Posted by Marc Montoni at Free Virginia:
So, you’re a Libertarian Candidate, and you want a big donation from me. Sure! I have $1,000 burning a hole in my pocket. You can claim it — all of it.
But it isn’t “free”. You’ll need to have some ducks in a row. Here are my requirements:
Thanks. That’s interesting.
Here’s a related book.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1426714.Living_Downtown
Michael, you might also be interested in this:
Land Use Regulations: Welfare for Developers, by Greg Dirasian
In my experience, when an idea doesn’t work or is weak, the exponent has a choice: engage the questioner with the attitude of gratitude, seeking to improve the position – OR – evade or attack the questioner.
For me the latter choice is dysfunctional.
Takes all kinds, though…
@ 64 Matt thank you for the compliment.
Th LP certainly needs some decent trifolds on zoning as well as a number of other local issues.
Marc maybe you can convince the headquarters staff that we need something on this subject.
Btw the incident with the gravel pit is based on a real event.
Now I am off to finish prepping our news letter. See ya later.
Michael, Mike Kane was right.
Probably best to ignore him; it’s a waste of time to respond. I know that myself but occasionally he manages to suck me in.
Michael, you might be interested in this article I wrote on the subject of zoning.
I have a version of it I turned into a tri-fold flyer.
Robert I have other things to do with my time.
more…
It might be a winning approach, btw, not necessarily electorally, but in its persuasiveness. Persuade me.
mhw, that’s a nice summary (although I’d like to see how you arrived at 50%).
But that wasn’t what I was trying to determine. I’m simply wondering whether your gut sense is that our hypothetical candidate for the Memphis city council, call him “Rand Rothbard,” should have “Abolish Zoning” as a bullet point prominent on his brochure, website, and stump speech.
Rand Rothbard might have 3 bullet points:
* Abolish zoning
* Abolish the police department
* Abolish speed limits
Do you think that’s the outlines of a strong campaign? If not, what might the abolitionist candidate’s pitch look like as a general proposition.
I think that’s a decent argument against zoning laws. With a little fine tuning, it could be great.
Sure. And since my wife no longer has me climbing on a ladder here’s the pitch from the candidate. See if this is okay.
Good evening; and thank you for inviting me to speak this evening. As you know I am opposed to zoning. Please allow me to explain why.
The history of zoning is a history of racial and class discrimination. It many places it was used to separate the lower class from the upper for the benefit of the upper class. That is still the case today.
Zoning divided the city of Memphis into distinct areas where commercial activity, industrial activity and residential were all separated. This forces people to travel further to get to jobs and to stores adding to the cost for families.
People were told this was to protect their homes from having a slaughter house built next door. But zoning laws don’t protect you from that. One residential area I know of the home owners thought they were protected from industrial activity and the new owners of a nearby hill obtained a zoning variance and now there is a gravel pit in that neighborhood and a 1000 trucks a week pass thru with noise and dust always in the air.
Zoning adds to the cost of housing and makes it more difficult for low income families to become buyers. Housing in some cities where zoning is popular cost 50% more than in cities where it is not so popular. That means the money leaves the family table to pay for that new home and flows into the bank accounts of the international banking system.
Because of the higher housing costs people move further out in order to buy something they can afford and this is another cause of sprawl.
I hope you can see how zoning discriminates. It is expensive. It raises prices for the housing and all most everything you buy because you have to travel further. It contributes to sprawl and thus to air pollution. And it is a subsidy for the international bankers.
61 mhw, I track. Are you suggesting that would make a good campaign position for the hypothetical L Memphis city council candidate?
RC Houston is growing fairly fast and if nothing else that should put upward pressure on housing prices.
mhw, thanks for the research. Whether Houston’s zoning regime (or lack thereof) is the one and only reason for its impressive 20+% lower housing costs seems unlikely, although it certainly contributes. It would be interesting to see if anyone has attempted to quantify the reasons for Houston’s advantage here. (My quick search eliticited nothing on that score).
