[5][6] Multiple sources, including the Libertarian Party, have referred to Hospers as the first openly gay person to run for president of the United States.

He appeared on radio shows with Ayn Rand, and devoted considerable attention to her ideas in his ethics textbook Human Conduct.

[11] Although Hospers became convinced of the validity of Rand's moral and political views, he disagreed with her about issues of epistemology, the subject of their extensive correspondence.

[2] Rand broke with Hospers after he, in his position as moderator, critiqued her address, and she felt he had criticized her talk on "Art and Sense of Life" before the American Society of Aesthetics at Harvard.

[14] The Libertarian Party was poorly organized, and Hospers and Nathan managed to get on the ballot in only two states[15] (Washington and Colorado), receiving 3,674 popular votes.

[2] He adopted more conventionally conservative views in his later writings: in 1998, he wrote an article rejecting open border immigration, and in a 2007 revision of his book Libertarianism, he said he supported the Iraq War.