Libertarian National Committee August 19, 2023 Meeting Liveblog

We will commence when it is available. They will by and by come to order.

We are live. I am about 3 minutes behind.

Public Comments: Duque is speaking as a non-member. He resigned after the vote of non-confidence by his region. He travelled to DC, and then resigned. He said there was loyalty to friends and keeping his word. He kept his word by resigning. Michael Heise — ignore the noise and the haters. Pat Ford — libertarians doing mutual support of people in need, especially Vermont after the severe weather. Asks support of Libertarian Activism group.

Taking roll. Each member will say who they are and what they are doing. There is a tech glitch, being worked on. Introductions finished. Meeting paused while hotel wifi being fixed. They are now trying to go to audio only.

Text of statement by Michael Duque at the start of the meeting:

​”Good morning LNC and Libertarians. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning. I am excited to speak this morning as a member of the public and a member of the Libertarian Party since I have hereby resigned as Region 1 Representative. The reason I have done that is to uphold my word, because I gave my region my word that I would resign should they have a simple majority vote of no confidence in me by the region chairs, which happened last night. Up till last night my region chairs chose not to vote no confidence in me, and I traveled here to uphold my duties, and thereby I have resigned. It’s important. A political role model of mine says that “In politics, all you have is your word or your friends. if you go back on either, you’re dead.”I think he was talking about keeping ourselves honest. Keeping each other honest. Because even Libertarians sometimes falter, even those of us who stand on principle, even good people will lie. Lie about each other, lie to themselves, and lie to the people that we claim to represent. Members are watching, and I encourage everyone to keep themselves honest, and keep each other honest, and continue to fight for liberty. Thank you very much.”

Todd Hagopian is liveblogging. The investigatory committee reported. Recommendation was censure and Duque be excluded from confidential matters for the remainder of the term. Pantke adds “Given that Region 1 has already rendered a vote of “no confidence” against him, we recommend that the LNC censure Mr. Duque for the release of the memo “Confidential Memo to LNC”, ​In the event that Mr. Duque has not or will not resign from the LNC, the investigatory committee recommends that Mr. Duque be excluded from all confidential matters until the end of his present LNC term”

They started debating the recommendations. Live stream has now stopped. Livestream has reappeared. I am 17 minutes behind. They are discussing motions to censuer. The original motions are withdrawn after attempted amendment and discussion.

Watkins: Move to adopt the recommendations of the investigative committee and censure Mr Duque based on those recommendations. Time extended.

Vote on motion: Bowen no. Nanna abstained. 11 yes, 1 no, 1 express extension. Motion passes.

Chair speaks. Lists difficulties of past. Conflicts, staff turnover,… “On the cusp” of something positive. There is a 90 day plan. Things are changing. Fundraising may not be positive until the end of September. Discussing speaking with staff members. We are still hiring. Affiliate support will be improved. Not actively seeking a new executive director. Need to finish onboarding the new staff then hire an executive director. National party activism doing really well. successful events at FreedomFest PorcFest,… looking to improve relations with the bitcoin community. Improve candidate support.

Discussing costs of candidate training and who will pay. Sound is a bit weak.

Tuniewicz: There was a group of this people using a non-party asset for communications including discussion or personnel. Was this all right with you? Chair first claimed it was LNC property because it was hers. Tuniewicz: Did you approve: Yes. Nanna: This was a closed group, not available to the public. Harlos: There was a chat like this last term. I refused to participate. LNC members chatting privately is politics. Ford: Never put anything into writing you don’t see on the first page of the NY Times.

Report of Vice Chair. Doing outreach to non-party groups that align with us. Fed group. Mises Caucus. February Rally. (He’s a bit hard to follow.)

Ford: Educational freedom groups, especially in twitter spaces, have greatly expanded. We should be vigorous about outreach there.

Heise: Mises Caucus has 150 people phone banking starting this Wednesday. Issue antiwar. Ten minute break. Wifi went down again.

Treasurer reports: Major changes in accounting. We have outsourced employee relations. We are up to date on FEC filings (he thinks there are rumors to the contrary. Next report will be out on time. he anticipates that revenue is down. There is an FEC letter. It is standard. It required a simple letter response. There is no indication of impropriety (as a former FEC filing Treasurer, that is also the opinion of your scribe here). He specifies the report is 19 days late. He will not report incorrect financial reports. He is holding off until the new accountant can fix issues. FEC report had to come first. June will be done after the August FEC filings. There are several months of bringing the new accountants up to speed.