Assuming it’s 18 points, say, that’d be something to be explored. I wonder if an L running for city council in say Memphis could make the case for abolishing Memphis’s zoning laws based on the Houston experience. And whether such positioning would get the L candidate a step-function increase in attention and votes. My gut tells me it would not, but then my guts been wrong before.
I would think this issue might have more traction than, say, abolishing speed limits.
RC I figure you could have Googled this yourself but seeing as you didn’t find time to post anything like it here is the best I can do.
In Houston, your dollar has a much higher buying power than virtually any other major metropolitan area in the country.
• The Third Quarter 2012 C2ER Cost of Living Index shows that Houston has one of the lowest overall costs of living among the 29 metropolitan areas with more than 2 million residents. Houston’s housing costs are 37.9 percent below the average for these large metro areas, and its overall costs are 18.1 percent below the average for this group.
• The Third Quarter 2012 C2ER Cost of Living Index also shows that Houston’s overall after-taxes living costs are 9.2 percent below the nationwide average, largely due to housing costs that are 21.1 percent below the average.
http://www.houston.org/living-here/cost-of-living/index.aspx
MHW is being sarcastic here, for anyone reading who doesn’t know him.
Mw 56, I wonder if people make that connection with zoning, and even if they did, I wonder how signifcant the pricing difference is. Is housing in Houston appreciably lower than a comparable city, and how much lower is it, if so.
I wonder also just how widespread the anti zoning sentiment is among the progressive community.
No RC I haven’t. I live a very sheltered life in this basement I am in.
But I guess some people like the idea of causing others misery and driving up the costs of housing, depriving others, especially the poor, of an opportunity and funding the global banking system.
Btw there are some every progressive groups that have seen the problems zoning and other regulations cause.
53 mw, sure, one can make that argument, and some may buy it.
However, public choice helps us understand the difference between diffuse costs and specific benefits. People who like their neighborhood of single family houses will most likely want to keep things as they are.
Have you had high success rates converting people on this issue?
From LP staff:
Here is the criteria for elected Libertarian Party officials that was used when Wes was the ED (and has been in place since then):
General criteria: For partisan offices, the elected official must have appeared on the ballot with the party designation “Libertarian” -or- the elected official must currently be registered to vote as a Libertarian.
For nonpartisan offices, the elected official must be a current or former dues-paying member of the Libertarian Party -or- the elected official must currently be registered to vote as a Libertarian.
Me:
Thanks! Those are pretty broad criteria.
I guess the real issue then is finding out and keeping track of that information.
I don’t believe that out of the [300,000+] registered Libertarians in the US – plus the tens if not hundreds of thousand of current and former dues paying LP members who are not currently registered Libertarians, who live in states where there is no registration by party, or states where Libertarian is not one of the parties someone can register with – that there are only 100-something people elected to office.
I’ve read that there are 600,000 or so elected/appointed offices in the US. Even if we remove the appointed offices there are still a huge number of elected offices of some sort.
I don’t believe we have the information gathering infrastructure to go through all those offices and check them against lists of registered Libertarians or current and former dues paying members.
Nor are we able to get a hold of all (or even a substantial portion of) our registered Libertarians and current and former dues paying members to ask them if they have been elected or appointed to anything.
Thus I suspect that the only thing you have had time to do is to go through the existing list of people that self-reported their elected status or were reported by the states a few years ago and see how many you could determine were still in office, plus add the few well-publicized new ones to the list. Given that methodology it is of course not surprising that the list only tends to shrink over time through attrition.
If this is true, then the real question is one of methodolgy – how we might be able to get a better hold of our registered Libertarians and current and past dues paying members to ask them (this could include, for example, trying to find volunteers/interns to go through those lists; putting out email, facebook and twitter blasts; an LP blog post; a button on the website; an article in LP News; and so on).
This could be combined with an appeal that explains the benefits of having Libertarians elected to minor local office and the fact that those races are much more winnable than major political offices – things many people have never even thought about. Which in turn would serve the already announced and touted goal of having more Libertarians run for office, and if successful would allow us to have another growth metric to boast about in the next few years.
