Mark Rutherford has resigned from his position as Vice Chair of the Libertarian National Committee, having served roughly half a year of his term. Rutherford, who previously held the position, was elected to a non-consecutive second term at the Libertarian National Convention earlier this year.
Rutherford’s resignation was first reported last week on by Third Party Watch, which directly confirmed the news with him. Rutherford has not provided a specific reason for his decision to step down, nor does the LNC’s public Business List mention his resignation. The national committee held a business meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, on Saturday, where Rutherford was notably absent.
As of Monday morning, the Libertarian Party’s official website still lists Rutherford as the current vice chair. According to party bylaws adopted at the most recent national convention, the LNC is responsible for filling the vacancy created by Rutherford’s resignation.
The individual ultimately selected by the national committee must be a sustaining member of the party and will complete the remainder of Rutherford’s term. Current bylaws do not specify whether the new vice chair requires more than a simple majority vote.
Rutherford was elected Vice Chair on the first ballot at this year’s Libertarian National Convention, defeating Hannah Goodman of Colorado and Joshua Hlavka of Florida. He initially sought the chair position but was defeated by Angela McArdle in the second round of voting. This marked Rutherford’s second term as vice chair, having first served after being elected on the first round of voting at the 2010 Libertarian National Convention.
First, 5Arete23, since RFG Jr. was NOT placed on the ballot, so there is nothing there.
Second, Seebeck, the minutes show that the resignation was accepted immediately after roll call.
Third, Ms. Evans, it would need a majority of the votes cast to fill the vacancy.
There are numerous examples of party officials and state parties endorsing someone other than a national convention’s choice. For example, see Southern Democrats circa 1948-68. Despite breaking with the yankee democrat party on presidential nominees, many of those same folks voted Democrat for President as recently as carter 1976 (but not 1980) and primarily / overwhelmingly for state, local and congressional democrats much more recently than that.
Following the party line in all circumstances regardless of personal views is the stuff of Marxist sects, and not coincidentally why there are so many of them.
@5Arete23
5Arete23> She therefore should have resigned her position with the LP-CO or been removed.
5Arete23> An officer of General Motors who publicly tells people to buy Ford vehicles should resign or be fired.
5Arete23> A related scandal is that the Libertarian National Committe has apparently done nothing about the LP-CO’s executive committee’s attempting to put RFKjr on the CO ballot as the LP’s candidate
5Arete23> The scandal became ludicrous when the LNC instead occupied itself in suspending the LNC secretary Harlos
5Arete23> LNC chair McArdle piled Pelion upon Ossa when she demanded that the CO state government remove the Oliver electors.
5Arete23> How dare you question my choice!
5Arete23> These comments are beside my point
5Arete23> you should resign or be removed
5Arete23> If @Nuña thinks otherwise, we have little to discuss
Ah yes, you have been so “conducive to reasoned, productive discussion” yourself… U+1F60F
Look, if you didn’t want to be enlightened – and bear with me here as I try to stoop to your level and put it in language that might get through that thick skull of yours, because nothing I’ve said so far seems to have – then you shouldn’t have:
1) been too lazy to do even the tiniest bit of reading before ignorantly shooting off your big mouth,
2) been so pretentious as to try and speak about something you clearly know jack shit and fuck all about in the first place, and
3) been so arrogant, narrow-minded and downright rude when your nonsense got debunked.
As it is, you just keep embarrassing yourself further and further with every word, as I tear your bullshit to shreds and you a new asshole along the way.
Now while it is indeed possible that you may benefit from spending a little less time online – and it would certainly be a blessing for everyone who doesn’t have to be around you in real life – I doubt your brain rot is so easily excised, which is the root of the problem here.
Indeed, your immediate attempt to blame the Mises Caucus for the humiliation your arrogance and ignorance, laziness and pretentiousness, bigotry and lack of civility inflicted upon yourself, indicates that your latest excuses are nothing more than a futile attempt to save face while you crawl off on your belly and with your tail tucked between your legs.
A wise move, since you are not open to the possibility of learning anything through reasoned and productive discussion, but one which you could have – and should have – made several comments ago. Before pretending Goodman should have resigned or been “removed”, in fact.
Thank God for the Mises Caucus! Because if not for them, the entire LP would consist of you (national) socialists masquerading as “Libertarians”. And it’s already bad enough as is.
@Nuña> we have little to discuss
Correct.
Nuña> What infantile bigotry!
Nuña> Why you are still yapping?
