But every other week or so, the Libertarian Party's Senate nominee in North Carolina opens a few craft beers on the counter of the bar in his campaign manager's basement. He takes deep gulps from a pint glass bearing an image of Austrian-school economist Mur­ray Rothbard and expresses his Everyman frustrations with the current political system into a video camera.

So far, Haugh's campaign barely exists anywhere but on YouTube. But it is doing surprisingly well in a high-stakes Senate contest in which candidates and outside groups have already spent more than $15 million.

Four polls lately put his support somewhere between 8 and 11 percent — not enough to suggest a realistic possibility of winning, but conceivably enough to affect the outcome of the race.