The Liberal Party USA presidential ticket of Dr. Laura Ebke and Trisha Butler will appear on the New Mexico ballot later this year, with the Libertarian Party of New Mexico placing the ticket on its ballot line.
Butler told Independent Political Report on Friday that the campaign received official confirmation from the New Mexico Secretary of State’s office that afternoon. As of Monday, both candidates now appear on a public list maintained by the state, which associates them with the Liberal Party USA.
Butler previously said the Libertarian Party of New Mexico had submitted paperwork earlier in the week and was awaiting confirmation. She added that the Liberal Party USA nominated the ticket to give its members and voters a liberal option on the ballot, with the state affiliate later agreeing to place the ticket on its line.
The listing has created some terminology confusion. The Secretary of State’s office identifies the ticket under “Liberal Party USA,” even though the Libertarian Party of New Mexico is the ballot-qualified entity that placed it on the ballot. By contrast, the Libertarian presidential ticket of Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat, which was nominated in New Mexico by the Free New Mexico Party, appears under the “Libertarian” label.
The Libertarian Party of New Mexico is one of three founding members of the Liberal Party USA, which was initially organized as the Association of Liberty State Parties. New Mexico is currently the only state where the Ebke-Butler ticket is expected to appear on the ballot.
Do you actually have candidates for county and state legislature on the ballot? How many? In what ways would not having an inactive one state presidential ticket of two names recognized by hardly anyone hurt those down ballot campaigns, if they exist?
The answers to these questions aren’t important to me and they are not accusations or recriminations framed as questions. I’m just wondering why every party not even remotely equipped to compete for POTUS has to have a POTUS candidate on its ticket.
I suppose if I was running for county or state office I might hear the question, probably frequently, of who my upstart long shot party supports for president from voters and media. I would probably give some version of we’ll think about tackling federal issues once we have made some progress at the county and state levels. I might or might not share my personal preference or lack thereof and make it clear the party is not unified or taking an official group stand on that depending on how much time opportunity cost that part might have in a given interaction.
If I was a voter or journalist who posed such a question to an aspiring long shot politician and got that answer I’d actually appreciate it as unusually level headed for a fringe political campaign or party.
Maybe I’m atypical in this regard But it just seems like a totally logical position that seems like it would make sense to folks.
In certain settings I might add a half serious quip about building a wall around DC or something like that. Or maybe my actual plan to literally, physically undrain the DC swamp, reverting it back to natural habitat before humans turned it into an unnatural habitat for political ghouls and goblins of various sorts.
We’ve got as much influence on the outcome of the presidential race as we do on a race between Mars and a comet, and as much impact on it as throwing a rock by hand in its general direction from Earth. All politics isn’t local anymore, but what’s wrong with at least some of it not being nationalized every here and now?
Just to set the record straight… I was a delegate to the special convention (held online) which nominated the ticket with which so many people seem to take issue. If the Free New Mexico Party’s ballot access drive had failed, I believe the LPNM would have nominated the Oliver-ter Maat ticket despite no longer being affiliated with the LNC nor bound in any way by the conventions’ choice of nominees. When Gary Johnson declined to accept the nomination we were quite aware that the chances of gaining a 5% vote share in a statewide race were quite unlikely. Kennedy had not yet dropped out at that time but his ballot effort was also successful so the “opportunity” to nominate a candidate with at least a remote possibility of maintaining ballot status was not open to us. Again, New Mexico does not allow fusion nor allowing two parties to nominate the same candidate even if their vote totals are not aggregated. The possibility of nominating no one at the top of the ticket was deemed as potentially detrimental to candidates down ballot who are running for state legislature or county offices. And as Paul Harvey might have said… “and that’s the rest of the story”.
They can’t fuse, but running no ticket would have been logical. Running Johnson might have made some sense since he at least had a shot at 5% and preserving ballot access. As it stands, they’re completely delusional. 5% doesn’t fall out of the sky. Oliver might get a tenth of that if he’s lucky. This fly by night thing with a misleading name and unknown candidates who aren’t actually campaigning, forget about it.
It is interesting that the ballot label is not tied to the body that nominated. It is odd that the New Mexico Libertarian Party did not adopt Oliver as he won the nomination over the paleo-conservative faction that LPNM disaffiliated from. This seems a classic conflict of inside and outside strategies.
It is further confusing as to why Ebke is running when there is no mention of her running on the LPNM website, nor on the Liberal Party USA website, and her personal website is down.
The Liberal Party is not a recognized party in New Mexico New Mexico is one of the few states which allows a recognized party to change its name, so the only way she could be on the ballot under the Liberal Party name is if the Libertarian Party of New Mexico officially changed its name to the Liberal Party of New Mexico.
* may know more
“understanding is Ebke will appear with the ballot label Liberal, Oliver will be with the ballot label Free New Mexico Party, and nobody will be on the ballot as Libertarian.”
You may know about this, but I thought the ballot qualified Libertarian Party of NM is the Liberal Party affiliate in that state, so the ballot label would be Libertarian. Regardless, the rest of what I said still holds true.
There was no such need. The ticket won’t get 5%. It won’t get 0.5%, either. Not running one would have been totally fine.
Liberals needed a ticket to put on the ballot in New Mexico, and have also filed it for write-in status in some states. Ebke and Butler (who’s also the Liberal national chair) agreed to be the kind of token ticket for that purpose this year, while they’re just getting started and haven’t fully organized yet. But they aren’t actively campaigning; there is no Ebke campaign filed because they’re not spending anything on it.
No particular animus for Oliver about it. He’s just another party’s candidate.
There’s no danger of either the Free NM or NM Liberal parties retaining ballot access, and would have been none had one not run. It’s conceivable, but far from assured, that Johnson could have had 5% had he agreed to run. Ebke and or Oliver and or anyone else who ran for the LP nomination this year, not so much.
This seems strange.
My understanding is Ebke will appear with the ballot label Liberal, Oliver will be with the ballot label Free New Mexico Party, and nobody will be on the ballot as Libertarian.
Not true.
My guess is that they are doing this with the hope they can siphon votes away from Chase Oliver so the Free New Mexico Party does not retain recognized party status.