The Libertarian Party announced the newest members of its Candidate Support Committee this week. The group has been assigned the task of identifying, recruiting, and supporting candidates for the party’s “Run Locally” initiative during the 2025 and 2026 election cycles.
“We’re proud to introduce the Libertarian Party’s Candidate Support Committee, a team of champion Libertarians ready to help execute our Run Locally strategy,” the party said in an email on Wednesday. The committee includes nine members, most of whom are either state party officers or elected local officials.
Among the members are Libertarian National Committee At-Large Rep. Andrew Watkins, Libertarian Party of Oregon Vice Chair Will Hobson, Libertarian Party of Colorado Campaigns Director Jacob Luria, Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania Election Committee Chair BJ Hebenthal, and Libertarian Party of Utah Executive Committee member Jeremy Baker. The elected local Libertarians are Aron Lam, Bill Schult, Drew Werley, and James Cook.
According to the Libertarian Party, the Candidate Support Committee will concentrate on four main objectives. These tasks include recruiting new Libertarian candidates while encouraging former candidates to run again, creating a formal communication network for elected Libertarians to share resources, identifying “high-impact candidates” in competitive and winnable races, and developing content to strengthen and amplify candidate messaging.
All of these efforts are part of the party’s Run Locally initiative, which looks to recruit and run candidates for city councils, mayoral positions, and school boards across the country.
“Local government makes decisions that directly affect your daily life: from spending and taxes to regulation, policing, school curriculums, and zoning. By running for local office, you have the power to protect and expand liberty in your own community,” the party has said on its website.
The party stated that it aim to elect at least 100 Libertarian candidates to local offices by the end of 2026.
Just some historical background. Big Springs, Utah is a small town, with, at the time, a significant number of Mormon polygamists.
Like most Mormons, the leaders of Big Springs were Republicans. Then the Republican Attorney-General of Utah decided to crack down on
polygamists. It was this crackdown that lead the entire town council to switch to The Libertarian Party.
I don’t know how long it lasted, as libertarian news coverage did not last past the initial party switch of the town council.
“I think they got rid of the local property tax, for example. […] They got rid of some useless regulations and matched taxes to spending. Paid cash for a building instead of going into debt. Pissed off a lot Democrats.”
All good stuff! Very nice.
I don’t suppose it would be possible to levy negative local tax to balance out any non-local tax, and just have the local government pay it directly to the state or federal – or better yet, refuse to do so.
The trans satanist in NH was opposed by the state and local GOP, however she was the only Republican to file during the filing period. The county GOP tried (unsuccesfully) to organize a write-in campaign against her in the primary.
Leadville City, Colorado – One Libertarian elected in 2000, 2 more in 2001, another person switched registration to Libertarian in 2001, giving the Libertarians a majority. In 2002 one Libertarian resigned and another changed registration. The Libertarians had a majority for about 9 months.
Leadville was a mining town and the town’s mine shut down, leaving the town in extreme financial distress. I doubt anything was, or could have been done for the town.
Big Water, Utah – the Mayor and all 4 town councilmen were elected initially as Republicans and changed to Libertarians. They were re-elected as Libertarians at least once. I saw a reference that they were still in office in February, 1994. And a different libertarian was elected mayor in 2001. Yes, they did do some things. I think they got rid of the local property tax, for example.
Crystal Springs, Minnesota in the 2010s has also been included in that list, but I think those were non-partisan elections and some of them might have been libertarian allied Republicans. They got rid of some useless regulations and matched taxes to spending. Paid cash for a building instead of going into debt. Pissed off a lot Democrats.
“These tasks include […] encouraging former candidates to run again”
I’m sure there are exceptions, but by-and-large that does not bode well for either the libertarian quality of the candidates or for their ability to win races.
“All of these efforts are part of the party’s Run Locally initiative, which looks to recruit and run candidates for city councils, mayoral positions, and school boards across the country. […] The party stated that it aim to elect at least 100 Libertarian candidates to local offices by the end of 2026.”
If they are anything like the majority of LINO statists I’ve seen run for local offices as LP candidates in recent years, please don’t bother, at best they are as bad as what the GOP runs or endorses, at worst they are worse than what the Democrats run or endorse.
—
@Andy @Seebeck
Was anything notable actually achieved in Big Water and Leadville? And if so, how quickly was it undone after they lost the majority?
—
@Stewart Flood
That reminds me that four years ago, New Hampshire saw a transsexual satanist run as the Republican candidate for county sheriff on an anti-law enforcement platform… It’s been hard to take any NH GOP seriously after that.
As you say, let the national party worry about the candidates for federal offices, let the state parties worry about candidates for offices as the state level, and let county parties worry about candidates for local offices. Though that is certainly not to imply that state parties cannot nominate different candidates for federal offices from the national party, as the LPCO did this year.
The only time that Libertarians ever took over a local government was in Big Water, Utah, which is a very small town, where in the 1980’s for a two year period Libertarians has a majority of the city council seats and the office of Mayor. This was a long time ago and most people, even most LP members, do not know that it happened.
Leadville, CO, 2000 also.
I think that the biggest problem with this top down approach is that they don’t always know enough about who it is they’re talking with and recruiting. I remember years ago, when someone from the national party contacted me to tell me about this great candidate they had who they had talked into run for Congress.
Had they simply contacted ANYONE in our our state party first they would have learned that this person was bat shit crazy and not wasted anyone’s time.
If the focus of the committee is to help state parties learn how to recruit candidates then it could be effective in getting more people to run for office. If they are simply taking over the job that is the responsibility of the state and local party, then all they are going to do is get the same result: a lot more bat shit crazy candidates. They will also get the resentment of the local parties that have to clean up the mess.
The national party should never be recruiting local candidates, other than possibly having a website to collect information, which they then send to the state party.
I am not opposed to Libertarians running for local offices, but keep in mind that Libertarians have been running for local offices for decades and it has never given us much progess. Most people do not pay attention to local government offices, and what happens with Libertarians is that they get into some low level office where they can’t accomplish much if anything, typically a board or comission or council, where they are the only Libertarian on it and they get outvoted on everything.
The only time that Libertarians ever took over a local government was in Big Water, Utah, which is a very small town, where in the 1980’s for a two year period Libertarians has a majority of the city council seats and the office of Mayor. This was a long time ago and most people, even most LP members, do not know that it happened.
It would be great if Libertarians could take over a local government today, but I see no effort to make this happen anywhere