Here we see Mises-Caucus-style civility, so conducive to reasoned, productive discussion. Perhaps we would all be happier if I were to contribute no more to Nuña’s enlightenment than I have monetarily to the national LP since 2022 after decades of consistent contributions. And even as my state and local LPs (as yet unreset by Mises Caucus shenanigans) have benefitted from my extra, redirected cash, so too will the people around me benefit (I assume, based on their welcoming manner) from my spending a little less time online.
@5Arete23
“take up your complaints about Secretary Harlos with the Judicial Committee”
If you had paid attention, you would have know that this has already been discusses time and time again already.
“and, as I wrote, I am not familiar with the LP-CO’s bylaws.”
Exactly, you very clearly are not. Even people like Seebeck, who are supposed to be intimately familiar, get the bylaws and their interpretation wrong – though whether through ignorance or malice is another matter entirely – which makes it very amusing how pretentious you are being, given that you clearly know nothing about what you have so much to say about.
“If you are an officer in a political party and publicly support another party’s candidate over your own party’s candidate, you should resign or be removed.”
That’s not how that works outside of you bizarre little delusion though.
Being a party officer does not somehow take away your rights as an private person. You still get to vote for whoever you wish. You can still publicly announce whom you intend to vote for. You still can say whom you have voted for, if you so wish. Think of it as wearing hats: https://www.quotes.net/mquote/956608
Most government officials maintain separate social media accounts for their official function and for their personal life, exactly because they cannot be interpreted as saying certain things “ex cathedra”, e.g. https://x.com/senrandpaul https://x.com/randpaul and https://x.com/repthomasmassie https://twitter.com/thomas_massie
Not only did Goodman not break any bylaw, she breached no protocol, no etiquette, not even an expectation. So she is under no compunction to resign, i.e. her conscience is clear. Nor is the board of directors of the LPCO is under any compunction to remove her as chair, since there is no question of her actions having been ethically justified, whether you agree with them or not – I don’t.
“If @Nuña thinks otherwise, we have little to discuss”
If I won’t be brow-beat into agreeing with your errors, then we have little to discuss? What infantile bigotry! But such is your prerogative. The question then is, why you are still yapping?
“I invite the reader to contemplate what normally happens to an officer of a competitive organization who publicly supports a competing organization over his own.”
Exactly what happens here: people see that the organization is so FUBAR that even the officer wants nothing to do with their BS.
E.g. “Pappa” John Schnatter refusing to eat Papa John’s pizza because of their evil woke nonsense, Colonel Sanders refusing to eat KFC after they lowered his quality standards to cut costs, the Linux Foundation switching to Windows after they got rid of everyone who actually knew what they were doing, Intel CEO Bob Swan preferring AMD processors to Intel because they provide more consistent performance, Ford CEO Jim Farley driving a Xiaomi because they make better and cheaper electric cars, etc.
It’s not uncommon, and it usually says more about the organization than about the officer.
If YOU think otherwise, feel free to try and vote Goodman out at the next LPCO board election – assuming you are even a member of the LPCO – heck, try to have a vote of no confidence passed against her before then. But don’t pretend like she should resign of her own accord, or the board should remove her.
“The LP-CO’s attempting to put RFKjr on the Colorado presidential ballot instead of Chase Oliver, the candidate chosen at the LP national convention, is an endorsement of RFKjr.”
Kennedy is a member of the Libertarian Party. No bylaw violation there. As far as I am aware, state affiliates are under no actual obligation to nominate the candidate picked at the national convention. But even if they were, the large scale fraud at this year’s convention (ter Maat abusing a faux point of order to change the outcome, delegates being misinformed that NOTA would lead to many parties losing ballot access, non delegates voting, questionable delegates voting on whether or not they themselves were delegates, etc.) would certainly void any such obligation.
McArdle was not willing to pick a fight with the LPCO and told Harlos to stand down, Harlos did not and instead attacked both the LPCO and McArdle. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
“If two parties endorse different candidates in the same general election, they are not part of the same party.”
However much you would like to believe that, clearly that is not a universal truth. The default and the norm are that state parties retain the autonomy to nominate different candidates from one another. Anything more restrictive – and thus less libertarian – than that, is an added layer of regulation.
@Nuña, take up your complaints about Secretary Harlos with the Judicial Committee, who came to different conclusions: https://thirdpartywatch.com/2024/12/03/phillies-wins-judicial-committee-sustains-my-appeals/
Hannah Goodman should be free to vote for whoever she wants and take the consequences, and, as I wrote, I am not familiar with the LP-CO’s bylaws. These comments are beside my point: If you are an officer in a political party and publicly support another party’s candidate over your own party’s candidate, you should resign or be removed. If @Nuña thinks otherwise, we have little to discuss, and I invite the reader to contemplate what normally happens to an officer of a competitive organization who publicly supports a competing organization over his own.
