https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuCqhNWcOW0
Accompanying press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Joe Hunter
(801) 303-7932
[email protected]
“BERNIE WAS RIGHT,” GOV. GARY JOHNSON SAYS IN NEW WEB VIDEO
Oct. 14, 2016, Salt Lake City, UT — In a video released today, Governor Gary Johnson, Libertarian nominee for President, appeals directly to young voters and independents who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders in his campaign against Hillary Clinton.
Citing his opposition to military interventions, “crony capitalism” and the War on Drugs, Johnson points to issues on which he is more closely aligned with Sanders than is Ms. Clinton.
Johnson says, “As you have probably seen, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her media friends are spending millions attacking me. They’re attacking because they’re seeing the polls — the polls showing how many millennials and independents are supporting the Johnson Weld campaign.
“Many of those young people and independents had previously supported Bernie Sanders. They supported him because he opposed the wars they oppose — just as I do. The same wars Hillary Clinton has supported and helped send us into.
“They supported Bernie Sanders because he rejects the crony capitalism that has become a way of life in Washington, DC. I rejected cronyism when I was Governor, and I reject it now. Hillary Clinton? She’s the poster child for crony capitalism. Her entire life has been about government favoring the rich and picking winners and losers.
“Senator Sanders is one of the few politicians who tells the truth about the War on Drugs, and isn’t afraid to agree with the majority of Americans about ending marijuana prohibition. I’ve been there for 17 years myself leading the fight. Hillary…she is against legalization. The poll numbers are just not high enough for her, I guess.
“And, when it comes to individual freedom and civil liberties, Bernie and I are a lot a like. A lot more than Hillary.
“Now I do need to point out that Bernie and I certainly don’t agree on everything, like spending and taxes. I see the dangers in high taxes and big government.
“So, if Hillary Clinton wants to know why the millennials and independents are not supporting her campaign. How about she take a look at her stand on the issues. Bernie was right, Hillary Clinton is out of touch.”
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So Nielson did not even work on Johnson’s first campaign for Governor, and he instead had a campaign manager with zero experience. LOL! This is the first time I have heard this one.
If he worked on the re-election campaign, I suppose that is an accomplishment, but re-election campaigns are much easier than getting elected the first time.
So it sounds like not only is Johnson’s record overrated, his campaign management team is overrated as well.
Chuck, Johnson’s message has also strayed into left wing “Social Justice Warrior” territory as well, which is also not libertarian.
Robert Capozzi wrote:
Then you’ve been hiding under a rock. His message has been “honed” from libertarian to conservative Republican on a range of issues.
Also, people should stop giving Ron Nielson credit for Johnson’s successful election as governor. Nielson was not his campaign manager on the first run, nor did he make the successful advertisements. In point of fact Johnson asked a friend with zero political experience to run his campaign.
It sounds like Be Rational and Andy should find a campaign for the presidential nomination to work on, and if they can get that candidate to win the nomination maybe they can show us how a campaign should really be run.
Be Rational has made many good points. Gary Johnson’s campaign should listen. Where are tha national television ads? In 1980 Ed Clark’s campaign aired 47 national television ads on ABC, NBC, and CBS. All but six aired aired during prime time. They were so succesful Robert Strauss, campaign chairman of the President Carter election campaign said the [Ed Clark] ads were the best of any of the candidates.
Gary Johnson should air national television ads.
It sounds like Be Rational and Andy should find a campaign for the presidential nomination to work on, and if they can get that candidate to win the nomination maybe they can show us how a campaign should really be run.
aj: The people who really believe in the message are the best people to sell the message.
me: And yet you present no evidence, you just repeat your assertion without any support. Now if you believe that Badnarik 04 was more effective than GJ 16, that is, of course, your prerogative. Most metrics have and will suggest otherwise.
If you want to actually CONVINCE people, I suggest you give them actual reasons to agree with your POV.
Robert Capozzi said: “Same goes for a doctor…I don’t care about their politics. I care about their skills.”
Working on a political campaign is not like going to a doctor, or a car mechanic, or a barber, or pretty much any other example of which you could provide.