I’m not saying which of these things we should do; I’m just trying to frame the parameters of what we should consider along these lines.
Zoning increase the costs of housing and is a subsidy for the banksters. It also contributes to sprawl. Try those two comments on your local nimby folks next time.
…I’ve NOT said that at all…
mm 50, no, don’t leave the field to them. I’ve said that at all.
Politics involves much inductive reasoning, esp L politics. Not enough data to make a quantitive case for ANY approach that I’ve seen.
So you’d rather just give up and leave the field to them?
Do you actually think about the things you say before you say them?
Most Libertarians who have been elected, have been elected at the local level.
In your world, they should all have run for offices further up the chain and eschewed actually winning in order to….
What?
The few times L’s have had a majority on a local board have often coincided with just the result we were looking for — such as the FL Libs who gained a majority on the conservation board and promptly abolished a bunch of its programs. Or Willy Marshall in UT and his L compatriots on the town council who abolished several local functions. Here in Virginia, Phil Friday was elected to town council back in the 1980’s, and, although he was the only L, convinced his colleagues on the council to abolish the town police force.
I believe Libertarians should concentrate on running at the town, city, and county level because that’s where we have proven we have a chance of winning. This is why my offer above is aimed primarily at local campaigns.
And despite your theorizing, yes, we can still win even with “abolish zoning” and “abolish the town police force”.
If you think otherwise, then prove it. Do all of the things winning candidates do (be involved in your community, wear out shoe leather meeting constituents, get attention in the local paper, etc), and call for something bold, and see what happens.
But of course, you and I both know you will do no such test of your theories.
Which means your “we can’t win at the local level if we mention abolishing zoning” barely rises to the level of “wild guess”.
48 MM, yes, some of the most annoying and palpable coercive state actions are bizarre regs, and yes those happen at the local level, by and large. And, of course, assessing levels of coercion is a subjective matter.
It’s been my experience that those very-close-to-home aspects of what the state does to us are some of the toughest to convince non-Ls of the virtues of more liberty. People might want lower taxes, ending wars, and pot legalized, but no zoning? “You mean to tell me if you Ls are in charge, they can build a skyscraper next door?”
NIMBY is an issue that statists can manipulate for quite a while, is my guess.
I guess that depends. Some areas, maybe; other areas, well, the local ‘crats can be just as bad or worse. For instance, I don’t see much fed interference on what color you paint your boutique downtown.
Never said you did. I specifically did not refer to anyone nor did I reference a specific numbered comment.
Looks like I’m gonna be all over the intertubes now. 😉
I was not my intent to suggest that the presidential candidate should walk door to door. I would think that would be obvious. Lets use our common sense.
That is why I said Congress, statewide races, citywide and countywide races in a few of the biggest cities and counties, and of course president.
Yeap, them durn LiberCops have sent many packing, in too many cases people who are needed now.
Bring them in and teach them UP !
There is a political party that believes the family budget is more important than the Federal budget. A political party that is working to restore the hopes and dreams of every hard-working American family.
It is the Libertarian Party. http://www.lp.org/
“Libertarians have quietly become America’s best organized and most significant third party. Unlike flash-in-the-pan parties organized around cults of personality like Ross Perot’s and Ralph Nader’s, Libertarians have organized at the grass roots for the long haul. They are fast approaching the point where they may force the major parties to reckon with Libertarian ideas.” – Bob Ewegen, The Denver Post, https://www.lp.org/contribute
Libertarians! What’s happening in your area? Send stories, photos, videos to publish in Libertarian News Examiner. [email protected]
Garry Reed Libertarian News Examiner.Garry Reed is a longtime freewheeling freelance libertarian opinionizer. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, River Cities Reader and several assorted…
40 mm, my point is that in my judgment the greatest coercion comes at the federal, then state, then local, levels. Taxes and spending are clearly that way, regs generally are as well.
Do you see it otherwise?
Of course, I support lessening coercion where you can, when you can. If your approach works to do that, and if it were to do so optimally, I would surely tip my hat to you. Good fortunes….
