In a blog posted to her MySpace page, Dr. Mary Ruwart — who challenged Bob Barr for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination and was leading on the fifth of six ballots — questions whether her party is “snubbing” its most ardent supporters: the “have-nots.”
Dr. Ruwart says “Liberty’s Natural Constituents” have always been the young and disadvantaged, and it was these types who founded the Libertarian Party in 1971. But now, says Dr. Ruwart, the LP seems to have “forgotten who brought her to the dance.”
Dr. Ruwart is referring to the LNC’s equation of fundraising ability with “leadership.” Here, she explains:
The “Leadership” category under the “Our Party” tab at the LP’s website proclaims “one of the most important task that is expected from a board member of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) is to raise funds for the organization through a combination of personal contributions and funds raised through personal solicitations” (grammatical errors uncorrected).
The LNC is the governing body of the LP. Its job is supervising the National Office and conducting Party business between conventions. The recently-introduced idea that “leadership” is equivalent to fund-raising and that the LNC members are responsible for personally doing so is just another indication that the LP, like America herself, has lost its way.
The amounts shown for each person reflect only one-time monetary contributions to the national party or funds raised through the national party for ballot access. Pledges to the state or national party, direct contributions to a state’s ballot access drive, one-time donations to state parties, or donations to LP candidates aren’t included. Even as a measure of monetary contributions, the so-called “leadership” page is itself misleading!
Dr. Ruwart says equating financial contributions to leadership is “denigrating” to newcomers, many of whom are young and less well-to-do. She chastises “elitists” within the LP who slur working-class activists as “povertarians.”
Dr. Ruwart’s release can be read in its entirety below:
Liberty’s natural constituents have always been the young and disadvantaged, not the established and the elite. Is the Libertarian Party, built on the activism of the “have-nots,” now snubbing its most ardent supporters?
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
– Inscription on the Statue of Liberty
The inscription on the Statue of Liberty asked not for Europe’s titled, wealthy, or elite, but those who benefit most from liberty—the poor and the oppressed. When the Statue was unveiled in 1886, it was common knowledge that the impoverished were freedom’s natural constituency.
In Europe guild membership was necessary to work at one’s chosen profession. Only the well-to-do or well-connected could hope to qualify, however. For the working poor, coming to America was the difference between putting their children to bed with full stomachs and watching them slowly starve to death.
Those with money or connections had no need to abandon their homes and seek a new and uncertain future half way across the world. The elite could afford to buy or maneuver their way into the guilds. Those who could do neither flocked to America’s shores hoping that Lady Liberty could deliver what their statist homelands could not. The youthful poor were especially motivated to take their chances in a new nation.
America became wealthy because, unlike other nations, its poor could work with little or no government interference. In any society the poor outnumber the rich. In the fledging U.S., with a population primarily derived from immigration, the poor were probably even more numerous. However, because they had freedom they could work their way from poverty to success—and most of them did exactly that!
Liberty’s natural constituency consists of the impoverished, the downtrodden, and the young. Statists know this well. In the early 1900s, after creating the Great Depression with the Federal Reserve, the enemies of liberty encouraged those whose livelihood they had destroyed to take government handouts.
To their credit many people simply refused. Was it a matter of pride as the history books claim or did they understand that the price of a free lunch was their liberty, their only hope for a better life? Was it an accident that the statist agenda of the 1960s began with a War on Poverty? Getting the poor to accept the dole seduced liberty’s most ardent constituents into sleeping with the enemy. When the impoverished are convinced that government is savior, rather than oppressor, liberty is doomed.
Not surprisingly, the Libertarian Party (LP) was started in 1971 by the young and not-so-well-to-do. These groups understood that liberty was their only political hope. Although money was scarce in the fledgling LP, activism was high. Over the next three decades a membership of a mere 10,000-30,000 individuals managed to run presidential candidates in almost all 50 states in spite of ballot access laws designed to thwart third-party success. LP candidates got 10-1000 times as many votes per dollar as their Democratic and Republican counterparts. The LP became our nation’s largest, most persistent third party because of the activism of less than 0.01% of the population. The LP elected hundreds of office holders and made its name a household word. By 2008 the media was so savvy about LP platform positions that it began criticizing LP candidates when they promoted contrary ones!
