From Richard Winger at Ballot Access News:
As previously reported, last year the Alaska Libertarian Party came in second for Governor of Alaska among the party nominees for that office. That is because the Democrats didn’t have a gubernatorial nominee. Therefore, under Alaska law, the Libertarian Party had the right to choose a nominee for the Commission that regulates campaign finance.
According to this story, the legislators who must approve the appointment aren’t sure they want to appoint Bill McCord, the Libertarian Party’s choice. The story is fairly comprehensive, and says one objection to McCord is that he hasn’t lived in Alaska very long. The story does not say if the position actually has a duration of residency requirement, but probably there is no such requirement. The story also does not say that McCord has been very interested in election law for over twenty-five years. Back in 1991, McCord was a constituent of Congressman Al Swift, who was chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives committee that handled election law bills. McCord helped persuade Swift to hold a hearing on a bill that would have helped minor parties and independent candidates.
What happens if they do not approve the appointment?
It’s Alaska, so maybe wolves could be the solution…
Carpetbagging is a big problem with the LP, unfortunately. You often have people move to a new state and they can easily be elected head of the state party or get nominated for a statewide office based on their experience being an LP activist in another state. That’s not impressive to most voters, who are looking for candidates with experience being active members of the local community.
This problem is largely an unfortunate consequence of being a small organization, but carpetbagging is really something that should be taken into account by the state parties.
Sounds like the Democrats (& Walker) are trying to make a fiasco out of it in hopes of making a statutory change that would strip Libertarians of their positions on APOC altogether, and that the Alaska LP are themselves angling against McChord being confirmed, in the hope that their preferred nominee (Mark Fish) gets on instead.
The state law provides that the two top vote-getting parties for Gov get two members of the board each. The Gov originally interpreted this to mean the staggered terms of the current Dem members expired immediately, but that’s not the case. One seat goes the Libertarians now in 2015 for a five-year term, another will go to them in 2017 for a five-year term. Fish was appointed to the 2017 seat, so that had to be withdrawn when it was concluded that seat isn’t open yet.
The state law says the parties should provide a list of four nominees. ALP submitted five names, apparently in the expectation that one would be appointed now, leaving the other four as nominees for the 2017 seat. However if the ALP Chair’s comments are correct that McChord was “fifth out of five” on that list, then he wasn’t eligible to be appointed as one of the *four* nominees for the 2015 seat.
Alaska LP should have been operating on the assumption that their last-preference nominee would be selected by the Governor. They shouldn’t have put somebody’s name on the list that they weren’t comfortable with that person being *the* Libertarian officeholder in Alaska. The residency thing is no doubt overblown and trumped-up, and I’m sure Republican and Democratic nominees haven’t ever faced this much scrutiny over credentials, but still… if ALP is going to submit his name, they should be prepared to defend him and justify the selection if he’s chosen. Not claim they didn’t really mean it or intend for him to be selected.
Seymour is right. Of course they don’t like him. They’re not gonna like anybody the LP puts up, if the LP puts up a real libertarian.
So, the totalitarian power structure isn’t happy that someone might question the laws they wrote to interfere with access to the ballot and free speech? You don’t say.