@42 You got that one right.
Hey Robert Capozzi, if I showed you evidence, what would that prove? Would that mean you’d get out of your basement, off of IPR, and actually doing something for the LP?
It wouldn’t, and we both know it.
You lived in the DC area for years yet I never saw you at any of our meetings.
I’m not usually one for personal attacks, but you are a troll. A useless troll who posts incessantly on the internet
It is Mr Montoni’s money. Perhaps he will tell us how matters turn out, a year down the road. I put a similar amount into MA campaigns this year (plus finding petitioners that put Dan Fishman on the Congressional ballot; he got 6%). To judge from shrieks of Republican fascist pain, Dan was quite successful. Bob Underwood got more votes though a slightly lower percentage than last time against an entrenched incumbent.
Nonsense. But I guess if one only dips one’s toe into actual politics, one could say the above and fantasize that it’s a true statement.
Otherwise…
Just a few trips to the local City Council or County Board of Supervisors meeting would suggest the opposite.
YESSSSS! Here we have it folks! The above quote is the IPR community’s looniest words of the day!
28 p: Again, $1,000 is a significant amount in many local races, which are the most likely to be winnable.
me: Sure. However, local races offer fewer opportunities for striking a “hard edge,” “abolitionist” pose.
I do wonder if Montoni can/would follow through on, say, 100 hard-edge L candidates for dog catcher, for ex.
22 mk: This party will not grow being Republican-lite, or Democrat-lite. History shows us that
me: I missed that history lesson. I can’t think of one LP candidate who was more moderate than the R or D. Most that I’ve looked at were taking positions further away from the status quo than their rivals.
Can you point us to a data set that indicates which L candidates were more moderate than their rivals?
I was not my intent to suggest that the presidential candidate should walk door to door. I would think that would be obvious. Lets use our common sense.
@34 Correct. The appropriate campaign and level of fundraising needed depends on the office, the number of voters or population, the geographic size and shape of the district or voting area, the urban rural composition etc.
… and an active candidate with an active campaign and lots of face time and shoe leather are always essential …
There are many small states with small State Rep districts ripe for targeting with modest campaign budgets … and many large states where State Rep districts are similar to Congressional Districts, needing hundreds of thousands of dollars to be competitive.
Taking advantage of these differences is part of the Zapper Plan.
He was talking about the list of screening requirements. In other words, he’s saying the LNCC doesn’t screen as extensively as I do.
There is some precedent for an outside effort helping LP candidates to victory. Check out the successful year the “Libertarian Victory Fund” had in 2001.
Unfortunately, Mr Azzaro, who was energetic and excited about the Party, apparently became one of the many people in the LP who have been targeted for sliming by our peculiar brand of LiberCops, and he left the following year.
For local races and small districts, totally true.
TV is only better for Congressional and Statewide races and a few of the largest population cities and counties in the country.
And of course president.
Otherwise shoe lather is absolutely better and more cost effective.
Of course, it’s also time consuming. Some people have more money than time.
Agreed Michael H. Wilson.
Too damn many people think they need to raise 50K and buy tv ads. There is nothing like face to face conversation with the voters.
Two years ago we had a candidate who ran for school board and came within a couple of percentage points of winning. he did that by walking the district and handing out literature. If he had started walking the district a month earlier he would have won. The key was walking the district. And when it comes to being radical well this guy is as radical as it gets.
I cannot emphasize walking the district and knocking on doors enough.
Actually they have the entire LNC database as of at least earlier this year. I’m guessing you were probably being sarcastic. They may have some of the same criteria as Marc, but radical or hardcore libertarian (abolitionist, or whatever anyone wants to call it) does not seem to be one of them.
This is what the LNCC should be doing. Their list may not be as extensive as Marc’s, but they should be doing something similar.
Again, $1,000 is a significant amount in many local races, which are the most likely to be winnable.
And there are already people stepping forward to match Marc – both Matt on here and some people that have contacted Marc privately. So it’s sort of on its way to becoming a PAC.