Successful entrepreneurs and the well-to-do were largely missing from the early LP. Instead, these groups “bought” their freedom to do business by jumping through costly regulatory hoops, lobbying for political influence, and becoming workaholics. Once they learned how to manipulate the system freedom seemed to be more of a threat than a boon. Clamoring for liberty would endanger the influence and power that they had worked so hard to gain. Just as liberty’s natural constituency is comprised of the poor, disadvantaged, oppressed, and the young (who often fall into the former categories as well), the successful and politically connected often falsely believe that freedom does not benefit them.
Thankfully there are exceptions. Many of the young activists who made the LP what it is today have become better off in the last couple of decades and now support the Party financially. Those accustomed to “working the system” are finally seeing the light and contributing to the LP. Money, however, can never substitute for the activism that is the primary province of the young and not-so-well-to-do.
While money is the mother’s milk of politics and by implication, Big Government, liberty is best nurtured by activists willing to put their life on the line figuratively, if not literally. In the fight for liberty, activism comes first and money follows.
Nowhere was this more apparent than with the Ron Paul campaign. Youthful activists took the lead, creating money bombs, slogans, and Internet presence for the former 1988 LP presidential candidate and 2008 GOP hopeful. Independently of the formal campaign, activists raised record-breaking sums of money for Ron Paul.
The money bombs were successful, not because of a few big donors (the maximum donation permitted by law is $2300), but because of thousands of small ones. The average donation was $100 or less. Thus, for every $2300 donation, some eighty-eight $75 donors, forty-four $50 donors, or twenty-nine $25 donors contributed.
In spite of record-breaking fundraising, however, Ron Paul’s campaign was not driven by money, but by activism. Many supporters quit their jobs to work full-time on the campaign without pay. Activism came first. The money followed—just as it did in the LP. Candidates who did not understand this have attempted their own money bombs and universally fallen short of their targeted goals.
Unfortunately the LP, like America herself, seems to have forgotten who brought her to the dance. The “Leadership” category under the “Our Party” tab at the LP’s website proclaims “one of the most important task that is expected from a board member of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) is to raise funds for the organization through a combination of personal contributions and funds raised through personal solicitations” (grammatical errors uncorrected).
The LNC is the governing body of the LP. Its job is supervising the National Office and conducting Party business between conventions. The recently-introduced idea that “leadership” is equivalent to fund-raising and that the LNC members are responsible for personally doing so is just another indication that the LP, like America herself, has lost its way.
The amounts shown for each person reflect only one-time monetary contributions to the national party or funds raised through the national party for ballot access. Pledges to the state or national party, direct contributions to a state’s ballot access drive, one-time donations to state parties, or donations to LP candidates aren’t included. Even as a measure of monetary contributions, the so-called “leadership” page is itself misleading!
The saddest thing about equating financial contributions to leadership, however, is that it denigrates the true impetus behind LP success, giving newcomers that impression that the size of their wallet is more important than the activism that they wish to contribute. Liberty’s natural constituency, the poor, the oppressed, and the young, are sure to be discouraged when they encounter this not-so-subtle hint that no matter how much time and effort they are willing to put into helping the LP grow, they will not be honored for their contributions, at least on the national level. The elitists in the LP have even coined a term to denigrate those idealistic enough to sacrifice livelihood for liberty and now call them “povertarians.”
Most current LNC members, whether or not they are well-to-do, have a long history of LP activism under their belt. Appropriate biographies of each would impress upon the membership the importance and value of running for office, participating in ballot access drives, and educating the public about the LP. However, only the bios of officers are presented on the LP leadership page and only one of these even mentions LP activism.
How sad! Since money follows activism, we can rest assured that fund-raising by the LP will continue to dwindle as activism is given second-class status. Dr. Paul showed us that if we put forth the message of liberty in all of its glory, the young and not-so-well-to-do will provide the activism—and the money—required. If the LP wants to prosper financially, she needs to appeal to her natural constituents. Like her symbol, the Statue of Liberty, the LP needs to remember who needs her the most. Her cry of recruitment should clearly be “Give me your poor!”
Dr. Mary Ruwart currently serves as an At-large member of the Libertarian National Committee.
I was thinking more of moving there, seizing the military bases, and seceding.
Well if we could get enough people, maybe I could twist Mike’s arm to run for Senate again.
We should all move to Alaska!
Can we somehow abolish snow, though?
GE – as much as we disagree about Gravel, he had the right idea when he became a politician. He looked for the place where he was most likely to get elected, and that was Alaska. He needed the least votes there, and he could relate to the people there (go ahead, make a joke). He then worked hard for years to get the votes. We should follow his lead.
