Oh come one Gary, do you really think you can beat Martin Heinrich in this state and this year? Don't make a fool of yourself.
I suspect this is more Gary helping the LP out and giving them a race they can be excited about for this year. He seems fairly devoted to the LP, he's probably hoping to attract new donors and voters to the party for future races.
I'll be interested in seeing if he can finish second. Johnson has never struck me as someone interested in the senate. I recall in either 2010 or 12 a few polls came out that had him leading or near leading the Republican primary for senate, and he passed on that for what was frankly a longer than longshot campaign for president.
The excitement is getting to this Libertarian, even though I doubt he will win. It's awesome to have a high profile Senate candidate in what was otherwise looking like an underwhelming L slate for 2018. In 2016, our only particularly high profile candidate for Senate was Joe Miller in AK, who set a record for the LP in a Senate race and placed 2nd, but was still, you know, Joe Miller. If Johnson loses but still gets 2nd and gets a higher percentage than Miller (29.2%), it will still be a milestone for the LP.
Wikipedia says that there have been both Heinrich and Johnson internal polls already for both 3 and 2 way races. Assuming that the truth is somewhere in between, we're looking at about 43/27/23 D/R/L (so Johnson is down ~20 points in a 3 way race) or 45/40 D/L (so Johnson is down ~5 points in a 2 way race).