19 MM, actually, I did read your article, Mark. It’s conceivable that your $1000 could make a significant difference in either sort of race (winnable or recruitment), but it seems unlikely that it would.
Politics – including its financing – appears to be a numbers game, i.e., in this case, significant dollars. $1000 is quite generous for an individual, but politics requires collective action to be consequential.
If yours become a PAC and becomes consequential, I am open to the possibility that yours is the optimal approach. I happen to be skeptical, but I am first and foremost open minded.
I feel otherwise as far as them having an interesting point to make. I’d rather not take the thread in that direction just yet, but I can explain it in a more appropriate thread or later.
I do understand that this was just an example and not your ultimate point.
I can say from personal experience that a decent local campaign can be run for well under $5,000
$1,000 is a significant amount in many local races.
On the other hand, those kinds of races may not need some of the infrastructure e.g. a separate campaign manager and treasurer, etc. It may well be possible for one candidate with little or no donors or volunteers to spend a few thousand dollars for ads and/or mailings, knock on a few thousand doors and win.
Someone who has, say, 20 hours a week for several months and several thousand dollars to spare can do it with no or almost no help from anyone else. With a few volunteers and a few donors it becomes eminently possible.
Exactly!
I strongly commend Marc Montoni and Matt Cholko for their commitments.
The requirements are 100% reasonable.
This party will not grow being Republican-lite, or Democrat-lite. History shows us that
That presumes I have never given money to LP candidates before. I give money to candidates in Virginia usually every year, in varying amounts.
The big money is waiting for the right one.
I, and you, are that, regardless.
Which parts should I be ready to compromise away?
Ideology, which is important to me?
Recruitment, which is important to the LP?
Having a volunteer team or being on the ballot or having a Treasurer who knows how to keep the candidate out of trouble?
You are not a donor or supporter unless you actually give the money. Otherwise, you are just another person with opinions.
I would be much more supportive of the effort if the $1000 was guaranteed to be given to the candidate who most closely meets the criteria. Then show how successful the candidate actually was. Let the results talk.
Sigh. Did you actually *read* the article?
If not, here’s the executive summary reading list: Items 2b, 2e, 14 and 15.
Those are all about the effort that must be undertaken in a serious campaign, to raise money and recruit volunteers.
By itself, $1,000 won’t make a difference.
Duh.
Belabor the obvious much?
You didn’t read the article, so I’ll just repeat it here: “My offer is available to two types of campaigns: a) winnable races; or 2) recruitment campaigns.”
So if I’ve selected a candidate running in what I think is a winnable race, the $1,000 is intended to put an already well-organized candidate “over the top”, or at least get closer to being over the top. It’s not going to help a legislative candidate who enters a quarter-million-dollar race for state senate who has only raised $5,000 on his own, but it might make the difference in a race for county Board where a winning candidate typically raises and spends $5k and the Libertarian in the race has already raised $5k. There are literally thousands of those kinds of races in the United States.
Let me make it simple: I am acting as a one-person PAC. If Matt joins me on my quest, then it will be a two-man. Several other individuals have contacted me privately, that they will either match or partially match any grant I make under the challenge.
Don’t worry, I wouldn’t even ask you.
You haven’t seen the “Hard Edge approach” in action because few LP candidates actually use it.
The opposite approach is what 75% of all LP candidates take. And after thirty years of watching those 75% of LP candidates being nervous about having to answer a Tough Question or making a bold statement, I’ve had quite enough of the intellectually lazy, “don’t offend anyone” model of campaigning.
It simply hasn’t gotten us anywhere.
The few Libertarian candidates who don’t have nervous bladders have proven that a Libertarian can make a good run while advocating abolitionism (Michael Cloud, Carla Howell, others).
12 MM: Second, I did not share this offer as a means of convincing anyone. I am simply stating flat-out what I consider to be a good, well-organized, well-prepared candidate — and if he has that and the ideological hard edge I like in a Libertarian candidate, he gets my $1000.
me: Interesting. I respect that that’s your view, of course, i.e., that you like “hard edge” L candidates. The utility of publicly offering $1K seems to be more than just a statement of fact, however. Do you think that your $1K will be of consequence in any campaign? I s’pose it could be, but I wouldn’t think so…by itself.