Bah, you don’t have to give me money. Just let me know when you and Scotty are touring my district and I will hitch a ride with you. As it is now I am planning on taking his literature with me during my door to door campaign.
I wish I could make a donation to your campaign, Neil, but I swore to my wife I would make no more… I dropped a lot of cash on various candidates.
Well G.E. I am at least glad to know that despite our differences as far as choice of candidate, you will still team up with me. 🙂 I wasn’t going to suggest myself. There are plenty of good candidates out there. http://www.paulcongress.com/index.html
(You should look into getting Scotty on that site btw)
But I understand where VTV is coming from. It’s frustrating to see Barr raising the cash he’s raising — as paltry as the amount is — when there are candidates, such as VTV, who could be usuing that cash so much more effectively.
I think pretty lowly of Mike Gravel, and he’s probably about the second least despicable living current or former congressman or senator. There isn’t a lot to choose from.
What’s a joke is thinking that any real number of minor party candidates CAN get elected in a system rigged by the state for the state. What’s important is to spread the ideas of liberty. Having a legit presidential candidate, such as Mary Ruwart, would have done that. Look at Gravel — he spread his Nationalist Initiative via his candidacy. Now there are tons of committed (who maybe need to BE committed) activists on behalf of the NI4D. No one needed to be elected. Elections are a sham.
I respectfully disagree. Honestly, I think running campaigns where we get .32% of the vote doesn’t make us look more legitmate. It makes us look like a joke. Some Congressional districts are good territory for a run. And if we could get someone in Congress or even in the Senate, or hell, even get some of our former Congressmen and Senators to run again as Libertarians, that would be the right step in my opinion.
That’s true VTV. However, running a serious presidential campaign does make a party seem more legitimate, and I would imagine that it encourages people to vote for local candidates from that party.
Amen, brother!
Honestly, the more I have looked at this effort, and the efforts of all of the third parties to get into the white house, I think it is a waste of time and money. It’s absurd to try and get a presidential candidate elected from a party that doesn’t even have a single Congressmen or Senator to it’s name. (Meaning ones that were elected as a Libertarian). The presidential race is like trying to invade Berlin on the first day of WWII. We should take all of this money we are spending on ballot access, do research into what districts we have the strongest possibility of winning and spend that money and effort into getting at least ONE Libertarian into Congress. Let’s get someone on C-SPAN with the (L) in front of their names. THEN we can talk about getting them on a presidential ballot.
The best way to raise money is for the leadership to get people excited about campaigns and issues. That means hiring staffers who are real libertarians and know how to motivate people. Much as I might have criticized Dashbach/Crickenberger/Winter a few years back, I think they at least were trying to get people excited and active on issues. Since then it seems like LNC members and hired apparatchiks with hidden agendas have been busy squashing activity by activists in order to attract money from people who may have their own agendas, like squashing pesky hard core libertarian view points. The bottom line, LNC wise, is the amount of $25 an hour activism an LNC member does or motivates should be just as important as any money raised from fat cats. And probably will do more for the party.
Better idea: People should box up their old window AC units and return them to Barr.
I wouldn’t want to waste a good brick.
Maybe I’ll get a week’s worth of my baby’s dirty diapers.
GE,
If its own of those direct-mail already-paid postage letters….tape a brick to it and send it back. =)
They’ll have to pay the postage and get no money from you.
Got mine in the mail a few days ago.
That was a waste of money for the Barr campaign.
The Badnarik for Congress campaign was a great example of how money doesn’t help if it isn’t spent effectively.
It’s impossible to measure exactly, but I’m certain Aaron Starr’s tactics negatively affect morale and damages overall fundraising even if he can wave is own check in the air.
Then again, I do think the Bob Barr campaign should be doing better at fundraising. I think they should try sending a fundraising letter. That could help.
So we’d basically be dragging our divides to the american people and throwing it in their faces with meaningless ballot quarrels?
“The time for reconciliation has past”
Indeed…indeed.
what the world needs now…
Whoops, I meant to address that to Mike.
Fred,
Obviously it wouldn’t be a long-term solution. We would probably only do it for one election, and once that election sets a precedent for whether the next election should nominate a purist or a pragmatist.
dear lord…
Yes, comrade!
They’re impressing GE!
The god knows how many socialist parties don’t seem to be impressing anyone.
Yeah true, you’d need to put both guys against eachother on the same ballot to do a fair comparison.
But then you wouldn’t know if Barr would have received 2% or even more in that particular state that had Ruwart.