The people who really believe in the message are the best people to sell the message.
Enriching opportunistic Republicans who’d be just as happy working for Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush is not the way to run a Libertarian Party campaign.
aj, I view staff like a lawyer. I might hire Gloria Allred, William Kunstler (rip), Johnnie L Cochran, or Alan Dershowitz to defend me if I felt s/he was best equipped to win the case. I’d be less concerned about their personal politics, which in those cases, I don’t share their ideology.
Same goes for a doctor…I don’t care about their politics. I care about their skills.
Of course, since the product is a political POV, of course the strategist needs to understand the candidate’s perspective. I’ve seen zero evidence that RN has distorted GJ’s message. Rather, he’s helped him hone his message, possibly better than any amateur L ideologue might have.
In fact, that probably wouldn’t work so well. Imagine GJ hired TK to be his strategist. Might have gone something like this:
TK: OK, taxes…what is your message?
GJ: Taxes are too high and too complex.
TK: No! No! No! Taxation is THEFT!!! Always lead with the premise.
GJ: Isn’t that kinda shocking and over the top?
TK: Of course! You need to shock and awe the sheeple.
GJ: But if I say things like that, what are the chances I’ll get any media coverage? Won’t that just alienate 99.5% of the population, who will wonder how we’ll pay for our invincible national defense?
TK: Who cares about the media? Who cares about a “national” defense, there should be no nations, anyway?
GJ: I’m not sure this is working out….
🙂
This is not to say that it’s not a good idea for Ls to become campaign strategists and operatives. If someone wishes to pursue that as a career, I say Knock yourself out. I note that the addressable market is so tiny, I’m not sure you can make a living doing so.
“My point, though, was that GJ probably feels a loyalty and comfort with RN.”
If Gary Johnson is loyal to mainstream Republican campaign staffers then he should not be running as as Libertarian Party candidate, he should go back to the Republican Party and run as a Republican.
“Yes, running a third-party campaign is MUCH more difficult than an R or D campaign, I agree. Having a strategist who has some previous accomplishments and expertise is probably better than having an idealogue who might have some ‘good ideas’ IF the goal is to raise the exposure and support of the L candidate.”
Having experience running Republican or Democrat campaigns is NOT the same thing as running a Libertarian campaign, so their experience does not really translate as well as you are making it out that it does.
Part of the goal for these campaigns should be to give actual Libertarians the opportunity to work on them so they can get trained and gain experience in working on campaigns. Libertarians should not be sitting on the sidelines handing donations over to Republican campaign consultants who get to decide how their donations are being spent.
If I were running for office, I’d want passionate Libertarians as my campaign staffers, because I believe that they’d do a better job than the Republican mercenaries, and because I want Libertarians to gain experience that they can utilize on future campaigns and pass on to other Libertarians.
aj, overrated? GJ and RN probably saw an opportunity and exploited it. GJ was a neophyte. RN managed a campaign that won despite the odds, doing so where the Green in the race made the impossible possible. I assume that RN ran the re-election campaign as well.
My point, though, was that GJ probably feels a loyalty and comfort with RN. In many ways, this 2016 effort has been highly professionally done. The image making has been superlative. Based on some of the rallies I’ve watched, again, really well done.
Yes, running a third-party campaign is MUCH more difficult than an R or D campaign, I agree. Having a strategist who has some previous accomplishments and expertise is probably better than having an idealogue who might have some “good ideas” IF the goal is to raise the exposure and support of the L candidate.
Robert, Gary Johnson’s New Mexico run is highly overrated. What Johnson and company always conveniently neglect to mention is that when Johnson ran in 1994, it was a 3 way race. There was a popular Green Party candidate for Governor of New Mexico who received 10% of the vote. Take that Green Party candidate out of that race and the Democrat would have won, and Gary Johnson would be a footnote in history.
Also, running a Libertarian Party campaign is not the same animal as running a Republican or Democratic Party campaign.
br, OK, so let’s look at the record for rookie prez campaign managers from the past who were low/no pay positions. Are the Badnarik and Browne and Marrou campaigns your model? How good a job did they do with positioning, advertising, videography, fundraising, event management, and candidate handling? My sense is that Team GJ were excellent on all of these except, perhaps, media buying and candidate handling. Media buying was maybe a C, and the handling was probably better than we think, despite GJ’s Aleppo moment.
