Dan Halloran, former New York City Councilman who was elected as the fusion nominee of the Republican, Independence, Conservative, and Libertarian parties in 2009, has been sentenced to ten years in prison on federal corruption charges.
Mr. Halloran was found guilty last year in connection with his role in arranging the bribery of city Republican leaders to allow former State Senator Malcolm Smith, a Queens Democrat, to run as a Republican candidate for mayor in 2013.
The LP in NH has a hard time getting libertarians in that state to go that route rather than either trying to “infiltrate” the major parties or become anti-electoral politics anarchists. So paradoxically, lots of libertarians but weak LP.
The laws in NH are good on many issues, though not all, and ballot access is not one of the good ones. Speaking of which: http://www.ballot-access.org/2015/03/new-hampshire-ballot-access-bill-loses-on-house-floor/
New Hampshire still has fusion. But it is difficult to use; a candidate who wants the nomination of two ballot-qualified parties must win one of the primaries via write-ins. Nevertheless every year it happens.
The fusion law was a different law, which I think was changed much earlier if I understand correctly. And Richard is correct, Villaincourt is in NH, although he is from VT originally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Vaillancourt
The law in New Hampshire (which is currently being challenged in court) that prevents party’s from petitioning in the odd year before an election year did not get passed until 2013 or 2014, so thus can’t be used as an excuse for lack of success for the LP of New Hampshire prior to that.
Also, did NH get rid of fusion, subsequent to the 1990s?
“The Libertarian nominee elected to the New Hampshire legislature in 2000 was not a fusion nominee. He was listed on the ballot only as a Libertarian.”
Wasn’t that Vermont?
“Supposedly the Free State Project got people elected to the legislature as Republicans, so why are those Free State legislators so indifferent to freedom to vote for the candidates of one?s choice?”
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/01/new-hampshire-ballot-access-bill-introduced-by-ex-libertarianmax-abramson/
The rule is routinely ignored. I am unaware of any action being taken by any LNC to disaffiliate or sanction a state affiliate that nominates a fusion candidate. There was an effort to change the bylaws to reflect this reality in Columbus in 2014, but it failed. As such, states like New York and a few others continue to honor the rule more in the breach.
Back in the 1990’s, the vote test for party status was 3%. Now it is 4%. That made a big difference. Also back in the 1990’s, the party petition could be circulated in the odd year before an election, and the party’s nominees (when that petition was used) didn’t need to file a declaration of candidacy in June. The real question for the Free State Project is why the NH legislature is so hostile. Supposedly the Free State Project got people elected to the legislature as Republicans, so why are those Free State legislators so indifferent to freedom to vote for the candidates of one’s choice?
Sorry about the typo, should be fixed now.
re: fusion nominations, I’m not saying LPNY or other fusion-state parties should be punished or anything. Like I said I’m not convinced fusion nominations are per se a bad thing. I was just curious how it squared with the existing LP rule, or if that rule has just been being ignored.
re: New Hampshire, it’s true that NH has very bad ballot access for third parties. It’s also unfortunately true that the FSP has not translated into a revived or stronger LPNH. The reason for that though, is that Free Staters and other NH libertarians have been able to elected to the state legislature as major-party nominees, in numbers and frequency that would not be possible in other states. When roughly half of the state GOP caucus is recognizably libertarian, and even the Democratic caucus has a handful of Free Staters in it, the incentive for libertarians to attempt the LP route is greatly reduced. Whereas, for comparison’s sake, the small handful of libertarians who attempted to run in the GOP primary in Wisconsin in 2014, all lost in the primary, and lost big, as is the case in most states.
When the FSP has elected more of its members to state legislature, than the LP has in the entire nation in the same period, I don’t think the problem is with the FSP. Instead of asking why the Free Staters haven’t all joined LPNH, we should be asking why LPNH hasn’t been attracting Free Staters to run as Libertarians.
All of this makes one wonder if New Hampshire was not the best choice for the Free State Project.