Mike,
Whoever is the LP nominee in enough states such that they could theoretically win a majority of the Electoral College would be the de facto national Libertarian nominee. If no LP nominee is on enough states such that they could win a majority, than the nominee who could theoretically win the most EC votes who be the de facto national Libertarian nominee.
There is also a silver lining. If, for example, Ruwart were to get an average of 2% in the states where she was on the ballot, whereas Barr were to get an average of 1% in the states where he was on the ballot, then that would indicate to the Libertarians that it would be wisest to select a purist as the 2012 nominee. Conversely, if Barr were to get 2% to Ruwart’s 1%, it would indicate that Libertarians should choose a reformer in 2012.
I don’t like Hugh’s plan. But I do like secession and reconfiguration. Let the principled affiliates form their own LP and the neocon-libertines have their own. Let people fight it out at the state level for control of the name.
The time for reconciliation has past. This was the final straw.
Not sure where she gets her information, but most non-profits have boards made up of their largest fundraisers, who do a sizable portion of the fundraising for the organization.
This is not an unreasonable idea.
As far as young and penniless people founding the LP. . . I’ve never heard that idea put to print before. Ever.
So we can have a situation where 25 states have Barr, and 25 have Ruwart? So the message we send then is that we’re no longer really trying to win anymore? Plus, we’re as divided as all the other ideological parties, except the greens that go 99.99% McKinney.
Currently, the state parties (with the exception of New Hampshire and Massachusetts) choose whomever wins the nomination at the convention. My proposed system would have 50 mini-conventions choose the nominee for each state. For example, Georgia might have Barr as the nominee, whereas Texas might have Ruwart as the nominee.
Isn’t that what happens now, Hugh? I mean, don’t the states and the state Libertarians decide on who’s running if more than one person wants to be the LP nominee?
LP National doesn’t intervene, and state outsiders can’t just pop in…
G.E.,
I think it would be a good idea if each individual state LP held seperate nomination contests, similar to the Whig strategy of 1836. Some states could run purists, other states could run “reformers”, and we could all see which kind of nominee gets the most votes/capita on a state by state basis.
I see that Mark Schreiber (I presume that’s the identity of the person posting as “mscrib”) is still attacking Mary Ruwart. He was one of the people who tried to derail her campaign by bringing up irrelevant stuff about child porn.
Of course when you’re personally *collecting* $80,000 a year from the LP as a “marketing director” (as Schreiber once was), and perhaps are hoping to to have such a post lavished on you again, it’s understandable why you would be desperate for the party to be raising more money. And angry that anyone would dare to question the need for MONEY to be elevated over other focuses of LNC members.
Speaking of fuck-ups, what of lasting value did the Libertarian Party get for its $80,000/year investment? I remember a suggestion that the party change its name because the word “libertarian” supposedly had too much baggage. Talk about an “attack on the party!” Fortunately that one bombed like a lead balloon.
We must also remember that the marketing paradigm is all about selling things to people, so people caught up in that paradigm naturally tend to see people who have money as their “target audiences.” If you don’t have money, you can’t buy stuff, capice? No wonder it’s in such circles that terms like “povertarian” arise. To them, money makes the world go around, and if you don’t have it, you don’t count for much.
I agree with Matt.
What needs to be done: State parties need to start disaffiliating and creating a rival national organization with powers that are vastly limited by comparison.
Thank you, Matt Swartz!
Remind me again why there’s a national LP organization? It helps state parties that can’t (won’t?) get themselves on the ballot, but can’t those things be done more efficiently, perhaps on a state-to-state level? The LP in DC is expensive, and I don’t know quite what they give back, besides pushing GOP-lite presidential candidates on an unwilling rank and file.
Do your job, Mary, and raise some money. If you can’t, you can’t and just admit it. However, don’t turn your personal failings into an attack on the party.
Did you even *READ* what Mary said in her release? *NOWHERE* does she claim she cannot raise money. And nowhere does she attack the LP.
Mary does point out however, that simply raising or donating (or worse, loaning) money to the party so that some person in the Watergate Building can get a heftier bonus is a substitute for real activism.
I say loaning to the LP is worse because I have seen on the LNC too many times when a member will say something to the effect “and I will forgive $5000 of my loan to the LNC if the body passes this resolution”.
Mary correctly points out that idealistic people want to see their money well spent. The Ron Paul campaign did that in spades. And idealistic people are usually young.
Have you ever wondered why College or “Young Libertarian” meetings are brimming with excited people, while across town the local LP supper club struggles to get half dozen stodgy people to a meeting where insipid debate ensues?