Let’s not forget that Nielson was GJ’s svengali for his NM run. Maybe someone like Matt Kibbe might be capable and interested in 2020, or even Shane Corey, Steve Gordon, or Donny Ferguson.
Anthony Dlugos said: “Bear in mind, though, that, based on the nature of the political system in this country, which is limited to a market of two, the ‘team of campaign managers who understand how to build the party, how to run campaigns, how to fund raise, how to plan media buys etc.’ are for the most part not gonna be built up by the LP, they’re gonna come over as defections from the Duopoly parties, ready to go with the experience, know-how, and connections to do all that stuff.”
This is actually why Libertarian Party campaigns SHOULD hire actual Libertarian campaign managers and staff, instead of hiring people from the major parties (which was another reason why I opposed the nomination of Gary Johnson in 2012 and this year, and that is because he brought with him his “mainstream” Republican campaign staff), and that is so we can build up a team of actual Libertarians who are competent campaign managers/staffers. The Libertarian Party should have training workshops on a regular basis and the national, state, and local level, on how to run a successful campaign, so that we have plenty of actual Libertarians who have these skills and who can pass these skills on to other Libertarians.
Be Rational,
I won’t quibble with your well thought out strategy.
Bear in mind, though, that, based on the nature of the political system in this country, which is limited to a market of two, the “team of campaign managers who understand how to build the party, how to run campaigns, how to fund raise, how to plan media buys etc.” are for the most part not gonna be built up by the LP, they’re gonna come over as defections from the Duopoly parties, ready to go with the experience, know-how, and connections to do all that stuff.
RC, There are campaigns every year. The LP needs qualified activists to take on these roles. Many are available for low pay or as volunteers. We have wasted too much money on looters. Dedicated activists who will volunteer or work full-time for low pay because the are dedicated to our goals will give us far better results.
The same is true of ballot drives. Experience has shown repeatedly that we get far better results with paid and voluteer LP members than from outside petitioners and managers who have poor results and often loot the party.
BR, in theory, yes, there probably should be a stable of cult-challenging campaign strategists. I suspect there’s not enough business for even one.
RC,
Just as the LP has built up a significant amount of internal talent in ballot drive management, petitioning and successfully obtaining ballot status, the LP should develop it’s own team of campaign managers who understand how to build the party, how to run campaigns, how to funraise, how to plan media buys etc.
Using our own internal management team will allow all campaign and media expenditures as well as campaign planning to be completely transparent, and will prevent a repeat of the looting of campaign funds by opportunists that has happened in 1984, 1996, 2000, 2012 and 2016.
As to the media mix in 2020, it will be even more important to use Major Network Broadcast TV in targeted states in the 2020 POTUS race than it was this year. The social media that worked well for Ron Paul in the past hasn’t had the same impact since. The novelty and effectiveness have worn off. Barring some major new technology, there will be a continuing shift toward TV as the essential form of political advertising and outreach from now through 2020 for POTUS campaigns and for general statewide party building.
More importantly, the 2020 campaigns and the 2018 campaigns are already underway. The National LP needs to begin targeting now in key states: building up the State LP groups; helping the targeted states build separate, independent active county LP affiliates in every targeted state (and every other state where possible, even if not targeted); recruiting serious candidates in record numbers for US Senate and House in 2018 and beyond, that will begin campaign fundraising and planning at least a year ahead of the election; recruiting serious candidates for state rep in states with low population electoral districts who will run to win; production of generic issues literature, and usable, generic LP TV and radio spots for the affiliates to run; establish a co-operative TV advertising plan for the target states to run LP outreach advertising on major networks in the target states during the appropriate windows beginning in 2017, with national contributing a large share of the cost. The national LP should actually be running its own ads in these same targeted states before November, but it’s no doubt too late for that as national is very slow to respond in this area.
