vice chairman of the Libertarian Party of Iowa. He has run as a Libertarian for the state legislature and was the Iowa college coordinator for the Ron Paul presidential campaign prior to the 2008 Iowa caucuses.

Weltha is a systems administrator for the Iowa Judicial Branch and served as vice chairman of the Libertarian Party of Iowa from 2006 to 2008.

Cooper’s website states the government should have no role in what defines marriage but “no restrictions should be placed on the actions of peaceful people.”

He also stands against the Iowa Smokefree Air Act, says Iowa has one of the most restrictive fireworks bans in the country and calls the war on drugs a “miserable failure.”