The first office for which Jorgensen ran was the 1992 United States House of Representatives election. She ran as a Libertarian to represent SC-4, in northwest South Carolina, against incumbent Democrat Liz J. Patterson and Republican Bob Inglis. Jorgensen placed third with 2.2% of the total vote.
1996 vice-presidential campaign
Prior to the 1996 United States presidential election, the Libertarian Party nominated Jorgensen to be the vice-presidential running mate of author Harry Browne. Jorgensen was nominated on the first ballot with 92 percent of the vote. She participated in a vice-presidential debate televised nationwide by C-SPAN on October 22, along with Herbert Titus of the Taxpayers Party and Mike Tompkins of the Natural Law Party. Browne and Jorgensen, who were on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C., received 485,759 total votes, which placed them in fifth place with 0.5% of the popular vote. At the time, this was the Libertarian Party's best performance since 1980.
2020 presidential campaign
On August 13, 2019, Jorgensen filed with the FEC to run for the Libertarian presidential nomination in the 2020 election. She formally launched her campaign at the November 2, 2019 Libertarian Party of South Carolina convention, before participating in the official South Carolina Libertarian presidential debate the same day. In the non-binding Libertarian primaries, Jorgensen was second in the cumulative popular vote, winning one of the 11 primaries. On May 23, 2020, Jorgensen became the official Libertarian presidential nominee, making her the first woman to become the Libertarian nominee and the only female 2020 presidential candidate with ballot access to over 270 electoral votes. Spike Cohen was nominated to be Jo's VP. Spike is a mostly unknown figure in mainstream politics. That same day, Jorgensen's supporters repurposed Hillary Clinton's unofficial 2016 campaign slogan, "I'm With Her," to bring attention to alleged sexual assault victims of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. The slogan trended on Twitter that night and made national headlines.
Platform
Political positions
Social Security
Social Security "would be drastically changed... the most critical -- and controversial -- component of plan is that any American would be able to opt out of Social Security. Anyone who took this route would be allowed to invest 6.2% of their payroll taxes in individual retirement accounts but would receive no Social Security benefits at retirement." Jorgensen is committed to making the system financially stable for current beneficiaries and those who do not opt out.
Criminal justice reform
Jorgensen opposes the taking of property through federal civil asset forfeiture and the use of qualified immunity to protect bad cops. She is also critical of the United States' unusually high incarceration rate.
War on drugs
Jorgensen opposes the war on drugs, calling both of her opponents "tainted on race" and the drug war a "failed" policy. She supports abolishingdrug laws, and promises to pardon all nonviolent drug offenders.
Gun rights
Jorgensen supports the rights to bear arms. She has stated she would abolish the ATF whose purpose, she believes to be to enforce "unconstitutional laws".
Police demilitarization
She promotes the demilitarization of police, saying that the police's duty "is to go after specific perpetrators of violent crimes, not to act as a force against the people."
Environment
Jorgensen favors Generation IV nuclear power to reduce CO2 emissions. She supports removing "subsidies of all forms of energy production, allowing emissions-free nuclear power a chance to compete on a level playing field" and supports the use of hydraulic fracking while holding "fracking companies responsible for damages."
Jorgensen supports the Constitutional authority to block any new borrowing. She has pledged to veto any spending that leads to a deficit, veto any debt ceiling increases, and has promised not to burden “our children and grandchildren with bills for these bipartisan bloated budgets.”
Poverty
Jo Jorgensen takes the view that the most effective way to help the poor is “the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.” She believes that the best way to end poverty is to eliminate government policies and regulations that “drive up costs for anything from housing to health care to new businesses.”
Education
Jo Jorgensen favors the decentralization and localization of education, and promises to slash or eliminate the budget of the Department of Education, leaving the education of children to the states.
Trade
Jo Jorgensen takes the position that trade and travel are fundamental rights enjoyed by every person. Moreover, she has proposed to eliminate trade barriers and tariffs, along with repealing arbitrary quotas on the numbers of people eligible to “legally work, visit or reside” in the United States.
Neutrality and Peace
Jo Jorgensen favors no US involvement in foreign wars. Advocating armed neutrality similar to Switzerland’s, she has promised to “bring the troops home.”
Jorgensen supports a free-market healthcare system financed by providing individuals with a spending account with actual money and then "giving them the choice giving them the authority to spend it how they like" with the incentive that allows individuals to keep any savings creating an increased incentive for heathcare providers to compete by meeting consumer demand for low cost services over the current system or single-payer, in order to reduce costs and make health care accessible.
Immigration
In a Libertarian presidential primary debate, Jorgensen said she would immediately stop construction on President Donald Trump's border wall and eliminate quotas limiting who can immigrate to the U.S. During another primary debate she blamed anti-immigration sentiment on disproportionate media coverage of crimes by immigrants. She argued that immigration helps the economy and that the blending of cultures is beneficial.
She has said the government's bureaucratic response to COVID-19 prevented the rapid deployment of market solutions to the crisis, and its militaristic approach is "the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime," both in terms of restrictions on individual behavior such as stay-at-home orders and misdirected corporate bailouts, which she sees as antithetical to free-market principles and biased towards the well-connected.
Personal life
Jorgensen is married and has two grown daughters and a grandson.