The Ron Paul campaign, OTOH, was largely a spontaneous reaction to the staid campaigns of McCain and Hillary where nobody could get excited except for a few patronage seekers. The Ron Paul campaign was about *ideals*, something that appeals to the young and (usually) low income.
Mary quite succinctly points out the obvious, that an exciting campaign of ideals will bring out the masses of idealistic young people (and their puny $10 & $25 donations) than a top heavy campaign of supposedly professional campaigners trying to mimmick true activism with a one failed money bomb after another.
Oh, and FWIW, Mary *saved* the LP in ’83, just as she nearly saved it in 2008.
PEACE
Steve
Passive-aggressive much, Ms Mary? LOLz
Quoth “mscrib” —
“your elected position is the [sic] facilitate the party AND raise money”
Um, no. Per the bylaws, LNC members have to PAY money — annual dues to meet the “sustaining member” requirement — but apart from that the bylaws do not specify that fundraising is in any way part of the job description.
A person running for LNC could probably do well by informing the delegates that he or she will fundraise. A person running for LNC could probably do well by informing the delegates that he or she raised $X for the party during the previous term. But it’s not a job requirement by any stretch of the imagination.
The decision to raise funds — or NOT to raise funds — is a perfectly legitimate way to influence policy as well. An LNC member who can bring home the bacon, or decide not to do so, is going to be able to speak with more weight (if the listeners know how to listen) to how money should be spent.
Ditto for individual members’ decision to financially support the national party or not. If the LNC wants members to send money, then they need to figure out what the members want that will induce them to do so. It’s just that simple.
mscrib–
You said exactly what needed to be said above–it’s about time somebody new started shedding some light on what Mary Ruwart is really like.
Fundraising is basic to politics today. And since political spending == free speech, there is no reason to get upset about it.
I don’t see anything wrong with requiring LP leaders to raise funds for the party.
The LP wouldn’t need to have so many screaming fundraising letters if it were to raise dues for sustaining members to an amount that would fund core functions, such as ballot access. They should have jacked up dues to at least $10/month — roughly two hours/month for those on minimum wage, for the priviledge of voting on who runs the party.
Objectively measureable in kind contributions should also be accepted, such as ballot access signatures.
The LP suffers from too many backseat drivers who clog up conventions with spurious amendments.
It might be good to require a hefty monetary contribution by anyone running for president as well. If you cannot raise $10K (or maybe $50K) for the party’s ballot access fund, then no C-SPAN coverage for you. That would keep most of the non-serious candidates off the stage. (It wouldn’t have stopped Imperato, but at least he would have supported the party in return for the megaphone.)
It the party demands more of its basic members, it has less need to brown-nose the big donors. Quite a few hippie-leftist organizations require far more from the povertarian base.
When I was on the LNC, the national party LOST money on each new basic member.(The states may have profited through UMP.) The purpose of recruiting new members was to have people to upsell to.
* to facilitate the goings-on of the party
Sloppy-copy-paste…
Oh, good God. Is this because she’s a horrible fundraiser? LNC members (especially Mary goddamn Ruwart) have been with the party long enough that they should know some deep pockets. Ask. Let me reiterate for the rest of the lowly sustaining membership: your elected position is the facilitate the party AND raise money! If she can’t do that, which apparently she can’t or won’t, she should resign. For all the LNC does or doesn’t do (which is very little), squeezing money out of major donors should be a no-brainer.
And yeah, the “have-nots” who founded and built the LP with Charles and David Koch’s bank account. Please. This is more crap from someone who has made her LP career stirring the shit (yeah, Mary, some of us may recall how you helped destroy the ’83 convention) and doing little other than putting out a decent book that might make libertarianism more palatable to leftists (admittedly, a very good thing).
Do your job, Mary, and raise some money. If you can’t, you can’t and just admit it. However, don’t turn your personal failings into an attack on the party. Libertarians have a nasty habit of assigning blame to anybody but themselves or creating a diverting controversy whenever they fuck up.
But even with all the apparent dead weight on the LNC, I’ll still pay my dues…
Well, if I am a “povertarian” maybe the LNC can stop sending me direct mail and email requests to give them money to put neo-con Bob Barr on the ballot? I suppose they do make good toilet paper.
If she’s talking of young, I don’t think any of them were that young.
Iv got to disagree with her assessment that the “have-nots” founded the LP. It seems to me that all of the originals were academics and college-educated folks.