Rather, I would think that yours is a prescription for a “Hard Edge L” PAC. By bundling resources, you might influence other Hard Edge Ls to run for office, and to do so with more resources than usual. I’d respect your doing so, even though I would not actively support the effort myself.
Like economics, politics is a coordination problem. The point of politics is to share ideas, change minds and change laws, near as I can tell. I just don’t happen to see the Hard Edge approach as being optimal. In some forms, I consider the Hard Edge approach to be counter-productive.
You should do some research. PAC’s do this sort of process quite frequently.
When I issued the Challenge for the first time in 2004, almost the entire list of requirements I used was harvested from a questionnaire and interview process a Virginia PAC used to screen Democratic legislative candidates it had under consideration.
Their app had 50 questions, and candidates applying had to be interviewed by the PAC director.
If they answered most of the questions as desired and the interview went well, the PAC would donate $5,000 to the campaign.
I’ll throw away $20 on a Libertarian campaign with no plan. I’ll throw $50 or $100 to a Libertarian campaign that covers some of the basics.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to invest $1,000 on a pig-in-a-poke campaign that is poorly planned and executed.
I am sorry if that offends you.
“Yet another reason why the two major parties win. Much easier for them to raise money.
Sorry, but that’s just an amateurish outlook.”
Oh. I’m so sorry. I see the error of my ways now. How could I have been so amateurish.
Or … Perhaps … You didn’t get the point.
It is easier for major party candidates to raise money BECA– USE …
Their contributors don’t impose asinine lists of 20+ conditions.
Amateurish. Puhleeze!
14 tb, thanks. Yes, my statement would read better if it said “…he’ll likely need to make a different sort of case.”
Have we not established that IIRC that even you prefer “limited statism”? Or are you for privatizing the silos and NORAD tomorrow?
“Conformists” seems like a charged, loaded term, btw. One could secretly dream of a nonarchistic Blantonia while at the same time tack on the edge of the public square in terms of what one advocates, yes? IOW, where does it say that one must share one’s fantasies in a political context.
For ex., privately, I believe the Ls for bestiality legalization have an interesting point to make. Publicly, I think it’s a political non-starter.
Do you feel otherwise?
Montoni can of course support what he chooses to support, but if he’s sharing his standards as a means to persuade others to adopt his standards, he’ll need to make a different sort of case.
Who is to say he’ll need to make a different sort of case? He will persuade some people, perhaps. Some people may adopt at least some some of his standards like Matt evidently has. Others who prefer limited statism, which has not been working out so well, will only be persuaded with guns to their heads or promises of tax cuts as these methods seem to be required of those who cling to the state.
Conformists that crave the approval of others will adopt Mark’s standards at the very instant that a large number of other people adopt them so that they may then position themselves to appear mainstream and reasonable.
I don’t really care about “electing candidates to office”. I do care about “electing LIBERTARIAN candidates to office”.
I’ve had quite enough of mamby-pamby libertarianism. I’ve watched LP candidates try to hide libertarianism for all of my 32 years of involvement in the LP, and frankly, it ain’t working, and I’m rather annoyed at their hijacking of the LP and their effort to sell libertarianism as something is entirely NOT.
They are of course free to do what they want, but damned if I will donate to them; and since they and their supporters feel compelled to attack abolitionists like myself for daring to utter the “a” word, I am entirely free to attack their weak kneed stances as I see fit.
I disagree. Transparency can be turned into an excellent selling point. The candidate could bring up the subject of transparency and point out how he is unafraid to make his financial statements easily accessible, just as he wishes to do with government checkbooks.
Secrecy and unwillingness to offer information, on the other hand, tends to breed mistrust, as it often does with Mr Lieberman’s frequent calls for confidentiality where none is needed, for example.
Malarkey.
Perhaps I should specify, but my offer is not really directed at “library board”, “inspector of elections”, or “soil and water district director”.
