Upcoming Debate Coverage
IPR will have a reporter at the South Carolina Libertarian Party State Convention. He will seek to question each candidate for the Libertarian Presidential nomination.
Since IPR encourages interaction from our readers, IPR is accepting questions that may be asked of the candidates. There are only a few small requirements: First, your question must be able to be asked of any of the candidates. Second, it must be submitted as a comment here publicly on or before Friday, November 3 – one week before the event.
If your question is used, it will be credited as from an IPR reader during the interview and article.
The email message below was sent Saturday afternoon to the candidates currently listed as planning to attend the November 11 South Carolina libertarian party state convention and debate. These are the campaigns of Chase Oliver, Joshua Smith, Mike ter Maat and Lars Mapstead.
Good afternoon,
I am sending this message to the contact email address found on your campaign website or FEC filings. I will be attending the SCLP convention and debate on Saturday, November 11, in North Charleston, to observe and report on the event for Independent Political Report.
I would appreciate the opportunity sometime that day for a few minutes of your candidate’s time to ask a few questions about the campaign as well as issues important to the voting public. I currently plan on being there from approximately an hour before the convention starts through the end of the debate that evening. I am not attending as a delegate.
In the interest of transparency, I am sending this message to all of the campaigns I have seen listed as planning to attend the debate as of today. If you receive this and are not attending, I apologize for the intrusion.
If you are attending, please reply directly to me regarding the availability of your candidate that day. I plan on voice recording interviews, and your campaign will receive a copy of the audio.
Stewart Flood
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And I have been contacted this evening by the sixth candidate. My phone and iPad are screaming at me to go to bed, since they tend to shut off about 9:45 eastern time. Time to limber up the fingers in the morning and get ready for a lot of writing in a short period of time.
There is no guarantee, but my hope is to complete all the interviews before 4 PM and have at least a first article ready to publish before the convention starts around seven.
I have finalized my list of 10 questions, several of which are in multiple parts. Five of them are questions submitted by IPR readers.
I have six candidates potentially to interview, so I need to be able to limit interviews to hopefully 10 minutes or less. Otherwise, I would probably ask almost every question submitted in addition to the ones I already had. I cut down my original list to be able to include what I considered the five most important from here.
I have successfully contacted and spoken with five of the six candidates attending the SCLP convention tomorrow. This should be a fun weekend!
Lots of good questions were submitted. I have some questions of my own, and there was some intersection between questions suggested here and ones I already had.
I will start sorting through everything and come up with my planned list of questions, which I am obviously not going to publish here.
Even though I will not be accepting any more questions at this point, I would ask the editor to leave comments open in case any updates need to be posted before the event takes place a week from today.
I have still not received a response to multiple inquiries of one of the campaigns for an interview.
How are you organizing your campaign apparatus? What are you doing for fundraising? Are you resorting to direct mail? What are you doing to gain delegates? What is your opinion of campaign literature in languages other than English? What advertising approaches will your campaign use? Have you recruited a Vice Presidential running mate? Do you have a web site yet? Are you distributing press releases yet? Do you have a campaign newsletter for (1) campaign team or (2) donors and potential supporters?
Do you believe systemic racism exists, why it why not?
Nolan: Bob Jr. as Libertarian ain’t happening. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2023/10/more-thoughts-on-rfk-jr-running-as.html
Come on Darryl…you should know that was the first question I put on my list. And if any if them don’t expect it then they aren’t really prepared to run. 🙂
Say something nice about one of your opponents
Who are your top two picks for filling any vacancies that may occur in the Supreme Court during your administration?
I’d like to amend my Ukraine question to: Do you believe that Russia has legitimate security interests in Ukraine?
Do you believe abortion ought to be prohibited and, if so, what should be the punishment for a woman who has one? (Potential follow-up for those who want to ban abortion, but claim that only doctors should be punished: would women be permitted to self-administer abortions?)
For what crimes, if any, should covid vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer be investigated?
Should the government prohibit ESG investing?
Do you believe that Ukraine is fighting a defensive war?
Should Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act be kept as is, repealed, or amended, and if amended, in what way?
Social Security is set to run deficits in the immediate future, which would require the federal government to settle its intragovernmental debt owed to the Social Security Administration. Right now, the primary way that would happen is through the individual income tax, the corporate income tax, and issuing debt. How should the government handle payments to current retirees in the absence of an income tax or debt issuance?
Would you seek to deport an illegal immigrant who walked across the southern border on a public road, got a job, and rented an apartment in the US? Would you seek to restrict that activity through border enforcement?