Even with bad ballot access laws, one would think that with New Hampshire being the Free State Project state that Libertarians in New Hampshire ought to be able to smash through the ballot access barrier, especially when one considers that the party was able to do it there back in the 1990’s.
Not only that, New Hampshire continues to have one of the worst ballot access laws in the nation. New Hampshire is one of only 3 states that has not had any ballot-qualified minor parties in the entire period November 1996 to the present (the others are New Jersey and Pennsylvania). New Hampshire was one of only 5 states with no minor party or independent candidates on the ballot for any statewide race in November 2014. New Hampshire is one of a very few states that have made ballot access worse during the last 10 years (making it illegal for petitions to circulate in odd years). New Hampshire is one of only 3 states that won’t tally how many registered Libertarians there are (the others are Rhode Island and Oklahoma). There is something strangely authoritarian about New Hampshire. Remember, it took the US Supreme Court to tell New Hampshire that the state could not criminalize people who put masking tape over the state slogan on license plates. Ironically that slogan is “Live Free or Die.” New Hampshire is orwellian.
I assume this means I am right about the Libertarians elected to the New Hampshire legislature prior to that.
Hey, notice how New Hampshire became the target of the Free State Project in 2003, yet the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire has elected a grand total of zero people to the state legislature since then.
The Libertarian nominee elected to the New Hampshire legislature in 2000 was not a fusion nominee. He was listed on the ballot only as a Libertarian.
I am pretty sure that all of the Libertarian state legislators who were elected in New Hampshire back in the 1990’s were fusion candidates who ran as Libertarian Republicans.
By the way, as all good IPR readers know, the closest we ever came to the 50,000 threshold was Warren Redlich’s 2010 campaign which was shy by less than 1700.
Warren was a registered Republican and former Republican councilmember at the time he ran as the LP Gubernatorial candidate.
Andy C. at 3:00 am (!!):
As the Libertarian Party is not recognized as a political party under New York Election Law (which requires us to obtain over 50,000 votes for Governor in order to acquire party status and automatic ballot access for the following four Years), we do not have primaries.
The LPNY and its dozen chapters will continue to endorse fusion candidates of other parties where appropriate on a case-by-case basis. Last year, there were only two as major party candidates usually don’t want to go to the incredible hurdles to get on the ballot as a Libertarian.
mARS is correct. “Halloran” is the correct spelling.
Here’s what I wrote to my chapters and fellow state chairs last night:
>I regret to report that former NYC Councilman Dan Halloran, elected in 2009 on a fusion Republican-Conservative-Independence-Libertarian ticket, has been sentenced to 10 years for his role in the Malcolm Smith bribery case.
>http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/city-councilman-dan-halloran-10-years-prison-article-1.2137614
>Dan was a frequent speaker at Manhattan and Queens LP events. He was consistently in our camp and I considered him more than just an ally but also a friend.
>His life has been made miserable by the federal government over the past two years, and will only continue to get worse.
>I am terribly saddened by this outrageous sentencing.
“Halloran” is misspelled in the post.
“No affiliate party shall endorse any candidate who is a member of another party for public office in any partisan election.” -LP bylaws.
I see how this can be read as allowing fusion nominations in the case of a candidate who is an independent or LP member, but from everything I can find Holloran was and is a self-described Republican. He isn’t the only case of Libertarian/Republican fusion nominees being elected, but I don’t know how many of the others were Libertarians who also won the GOP primary, vs. Republicans who also won the Libertarian primary.
At the same time, if somebody runs for and secures the Libertarian nomination in the state-run primary, particularly in a fusion state, can the state party do anything about that even if they wanted to? I know there was some debate about this clause in Columbus, but I wasn’t keyed in to the details of the discussion. If it’s the case that state law doesn’t let a party reject fusion nominations, then perhaps having an official LP policy on the matter would be pointless. And I’m not 100% convinced that Libertarian fusion nominations are always a bad thing, anyway. Still, it just caught my attention that this a case of a person who is clearly “a member of another party” while also being the Libertarian nominee for partisan office.