We will look at changing credit card processing where there are opportunities for substantial saving.
Cash position is $230,000-250,000. Chair gave numbers close to $290,000, with bills to be paid out of it. We will need to be adjusting the budget down. There may be normal expenses as a staff member leaves. Move to executive session, LNC only, to discuss staff and finances. Harlos urges consolidating all executive sessions, as the transitions are clumsy.

Change of accountants. $10-12,000 for first month, then $2-3,000 per month.

Secretary reports she will be very busy with convention preparations and projected delegate allocations. Working on the manuals that she promised. Secretary says people who said bad things about her have apologized to her. Objects to people using the comments that have circulated about her to criticize futurewards the party. Wants people to each forgive other. Wants people to move on from what was reported last week. Q as to when numbers in delegate allocations were generated — end of May. Secretary is waiting for fresh membership data before she can recalculate delegate allocations.

Staff reports: Chair: There have been changes. By outsourcing operations, the operations director will now also do candidate support and the like. Work on customer relations and other activities such as Libertarian clothing. We hired someone as a fundraising director on a short-term rolling contract. Effort is to find new donors. Staff will be much more empowered. New PR person, working on positive PR strategy for us. Expert advice is being given that the fundraising director rolling contract should be for six months at least, not 90 days. Chair is very difficult to understand.

New fundraising director. Things don’t work if you don’t look at hard truths. June, July, August comparatives, compare with 2019. We are not bringing in direct mail and major donors. We can’t just just do email. We lose $20,000 that way. We will be sending our first direct mailer in 10 months. Ballot access very important for fundraising. We need a great deal of money for that. Most important thing our party does is run someone for President; it’s our biggest megaphone. Fundraising needs to be done on things the national party should do. Candidate support and recruitment. Ballot access. Without major donors the national party can reach its objectives. To fundraise I need to give donors a clear sense of what we are trying to do. Major push for quarter: direct mail, major donors, expand list of donors.

We will attempt to improve customer relations. Working to train new employee doing this. Marketing campaign: There is a new employee, with good things said about it. Convention naming process, worked to get people excited and involved in it. Editorial calendar: How do we coordinate emails. want to put things into calendar based on campaigns. Many questions, more adjectives than nouns.

There is a scrum calendar. Two week sprint for accomplishing tasks. Moving toward a project-based approach. We get a lot of tasks done but projects do not complete. What were the projects, I could not tell. Is there a prioritization process in the scrum? A: Most important things done first. Difficult to master, very difficult, identifying the most important projects. Apparently no one is in charge of deciding.

Chair: Vice Chair might have a snap something of what is being updated.

Q How does accounting work now? Did google search to identify emergency accounting. Firm gave proposal. We’ll do all the entries, pay all your bills, coordinate on employees and do payroll. We will do all the uploading and accounting for the FEC. A bit challenging the first time. Four accountants on their team: a controller, and FEC reporter, someone with power of account. Firm is located in Missouri. Paycheck will be our payroll, insurance, taxes, and be our HR people. Meeting recesses for lunch.

They are back. Presentations on the choosing the next national convention site. Grand Rapids Michigan is presenting. Presentation on another city, I believe Denver. Third choice is Chicago.

Redpath opines that any contract must have a penalty-free cancellation clause up to the end of the 2024 convention if the 2024 convention cancels or moves the date of the 2026 convention. At one time, we did change the date of the national convention. The locations are discussed. There seems to be a strong inclination toward Grand Rapids.

Moved and seconded to have the 2026 national convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan, over the Memorial Day weekend. Vote was 13-0-0 in favor, the chair not voting.

Break taken.

Staff reports. Events planned. A weekend charter trip with donors from Florida. Planned for next spring. Extra events welcome. Also an interest in subject matter links, experts getting commission for donations through their articles. Speaker discussed large donors. Chris Rufer, Sean Dow, others mentioned as possible. It appears we are talking with them. No mention of dollars through the door. Working on a new pitch for new products, e.g., scalable candidate support. Developing ways to see how successful our fundraisers are. Trying to automate our contact scheme. Outreach to crypto events..no other industry that is 70% libertarian.

Ford: What reactions are we getting from people we ask.

Speaker surprised that people brought up LPNH web posts. Solution was to talk about tangible objectives and tangible products , which drew their attention.

Staff member: improved membership reporting means we can try to get our membership prospecting up and running. Created a password store that lets us target who can access each password. Other software efforts to improve what we are doing. Issues with civicrm being geofenced are being solved. Problems with importing state level data being fixed. Civi has been a hard road but he is hopeful of progress.

Counsel’s report, mostly executive session. They are going to executive session. Livestream has ended.

There was a clarification. They discussed personnel issues, potential litigation, and legal advice from counsel.

That’s it for today.