Jo Jorgensen Biography

Jo Jorgensen was born on May 1, 1957, in Libertyville, Illinois, US, and grew up in Grayslake. Her Danish grandparents immigrated to the US.

Jorgensen studied at the Grayslake Central High School. Thereafter she attended Baylor University and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology in 1979. She furthered her studies at Southern Methodist University and earned a Master's Degree in business administration in 1980.

She worked at IBM with computer systems for some time and left the job and became co-owner and President of DigiTech, Inc, a software duplication company. In 2002, she obtained a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Clemson University. From 2006, she works at the university as a full-time lecturer of psychology.

During the November 6, 1992 held United States House of Representatives elections in South Carolina, Jorgensen ran as the Libertarian candidate to represent South Carolina’s 4th congressional district. She secured 2.2% of the total vote in the election and finished third behind Bob Inglis and Liz J. Patterson.

During the 1996 Libertarian National Convention held in early July that year, Jorgensen was nominated for vice president, as running mate of writer and investment analyst Harry Browne from Tennessee, for the upcoming 1996 United States presidential election. A voice vote followed by a roll-call vote saw Jorgensen, with no opponent, being nominated on the first ballot securing 92% of the vote with only 36 votes going to None of the Above. On October 22 that year, she took part in a vice-presidential debate along with the Taxpayers Party’s Herbert Titus and the Natural Law Party’s Mike Tompkins. The debate was aired by C-SPAN. The presidential election was held on November 5 that year and Browne and Jorgensen garnered 485,798 votes, which comes to around 0.5% of the popular vote, and finished in fifth place, marking best result of the party after 1980.

Jorgensen filed with the Federal Election Commission on August 13, 2019, to run in the series of electoral contests at the 2020 Libertarian Party presidential primaries and caucuses.  She announced her candidacy seeking the Libertarian nomination for the 2020 United States presidential election and formally launched her campaign on November 2 that year at the South Carolina Libertarian Party convention. Later that day, she also took part in the South Carolina Libertarian presidential debate that was held off the convention site. Jorgensen, who urges that quotas which set the count of people who can legally come to the US to earn a living, reside or visit should be revoked, asserted during a Libertarian presidential primary debate, that after becoming president, she would stop construction of the Trump wall right away. In another debate, she insisted that immigration, which fosters cross-culturalism, is favourable for the economy.

Following the competitive 2020 Libertarian Party presidential primaries and caucuses, the party chose Jorgensen as its 2020 presidential nominee at the virtual 2020 Libertarian National Convention on May 23, 2020, after four rounds of voting by registered delegates. With this, she became the first woman to be selected as presidential nominee in the history of the party. Although Jorgensen preferred politician and activist John Monds to be her running mate, the party instead chose libertarian, political activist, entrepreneur, and podcaster Spike Cohen. On September 15, that year Jorgensen garnered ballot access in all the fifty states and the District of Columbia which also made her the only female 2020 presidential candidate who secured access to more than 270 electoral votes.

Jorgensen's presidential campaign, with American politician Steve Dasbach as her campaign manager, received endorsements from several notable individuals like jurist and writer James P. Gray; stock broker, financial commentator and radio personality Peter Schiff; Gary Johnson the Libertarian presidential nominee in 2012 and 2016; and Jacob Hornberger, founder and President of the Future of Freedom Foundation, who contested as a Libertarian candidate for president in 2000 and in 2020 (against Jorgensen). Jorgensen’s presidential campaign however did not receive much media coverage compared to that received by Johnson in 2012 and 2016.

She backs the system of free-market healthcare and is against the system of single-payer healthcare, which she calls as "disastrous". She also calls the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program a "Ponzi scheme" and is in favour of employing Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) instead. She said that after assuming office as President following the 2020 election, she would like to permit people to move out of the OASDI program, although mentioning that she, as President, can end the program only after getting support from the Congress, and after all existing Social Security obligations are met by the government.

She expressed her opinion against the process of civil judicial forfeiture, the legal principle of qualified immunity, militarization of police, the war on drugs, foreign aid, embargoes and economic sanctions in the US. She is in favour of putting an end to trade barriers and tariffs; and the drug laws and even gave her word to forgive those drug offenders who are not violent. She also backs the national foreign policy doctrine of non-intervention and armed neutrality, and voiced her opinion for removal of American forces from other nations. She believes that removal or reduction of government’s regulation of the economy would help in bringing down poverty level; while tax reductions can be made by lowering government spending.

She criticised the US government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and insisted that the restrictions imposed on people including lockdown restrictions, as well as corporate bailouts were "the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime". She voiced against mandatory mask orders and urged that an individual should have the freedom to choose whether to wear a mask or not.

Her website crashed because of high volume of traffic following the September 29, 2020 held first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Same month, she came up with a list of potential Supreme Court nominees to fill the vacancy created by death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was serving as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jorgensen garnered little support in the nationwide public opinion polls that were conducted in relation to the 2020 United States presidential election.

In the November 3, 2020, held presidential election, Jorgensen bagged 1,865,535 votes, which is 1.18% of the national total. Many media outlets later speculated that Jorgensen's candidacy led to vote splitting and played a crucial role in the close contest between Democrat Biden and Republican Trump, and eventual victory of Biden, as Jorgensen's share of votes were more than the margin with which Biden defeated Trump.

Jorgensen is married and is blessed with two daughters and a grandson.