It is directed at city and county elections — in Virginia, these are usually “city council”, “county board of supervisors”, and the like.
I was elected to the Lord Fairfax Soil & Water Conservation District myself — with a campaign budget of less than $4. There is no need whatsoever for a $1,000 infusion into a race of that sort.
Oh — and my intention is to support candidates who, like me, wish to raise that proportion of registered Libertarians from .5% to 5.0%, then on to 50%. You can’t do that without branding.
First off, while I supported GJ once he had the nomination, how much I donated to his campaign has absolutely NOTHING to do with this particular offer.
Second, I did not share this offer as a means of convincing anyone. I am simply stating flat-out what I consider to be a good, well-organized, well-prepared candidate — and if he has that and the ideological hard edge I like in a Libertarian candidate, he gets my $1000.
I’m certainly not trying to convince Capozzi. He’ll need to figure it all out for himself; although I haven’t seen any sign yet that he’s started on the path of doing so.
For decades, I’ve watched dozens (if not hundreds) of Libertarian candidates soft-pedal Libertarian ideas.
Anecdote:
Reed Halsted’s race for House of Delegates against Eric Cantor. Reed constantly reminded all of his campaign volunteers that he only wanted to talk about repealing the sales tax on food and medicine in Virginia, and absolutely nothing else. We attended several events in Henrico County, where we dropped lit for his campaign. Reed made it very clear he didn’t want to discuss the larger Libertarian philosophy.
The result was 20%. We also didn’t go anywhere in terms of finding new supporters. Halsted’s campaign did succeed in getting the issue discussed; but our membership levels in his district remained flat from one year to the next.
Kip Karl and Shelby McCurnin got a few percentage points higher four years later, but did not so limit the topics discussed by volunteers, and both of them used the “a” word in newspaper interviews as well as in campaign forums. It did not hurt them, and one person I signed up as a result of a conversation started at a campaign appearance by Shelby is right now still a member of the LP. There may be a few others recruited as a result of the campaign, because I saw a half-dozen people appear on the LPVA database in Shelby’s district at the end of ’97, but I did not ask any of them what had prompted them to join.
Another anecdote:
I worked in the national office full-time from 1989-1993, and temped there to help out several times in the late 90’s – early 00’s. Both periods coincided with two of the three genuine “radical”, consistent presidential candidates we have run (Marrou & Browne). The other was Bergland but I didn’t work @ LPHQ during his campaign.
I saw first-hand the flurry of phone/email inquiries we’d get any time Marrou or Browne did a radio or TV interview. Both of them made prolific use of the “A” word (“abolish”), and didn’t hold back on anything.
I also received the inquiries that came in from Virginia during the Badnarik, Barr, and Johnson campaigns. They came in at a decent rate with Johnson, but Barr and Badnarik resulted in few new inquiries and even fewer new memberships.
Unlike most of the people who comment on this board, I actually do have first-hand experience with how inquiries are generated and by whom. Others have only their own unsupported beliefs as to what works. I’ve seen with my own eyes direct evidence — and I am putting a thousand of my dollars on the candidate who follows the proven path to earning success.
I might make an exception for a state where fusion is allowed; however, I’d look very carefully. I’m not interested in Republicans (or Democrats) who yak libertarian long enough to trick us into voting for them, and then get in bed with all the other prostitute politicians once elected. That is the main danger I see with fusion candidates.
By the way, this offer was actually directed at Virginia candidates. Thus the references to LPVA and resources on LPVA.com.
I disagree. Those other guys don’t really have a “brand” with a consistent set of ideals. We do. To the extent that we laugh and slap each other on the back, we will be perceived as “just another brand of mainstream”. I’m not interested in diluting our brand.
Sorry, but that’s just an amateurish outlook. It is no harder for us to raise money at all. The majors win because they have more SUPPORTERS. One reason and one reason only.
More supporters means larger cadres of volunteers to doorhang, etc., and larger numbers of donors.
