Joseph Wendt via LP Radicals on facebook:
Hey there, my name is Joe Wendt and I have filed to run for Soil and Water Conservation Board, Group 3 in Hillsborough County, FL (Tampa area). I am running on a platform to eliminate the Board. It is an antiquated position that costs the taxpayers approximately $250,000 a year. The Board wastes the taxpayer’s hard-earned money, and the taxpayers deserve their money back. I’ve ran twice before for the same position, receiving about 47,000 votes in 2010 and over 160,000 votes in 2012.
http://josephwendt.webs.com/
Previously on IPR and LP.org:
Joseph Wendt, 2012 candidate for Florida’s Soil and Water Conservation Board, netted the largest Libertarian Party vote total in his state, and one of the largest in the nation, running on a platform to defund and abolish the board he was campaigning to join.
“I am going to be blunt, the board is a waste of your tax dollars,” Wendt wrote on his campaign website. “It has a budget of about a quarter of a million dollars. What do they do with it? They fund a poster contest, and have 2 full-time employees that act like plumbers and doesn’t fix anything. Gee, call me crazy, but I think your tax dollars should and can be better spent. So, I want the County to stop funding the Board.”
He realized that it would take more than that to keep taxpayer funds safe, though, and made the next logical step a centerpiece of his campaign.
“We will need to abolish the Soil and Water Conservation Districts,” Wendt wrote. “This board has done nothing but waste valuable taxpayer dollars and has the potential to levy taxes for so-called ‘agricultural projects.’ It won’t be easy, since abolition requires either a majority of property owners to sign a petition or the signature of the Florida Secretary of Agriculture, then approval from the state legislature. This will be my long-term goal, a goal that we will reach with the help of the voters.”
Campaigning on big, bold Libertarian solutions like this can bring significant voter attention and support, as Wendt discovered when he received 166,126 votes on election day, 43 percent of the vote. He spread that message in person and through the invaluable assistance of local LP volunteers, but he primarily focused on his online presence.
“I put up yard signs wherever I could,” Wendt said, “But it was largely an Internet campaign.”
Wendt had considered running for state representative as a Republican in 2010, but as a long-time fan of the limited-government views of Ron Paul, he quickly grew disaffected with the establishment GOP. When members of the local Libertarian Party affiliate asked him to become involved, he jumped at the chance. He has since become treasurer of the Hillsborough County LP affiliate, and said that he may seek a position in state party leadership.
The near-win of his race and the outstanding vote total he received has Joseph Wendt excited to run again, aiming to win in 2014.
Last year, elected Florida Libertarians successfully abolished the Lee County Soil & Water Conservation Board.
A previous IPR article states that Wendt is also seeking the LPF nomination for Lieutenant Governor together with Gubernatorial running mate John Wayne Smith. That article, from May 23, 2013, points to a website, http://www.johnwaynesmith.com/, which as of this writing says that Smith is running for Agriculture Commissioner, which is either news to me or an outdated website.
Thanks to both sides of the vetting controversy for sharing your perspectives.
Mike, I’m glad that you brought up that there’s nothing the LPF can do about quasi-Libertarians running for office in Florida, That’s an additional augment for vetting from my perspective. We may not be able to do anything about them running, but we can make it clear that the LPF does not think they represent the party.
About someone saying he is going to win and how much that irks you, Interestingly enough, I’ve even heard that some consider that fraud, No one knows the future, so that could, or could not, come to be the outcome. Every sensible adult know not to rely on that hype any more than they’d rely on the prediction from the basketball coach who says his team will win before every game It’s not fraud to erroneous predict the future and it’s not wrong to look on the positive side.
Regarding the Bob Barr (and WAR, and other faux Libertarians), in Florida if these individuals wanted to run as Libertarians there’s nothing the LPF could do about it. Nothing. As long as they met the criteria of 365 day rule,and residency time requirement, and pay filing fee.
