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It might come as a surprise to a lot of folks, but there is a primary race on the Sept. 9 ballot: a face-off between two Libertarian candidates challenging Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, for his 3rd District seat.

Kevin Barrett of Lone Rock and Ben Olson III of Wisconsin Dells have very different points of view from Kind and each other, trading charges that the other is not a true Libertarian.

Olson is a self-employed homebuilder in the Dells area specializing in log homes. He also is a sawyer, musician and bartender. As a youth, he worked for his family’s boat business, giving guided tours on the Wisconsin River. For 20 years, he worked for his father and uncle and then moved on to other businesses. He is married and lives on a farm with three children.

Olson advocates for reducing the size and scale of the federal government, including eliminating Social Security. He follows the Libertarian values of individual liberty and personal responsibility, a free market economy and a foreign policy of nonintervention, peace and free trade.

Barrett has had more notoriety than Olson but not necessarily as a candidate. A former UW-Madison lecturer who now works as a political talk radio host, Barrett got a lot of press for his assertion that U.S. officials “either made Sept. 11, 2001, happen or let it happen in order to use it as a pretext of war.”

He doesn’t think he is out on a limb on that. “I think I’m squarely in the mainstream on the issue of war and that’s the issue people voted on in 2006,” he said. “A Zogby poll with Ohio University that showed that 37 percent of people believed that.”

He differs from his Libertarian colleague and party in some if its traditional positions. “Libertarians need to be more moderate on economic issues, especially in these economic conditions where people are hurting,” he said. “It’s not the right thing to be eliminating the programs that are helping people.”

Barrett believes if he gets the Libertarian nomination, he’ll pull more money into the party as well as pull more voters away from incumbent Kind and Republican challenger Paul Stark.

Barrett is married to a Morrocan woman. He converted to Islam in the early 1990s around the time they met. They have two children.

The Libertarian Party race between Barrett and Olson is the only contested one on the ballot. Other candidates for county, state and federal office appear on the ballot without opposition. It is a closed primary, which means voters can only vote for candidates within one party.