IT AIN’T ABOUT THE CANDIDATES. It *is* about building a bigger LP that has the muscle to get candidates elected.
I guess I have a love-hate relationship with Mr. Montoni 🙂
I strongly agree with 13 of his 19 recommendations. There is no need for me to list those.
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Number 1. If you want to elect Libertarians to public office, you can’t expect to micromanage their campaign platforms. As long as their overall campaign platform increases liberty, I am perfectly willing to give them some leeway as to what sort of production they are putting on during their theater performance (otherwise known as a political campaign). The way to judge libertarian purity is by a candidate’s votes AFTER they are elected to public office.
Number 11. I don’t have a problem with number 11, but most people that know how to use Google can find this information. I don’t want our candidate’s financial disclosure documents to be any more available to his or her opponents than the opponents documents are available to us.
I strongly disagree with number 12. Same as my disagreement with number 1 – the way to judge libertarian purity is by a candidate’s votes AFTER they are elected to public office. Plus – why would you want to saddle someone running for a non-partisan, winnable Library Board seat with the word Libertarian when only 0.5% of the district is registered to vote as Libertarian?
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I have a mild disagreement with number 10. Many special districts are a subset of a town, or they spread across several counties. I would be satisfied if the county or CD LP affiliate that contains the majority of the voters in that district endorses the candidate.
I have a mild disagreement with number 13. I agree with number 13 for recruitment campaigns, but I disagree with it for winnable campaigns. Again – I don’t think campaign donors should be micro-managing the campaigns of candidates who are running to win. I don’t care one bit how many new LP members Susan Marie Weber recruited into the Riverside County LP during her successful 2012 campaign for Palm Desert City Council. She WON. Having a Libertarian who has the ability to vote on all City Council matters for the next 4 years is the best possible recruitment tool for a county LP.
I somewhat disagree with number 19, but I admire Marc for that creative suggestion. We should require that our unsuccessful candidates running for winnable offices to agree beforehand to run at least twice for the same office, or for an office that is smaller in number of voters, but overlaps with the original office they ran for. I want them to keep their left-over funds for that second campaign.
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Despite my disagreement with some of these recommendations, I think it is great that Mr. Montoni has made this offer and compiled this list.
My favorite quote from his list: “All LP candidates should remember one thing: IT AIN’T ABOUT YOU.”
I wish more state and county/CD Libertarian Parties would make something like this document mandatory for a candidate to sign before they received an endorsement or any sort of financial or volunteer help from that affiliate.
Scott Lieberman — Region 4 Alternate, Libertarian National Committee
(CD = Congressional District)
These may be Marc’s standards, but they are not the standards that contributors should be using. I believe they are and example of standards that state parties should be holding candidates to before allowing them to be nominated.
Since Montoni’s opinion is the “L-ism is about *abolitionism*,” I take it that he didn’t support GJ. GJ did call for abolishing some things, but not all issues he discussed in his campaign.
Montoni can of course support what he chooses to support, but if he’s sharing his standards as a means to persuade others to adopt his standards, he’ll need to make a different sort of case.
My mistake. I should have said 2013 only.
The only one I disagree with is the requirement about not accepting endorsements from other parties. Perhaps this makes sense in Virginia, but in a fusion state like New York there are plenty of legitimate reasons for another party to endorse a Libertarian candidate — and no good reasons for the Libertarian candidate to decline the endorsement. Further, any major-party candidate who got an endorsement from another party would welcome that endorsement, fusion state or no. LP candidates should do the same.
Matt Cholko said: “My offer applies in 2012 only, and IS a serious offer”
Is this some kind of joke? 2012 is almost over.
I’ll match Marc’s $1000, with the same terms. I’ll give $500 to the first campaign to get 90% of the way there.
My offer applies in 2012 only, and IS a serious offer. Convince Montoni to give you his $1000, and you’ll get my $1000 too. If you’re close, but not quite there, contact me directly and maybe you’ll get $500.
Never made it past part 2, section f.
Just as soon put my own money in than go through this laundry list.
Yet another reason why the two major parties win. Much easier for them to raise money.