For all the talk of “winning elections” that comes out of certain people’s mouths, and being that the Libertarian Party of Florida is an equal party to the other two here, I find it troubling that we won’t even list our candidates on the website. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be an application process for receiving any form of state funding, but we are only talking about listing the candidates on the website. (A simply disclaimer saying candidates views may or may not represent the party’s platform could be posted in clear view at the top)
Major parties allow the registered voters to participate in the ‘selection’ process at the ballot box. That’s the way it should be.
Libertarians who talk about winning, growing the party, expanding outreach, yet support a top down approach of selecting who is listed on the website are speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
Either we want the LP to be a major party or we want it to be a small exclusive club.
Sometime in the not too distant past the State of Florida swooped in an dictated how the LPF would run, We would participate in primaries, we would elect our EC in such and such a manner, we would comply with a rule that says our candidates must be members of the party for 365 days, and more.
I’m not one to roll over to dictates from the State when it can be avoided. The majority of members seem to be of the same mindset. We comply, in our own way. We don’t exactly elect the officers the way the State wants us to, and we do continue to vet our own candidates.
Our election of officers is convoluted as the result, and so is the vetting process. It’s a work in process. At the time Joseph Wendt went through vetting there were many unanswered questions. Would we vet local candidates? Would we vet non-partisan candidates? Would we do background check? In time those questions were pretty well answered. We would vet local candidates if the affiliate asked us to do it for them and we would not vet non-partisan candidates. Joseph was stuck in the middle of that decision process.
I readily admit that the initial reasons for bringing up “devetting” were an over reaction to a statement made by Joseph. I wasn’t going to vote for “devetting” for those reasons. I did end up voting for it when it was pointed out that the office was a local non-partisan one.
Maybe other state parties would chose another path – perhaps divide between people who are willing to play dead to a State requirement and those that wanted to maintain some autonomy in their Party. That’s their decision – we mostly chose to stick together. Maybe people who are not in Florida don’t exactly understand why we do this; they might ask themselves how they would react if their State stepped in an started running their party.
Frankly I’m surprised that so many good Libertarians are unhappy with vetting. I think it’s the Libertarian way.
I do. It was just dumb. How was Paul endorsing Baldwin better than endorsing the idea of voting for any of the four alternatives? Barr cost himself a fair chunk of votes, good will and possibly donors as a result. And the idea was to stand up and say that all four of these other candidates agree on several important issues and disagree on those with both the Democrats and Republicans. Furthermore Barr said he would do it, and was there, but did not show up to the main event, instead holdng his own press confernce later to make the bizarre and insulting offer to Ron Paul to be Barr’s VP. Then he claimed he was not going to be seen on stage with “people like Cynthia McKinney” whatever that was supposed to mean. There were so many levels of fail involved I hardly know where to begin.
Well the solution to that is, in my opinion, recruiting stronger and better candidates like Gary Johnson.
I’ve made no secret of my problems with the Pauls, but Ron is a libertarian and was a good choice for president in 1988. My problem with Barr & Root has nothing to do with their disloyalty to the party, it’s that they’re not libertarians & should never have even been considered for our party’s nomination.
All fair points.
I don’t totally blame Barr for skipping the Ron Paul multi-candidate endorsement event. Paul sucks up all the oxygen in the Libertartian movement, channels it to his own network of organizations, and then generously leaves a few little crumbs behind for the minor parties to munch on.
If I was Barr, I’d probably just have have said “no thanks” to that invitation.
He endorsed Baldwin, quasi-endorsed Johnson (said he is wonderful; voted for him according to mutual friends, although he did not go on the record with that) and habitually votes alt-party, usually LP, for president. I believe the last LP presidential candidate he formally endorsed was Badnarik, but I’m not sure where I read that. There was also snubgate – essentially Ron Paul was going to tell people to vote for Barr, Baldwin, Nader or McKinney, withot endorsing one in particular, until Barr messed up the deal. Paul also sponsored legislation to ease ballot access every term he was in Congress, including if I’m not mistaken last term.