Do you believe the federal government has the authority to restrict the ability of the states to infringe upon the rights of individuals or do states have broad powers under the 10th amendment to craft their laws in accordance with the values of a majority of citizens
We are really starting to get some good questions, which added to the ones I have been planning should result in interesting interviews.
A week into this process I have directly communicated with three of the four candidates scheduled to attend. The fourth campaign has not yet responded to email sent to the candidate and to campaign staff.
In my “previous life” as a radio talkshow host, I did countless interviews. But they were usually rapidfire, with “dead air“ being the enemy and questions not usually prepared in advance. This is going to be interesting!
I also expect a few people to faint when they see me, either because the ghost has returned, or the fact that I weigh about about 80 pounds less than the last time I was physically at an LP event. I am no longer the fat *$#@ that one fellow LNC member called me during a disagreement years ago.
Keep thinking of questions!
I intend to limit my consideration to those candidates who — by the time of the convention — have either by their own personal effort or by the organized effort of their campaign staff recruited at least 1,000 new or renewal annual donors (aka dues-paid members) into the LP.
If you’re not serious about donor growth and don’t know how to accomplish it, then this is a vanity run and it will not leave the LP bigger or stronger for the next cycle.
That will not earn my vote.
Can you outline how you plan to recruit more annual donors? Can you prove your plan gets results? We are only a few months from the convention. By now, your plan should already be in place, and you should have a few dozen trackable converts.
So please explain what you’ve done and what you will do more of in the future to meet this goal.
Do you believe that the LP should consider the nomination of a well-established political figure for president such as RFK Jr or Jesse Ventura? Why?
Assuming that President Biden and former President Trump are nominated for President by their parties and you are the Libertarian Party’s nominee, what will be your top two main talking points against each of them in the campaign?
Which do you think makes for a better “Libertarian” POTUS Nominating convention: Delegates arriving already 100 percent committed to a given candidate; or Delegates arriving open-minded and waiting to see how you perform in the debates and other venues before deciding who to support?
Q1: At the 1974 National Convention, delegates approved the Statement of Principles as it currently exists. At the same convention, delegates approved language stating “we condemn bigotry as irrational and unjust.” A form of that language was in the Platform until it was stricken in 2022. What are your thoughts on bigotry as it relates to libertarian philosophy?
Q2: How would you describe libertarian philosophy?
Q3: What are your thoughts on whether or not the Libertarian Party should accept members from various voluntary economic schools of thought, as long as those members oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals?
Q4: Do you oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals?
Great question!
Past LP nomination races have of necessity been focused on rounding up delegates, ever more to the exclusion of efforts to appeal to the general public as the date of the national convention approaches. This has left nominees without either a campaign organization ready for the general election or significant name recognition with the public at large, and thus largely ineffective and irrelevant right from the start. It’s often suggested to nominate much earlier but that did not help when it was done in the past nor is it possible to change the calendar for this cycle. What is your strategy for creating name recognition and a general election campaign organization, prerequisites to November relevancy, on the way to achieving the nomination?
I think I need to clarify the intent of asking for reader input. The goal of these interviews is not to go in and simply start attacking or belittling any of candidates.
I am going to try to get an objective interview with each, hopefully giving them the opportunity to present more of themselves to IPR readers. There might be questions or issues not obvious to the reporter that readers can bring forward to ask.
Without leading off with it being impossible to win, I was already planning on asking each what their campaign goals are. Obviously, if a candidate just keeps blindly insisting that he will win, as some have in the past, I will ask for clarification of exactly how a victory would be achieved. But goals are important.
But I do not plan to ask just softball questions. What are the issues of concern to you that the candidates have either not explained on their websites or in interviews or presentations you have seen?
A day and a half after contacting the four campaigns, I have received a positive response from one, and a mass mailing from another. But it is still early. And if I don’t receive email responses, obviously, I will try calling.
I have found it challenging in at least one case to figure out how to contact the candidate. I had to look him up on the FEC site. Everyone else has published email or telephone numbers on their site.
Campaigns also appear to be forgetting that someone from the media may hear of them, visit their website, find no visible way for the media to contact them, and leave. If the only way on the website to contact a campaign is to sign up for a newsletter, the campaign has a big starting problem with the general public.
Hopefully these campaigns will evolve and realize that a menu selection called media should be providing information and ways for the media can contact them, and not simply put up brochures and logos that supporters can use. Having event calendars that do not even have any events on them – including this debate – is another serious issue. If you’re going to take the trouble to build a website, put someone in charge of keeping it current.
Hopefully by mid November, they will have the kinks ironed out and I won’t have any reason to even think about asking questions like this.
Q: Because you won’t be winning, what three specific goals do you think your campaign can realize for the LP?”