The Libertarian Party of New Mexico recently adopted the Liberal Party USA presidential ticket of former Nebraska legislator Dr. Laura Ebke and former Clarksville, Tennessee, City Councilmember Trisha Butler. The party has submitted paperwork to the New Mexico Secretary of State’s office to place the ticket on its state ballot line.
Butler, who is also the Liberal Party USA’s interim chair, confirmed to Independent Political Report on Tuesday that the Libertarian Party of New Mexico filed the necessary paperwork to place the duo on its state ballot line. However, as of this article, the paperwork has not yet been confirmed by the Secretary of State’s office.
According to Butler, the Liberal Party USA nominated the two because of their leadership within the party and their previous experience as elected officials. The ticket was then adopted by the Libertarian Party of New Mexico at a later nominating convention. “Dr. Ebke and I accepted the [Liberal Party USA] nomination to be of service to our burgeoning party as well as offer a liberal option to our members and affiliates. The Libertarian Party of New Mexico is a founding affiliate of the Liberal Party, they also held a nominating convention to adopt the LPUSA ticket,” she explained.
Butler said the party anticipates official confirmation from the New Mexico Secretary of State’s office sometime this week or next.
The Libertarian Party of New Mexico is the official state affiliate of the Liberal Party USA and one of its three initial founding state affiliates. Meanwhile, the Free New Mexico Party, now the recognized affiliate of the Libertarian National Committee, has submitted paperwork to place the Libertarian Party ticket of Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat on the ballot.
They didn’t nominate Oliver for the same reason you don’t see state affiliates of the Green Party or the Constitution Party nominating him. LPNM had already disaffiliated from the LNC long before the convention. He’s the candidate of a different party they aren’t part of, even aside from how fusion isn’t allowed in NM.
George Whitfield: because they already qualified separately and fusion is not allowed.
New Federalist: there’s no nontrivial chance that anyone you considered will get 5% except maybe Gary Johnson. You should have gone with no ticket instead of embarrassing yourselves.
Will Ebke rage-quit again if someone starts counting ballots behind a speaker?
I don’t understand why they didn’t nominate Chase Oliver and Michael ter Maat. This situation is getting more complicated and confusing.
“Wouldn’t nominating no ticket also have been an option?” – Curious
Yes it was also considered. Since the only way for the LPNM to remain ballot qualified is to poll 5% of the vote in a statewide race and the only statewide races this year were US Senate and the President/Vice President ticket. No one stepped forward to run for senator. The presidential ticket was the only option remaining.
Wouldn’t nominating no ticket also have been an option?
@Jim Robinson
While I agree that there is a strong case to be made that libertarians should defend to the death the freedom of speech of those with whom we disagree, I’m not sure that the right to free speech can be stretched to include a “right” to ballot access. In fact, it is a duty of libertarians to keep anti-libertarians off of the ballot.
Regardless of whether or not they should, however, the “Libertarian” Party does not have a particularly strong history of fighting for other third party’s ballot access, nor that of independent candidates. They very much play the same games as the Democrats and Republicans, but on the same little league scale as the “Greens”.
@NewFederalist
As mentioned on BAN, I am somewhat surprised that LPNM didn’t nominate Lars Mapstead, who had won New Mexico’s Libertarian Party primary. It seemed like such an obvious choice. Not that I’m complaining – from Ebke’s outdated and dubiously accurate wikipedia article, she at least sounds more libertarian than Mapstead.
Over at Ballot Access News there was lively and in many cases nonsensical discussion about why the LPNM nominated this particular ticket. Since New Mexico does not permit fusion the options open to the LPNM were 1) nominate the Oliver-ter Maat ticket or 2) nominate JFK jr or 3) nominate some other ticket. Since the Free New Mexico Party had finished its ballot drive successfully option number one was out. The Kennedy ballot drive was also successful so option number two was out. Attempts were made to persuade former NM governor Gary Johnson to accept the nomination but he declined. Other previous statewide LP nominees were also contacted but nobody accepted the challenge. Therefore the decision was made to go with the above mentioned ticket.
This is not unusual for the LP. They fight for ballot access for all third parties whether or not they agree with them. They don’t play games like the D & R parties trying to keep other parties off ballots.