Barr’s conversion was questionable to begin with, and even Steve Gordon tells me we have now “lost an ally,” (although he blames me and other radical libertarians for it) so I’m sure that means if Barr does manage to get back in Congress he will probably be back to his old ways.
His record is better, although Barr’s conversion occurred after his time in office. No clue how he’ll behave if he someone wins the District 11 seat this year as a Republican.
Wayne Allyn Root is a shameless self-promoter and a buffoon. This was obvious before, during and after his involvement with the LP. But at least he did raise a little money here and there. Not much else positive you could say about him.
I haven’t seen Ron Paul do much supporting of non-Republican candidates in recent history.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/04/Ron-Paul-to-Virginians-Insane-to-Vote-for-Libertarian-Robert-Sarvis
Depends on what you mean by same thing. There’s a sense that Ron Paul is more ideologically libertarian, whatever his party is. And he still frequently supports alt party candidates even as a Republican. His record in office as a Republican congressman is also much better than Barr’s. And he wasn’t out there stumping for Romney…although he did stump for Cuccinelli, which also sucked.
I suspect you are right on that count.
No doubt, altough the Governor candidate will probably get more media, I would think.
Paulie — no, qualifying closes on the same day for all parties. If Smith were to qualify for a spot on the Libertarian ballot in the Governor’s race he would go into a primary against Adrian Wyllie and anyone else who files to run. The primary is in Late August or Early September and then the nominees are set.
He could not go back and run for Ag Commissioner after the fact.
I think there will be 10 NPA or minor party candidates for governor and maybe 2 or 3 “others” in the Ag Commissioner race. It’s a lower profile race and people will be more prone to cast a protest vote there.
I would bet money that the LP candidates for Ag Commish, Attorney General and State CFO all significantly outperform whoever the party nominates for Governor.
Everyone is so ticked off about Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root — but they give Ron Paul a free pass. These folks all did the same thing.
There’s a few people within the LPF who like the idea of having some sort of power to issue a license to practice official Libertarianism. To get this “vetted” status, you get interviewed by some LPF committee. But I was briefly a member of the LPF’s executive committee, the body that ultimately voted to “vet” a candidate and I can tell you from first-hand experience that very few people involved with the vetting or the voting knew anything about the candidates.
The whole thing with Joe Wendt, as I remember it, was that he was approved by the LPF despite the fact that it was unclear what office he was even running for. Then some negative comments about Adrian Wyllie or Alex Snitker popped up and the LPF leadership tried to get him “devetted” on the grounds that he was also talking about supporting Newt Gingrich and some other stuff. Before everyone got knee-deep into a verbal battle on the conference call over this, it was revealed that he was a candidate for Soil and Water Board which is a nonpartisan race. So the consensus was that “vetting” was not appropriate for non-partisan candidates anyway.
That’s a rough version of how I remember it going down.
Regardless, it’s a silly and divisive process and needs to be eventually retired.
The LPF doesn’t need to vet candidates to decide where to spend resources. The LPF Executive Committee could very easily just ask a candidate to join their conference calls, talk directly to the candidates, and then decide if it makes sense to direct resources to a local campaign.
But Barr and Root did get vetted, IE, they were selected by delegates, not through primaries.
If you want to know why I personally support a vetting process, I’ll give you two names: Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root.
That said, the way the LPF does it is corrupt to the hilt.
The issue is that anyone can register as a Libertarian without agreeing to any libertarian principles, so both the candidates and the people voting on them may not necessarily be libertarians, even if they are big L Libertarians. Or, even if the registered voters are mostly libertarian (both big and small L), they may not have enough information to make a choice, so the state party helps them with getting that information…at least that’s the theory. This part does sound messed up though:
I can’t think of why that would make sense.
no closed primary, only register libertarians can vote in the primary
It seems to me that the LPF should be supporting all nominated candidates, and remaining completely neutral in primary races. The “vetting” is supposed to be done by voters at conventions or primaries.