The first seven target states should be started together – yes, we have enough money to begin – in 2017 and beyond:
ME, NH, VT
AK
MT, WY, ID
Funds permitting, we can add:
NM, UT
followed by:
NV, CO
From there, no more targets to be added until after the 2020 nomination, unless some major avalanche of new funding rolls in.
IMO THE question for the soon-to-come deconstruction of the Johnson/Weld 2016 campaign is, “How much donor money went to advertising/media/political activity v. how much donor money went as payments for advice from consultants?” I keep hearing rumors from multiple people who worked on the 2012 campaign with me who are working on this campaign (I am not) that the answers to those questions would be revealing. That the campaign is not exactly the model for the transparency, accountability, fiscal responsibility that the Libertarian Party demands of our federal government is abundantly clear. That the non-disparagement clauses in campaign staff contracts serve to prohibit any disclosure from key staff regarding the answers to those questions.
The FEC reports filed by the campaign suggest that “Liberty Consulting” (a black box which is non-transparent) might be one place to look (there is no apparent, specific accounting of who was paid what inside that sub-organization).
IMO a detailed deconstruction/explication of the spending for both the 2012 and 2016 campaigns, specifically staff and consultant remuneration as well as media company payments (were there insider deals for excessive costs for supplies, signage, website design, etc), would be helpful to our 2018 and 2020 delegates, and certainly before this management team is trusted with the execution of another Libertarian campaign (with Johnson, or some other candidate(s)).
br: You have to have a campaign management team that knows what to do.
me: You’re leaving us hanging. What is the management team that the 2020 cult-challengers should select?
And how would that work? Would the cult-challengers in convention demand that the would-be nominees bring along their campaign strategists? Would there be a “campaign strategist debate”?
Given the change in media consumption, are you sure that the rules you are SO sure of in 16 be the same in 20? Will people still be watching network TV, as you assert they do now?
They already have tour stops all over the country and media appearances.
A legitimate media campaign and tour stops all over the country would be a nice touch but that requires a lot of funding that the LP and Johnson/Weld does not have. We cannot compete with the big boys w/o a treasure chest to fund the battle.
I don’t think the ticket appeals enough to actual libertarians either who would be willing to contribute to the campaign. I donated in ’12 but had no interest in doing so this time around.
We got less than a week’s notice in Phoenix. Scheduling is almost day-to-day at this point.
FYI, as of last night, Johnson is apparently coming to CA. There will be a rally for him in Hollywood, just before the last debate. I’ll put up an article when I get some more details (unless someone else gets to it first).
Also, Johnson will be on John Stossel tonight.
I am surprised that he’s coming here, actually. A week’s notice sort of isn’t much.
Some good videos have been produced that no one will ever see. Those few that see them ignore them or don’t take them seriously, because the Johnson campaing is not on TV.
It’s just too bad that the campaign didn’t focus on actually getting Gary’s message out on Major Network Broadcast TV in targeted states from the outset – while his poll numbers were rising. You have to advertise in the early windows, and keep advertising – on TV – in your target states.
The campaign needed to control the message and set the agenda by getting the message out first. They needed to manage the candidate and assist with speeches, talking points and issues so Gary would be prepared.
The campaign wasted millions of dollars on useless billboards – What bonehead was running this cluster-fiasco? Well we know that answer, of course. The same bonehead who screwed up managing the Johnson 2012 campaign.
Clinton is so corrupt that her own future sure-to-be elected Electoral College members don’t want to vote for her. Donald Trump is now melting down totally with more scandals daily making him worse in every way than Bill Clinton.
But, the GJ/WW is in decline and disgrace. The campaign failed from the outset. The best strategy was pointed out in advance, their mistakes have been pointed out throughout the campaign.
Having a good candidate isn’t enough. You have to have a campaign management team that knows what to do.
Let’s hope that LP leaders will learn from these failures and start now. Campaigns 2018 and 2020 are already underway for the Ds and Rs. We should already be running hard.
I’m sick of this Johnson. Constantly kowtowing to the Progressives.
CAN’T WE RESCIND THE NOMINATION AND REPLACE HIM WITH A DOT MATRIX PRINTOUT OF THE PLATFORM???