Adam Kokesh has a flair for the dramatic, which tends to get him in trouble — usually by design. In 2011, the stocky Marine-turned-antiwar activist from Ash Fork, Arizona, was forcefully arrested at a silent dance protest at the Jefferson Memorial. Two years later, Kokesh posted a YouTube video of himself loading and cocking a shotgun in Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza, a stunt that helped land him in jail for nearly four months. Last January, the same day he declared he’s running for president as a Libertarian, Kokesh was pulled over by a North Texas highway patrol and charged with marijuana possession and tampering with evidence. “I think he’s been arrested 43 times,” says Ben Farmer, Kokesh’s chief campaign strategist, “and we’re proud of every single one of ’em.”
Tonight the 36-year-old Kokesh is on his best behavior. It’s July 1, day two of the Libertarian National Convention, a biennial gathering of the nation’s third-largest political party, which draws some 1,200 people to the New Orleans Hyatt Regency. Now, in a purple-lighted hotel event space, Kokesh is hosting a pub-style trivia night…