I guess that may not work quite right in an open primary state though, as, theoretically, some outside group could push a non libertarian onto the LP line. Does FL have an open primary?
I my self went through the vetting process last year and was initially approved, then someone issued an objection, then they claimed they couldn’t endorse me due to the race being nonpartisan. Than later that year they endorsed a candidate in non-partisan city council race. Some people involved in the vetting process are petty and show it.
And I just posted that comment in the wrong thread lol. It was supposed to go in the Ohio primary filing thread. That’s what I get for having two tabs open at the same time.
The Constitution Party has never been overly active in non-presidential races, except for a few states like Nevada, Missouri, Michigan, etc.
Lynn explained it before. Candidates just fill out a questionnaire affirming support for at least 80% of the party’s platform, plank by plank. Apparently they also have to meet face to face with LPF officers, which has become an issue in the case of Franklin Perez, previously (IMO unjustifiedly) devetted because he called for the arrest of Trayvon Martin’s killer, and denied the return of his fee; there have been concerns expressed over potential physical violence at the meeting.
Can you explain that how LPF determines which candidate to support, Lynn? I’m not trying to give you a hard time. To this outsider, it seems more like: ” Florida’s vetting process as the means by which the LPF Exective Committee decides which candidates to support.”
Is Smith able to run for Ag Commissioner if he doesn’t win the nomination for Governor, IE can he run for both offices? If so, does he want to?
Unfortunately, given my experience with the LPF’s vetting process and the apparent hypocrisy of some involved, I do not think vetting helps the LPF. Instead, it seems to allow the party to pick winners and losers, and ignore those they wish to isolate.
I see Florida’s vetting process as the means by which the LPF decides which candidates to support. Nothing more.
To run as a Libertarian in Florida you can collect signatures or pay a fee to the state. If more than one Libertarian files to run for an office, a primary is held and registered Libertarians in the jurisdiction vote to select the Libertarian nominee.
The whole vetting thing is just a handful of people trying to justify the creation of some internal bureaucracy. It’s a fading remnant of a time before Florida had primaries for minor party candidates.
I would like to make one thing clear. Alex Snitker does work tirelessly for the LPF. What many folks question is his modus operandi.
Snitker being wrong is esstentially calling the sky blue. Is anyone really surprised?
Sorry, that was what I meant, I should have been more clear.
Not to run, but to be listed on the LPF website and/or possible funds from the state party (which will most likely never happen)
He’d still have to be vetted though, right?
If John Wayne Smith ran for Commissioner of Agriculture, he’d get 5x the number of votes than he’d get running for Governor.
Ah…that explains it. Thanks.
Thanks for the support. On another note, I own the johnwaynesmith.com site, it is not an official site. I did edit it as a goof to say Ag Commissioner. JWS is still running for Gov, JWS is aware of the Ag Commissioner joke on the site and thinks it’s funny. Got to have some fun in politics and keep it interesting. There will be an official JWS for Gov site coming up this year. I will probably convert johnwaynesmith.com into a draft site to draft him for LP Presidential nomination in 2016.
That’s my understanding too. However https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2013/05/interview-libertarian-john-wayne-smith-and-running-mate-joseph-wendt-discuss-gubernatorial-campaign-in-florida/
That article, from May 23, 2013, points to a website, http://www.johnwaynesmith.com/, which as of this writing says that Smith is running for Agriculture Commissioner, which is either news to me or an outdated website.
It’s my understanding that Mr. Smith is running against Adrian Wyllie for Governor.
On the other race, does anyone know why Smith’s website says he is running for Agriculture Commissioner? Is it an outdated website, not yet updated, did Chris point the old artile to the wrong Smith campaign website (perhaps one from several years ago) or did Smith change his mind since then about what he wants to run for?
Best of luck!
Agreed! On both counts.
Here’s hoping that Mr. Wendt wins. He has a great shot at doing so having received 43% of the vote last time.
The best part is that his whole campaign goal is to eliminate the board altogether. Not reform it but to entirely do away with it.