The LP-CO’s attempting to put RFKjr on the Colorado presidential ballot instead of Chase Oliver, the candidate chosen at the LP national convention, is an endorsement of RFKjr.
If two parties endorse different candidates in the same general election, they are not part of the same party.
@5Arete23
A majority of the LPCO’s board of directors voted to nominate Kennedy as the LP’s presidential candidate in the state of Colorado. As those in charge of the Colorado state affiliate of the LP, I believe they are entitled to do so – as in the Constitution Party – and they certainly should be, to echo your appeal to common sense.
Harlos, which was not even a member of the LPCO’s board anymore, chose to go behind their backs and abuse its position as secretary of the national LP to conspire with Colorado’s notoriously corrupt secretary of state, repeat-election-fraud Jena Griswold, in order to put Oliver on the ballot instead of Kennedy. Harlos did this knowingly in contradiction to the LPCO’s wishes and against direct orders from national chair McArdle.
So there is nothing ludicrous about suspending Harlos from its function as national secretary, and frankly it should have been stripped of its party membership long since for its acts of insubordination and sedition against the LP.
What is ludicrous is pretending someone is not free to express that they plan to vote for someone outside of the LP, just because they also happen to be an LP official. That is what Goodman did: she said she was planning to vote for Trump. The LPNH, on the other hand, used their official social media to send out an endorsement of Trump. We can call them both idiots or LINOs for how they view Trump till the cows come home, but what we can’t do, is pretend like they acted in the same, or even in comparable ways. Goodman did not violate any bylaw in saying that she intended to vote for Trump, whereas the LPNH chose to disaffiliate from the national LP by endorsing Trump.
By all means, try to get Goodman voted out of the LPCO’s board if you like, or try to convince the LNC to not appoint her as Rutherford’s replacement. But let’s not pretend she violated any bylaw – like Harlos did – or that suspending her would be common sense rather than draconian insanity.
Do you really think it would be possible for me to be a football team quarterback, given that I always only ask questions?
Andrey,
I would call your picks, “the dream team.” Cheers!
So, would it be fair to say that Libertarians were far from being united in supporting the national convention’s controversial, divisive, subpar and confounding choice?
@Curious as football team quarterback:
“I plan to pass the ball to a player on the other team, and I expect to remain quarterback on this team. How dare you question my choice!”
In re LP-CO chair Hannah Goodman’s announcing that she would vote for the Republican Party’s candidate for President rather than the Libertarian Party’s candidate, I don’t know the specifics of the LP-CO’s bylaws, but it is common — and common sense — to forbid the officers of a party from supporting another party’s candidate in a race where one’s own party has a candidate. Her publicly supporting the Republican Party’s candidate does not make her evil but is inconsistent with her remaining an officer in the Libertarian Party when there was a Libertarian candidate in the same race. An officer of General Motors who publicly tells people to buy Ford vehicles should resign or be fired.
A related scandal is that the Libertarian National Committe has apparently done nothing about the LP-CO’s executive committee’s attempting to put RFKjr on the CO ballot as the LP’s candidate[1] and the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire’s endorsement of the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump for president[2], which contradicts LP-USA bylaw 5.4[3]:
“No affiliate party shall endorse any candidate who is a member of another party for public office in any partisan election.”
The scandal became ludicrous when the LNC instead occupied itself in suspending the LNC secretary Harlos for submitting the paperwork to put the LP candidate Oliver, elected at the national convention in which no CO delegate voted for RFKjr, on the CO ballot. It’s bizarre. LNC chair McArdle piled Pelion upon Ossa when she demanded that the CO state government remove the Oliver electors.
[1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/07/03/robert-f-kennedy-jr-on-colorado-ballot-libertarian-party/
[2] https://x.com/LPNH/status/1853616374267965550
[3] https://www.lp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-Indexed-LP-Bylaws-and-Convention-Rules-w-2022-JC-Rules-1.pdf
McArdle, Goodman and Malagon would be a great leadership team. Hopefully Redpath will be replaced soon as well, I would suggest Yeniscavich there.
@5Arete23
She did so as a private individual, not in her capacity as chair. If LPCO members take issue with that, they can vote her out at the next opportunity, or try to pass a motion of no confidence before then. She is under no compunction to resign, nor is the board is under any to remove her.
It’s not as if she went behind everyone’s backs and conspired with the secretary of state to illegally have Trump put on the Colorado ballot as LP candidate after they voted to nominate Kennedy, similar to some other creature I can think of…
I also think that Hannah Goodman is the excellent choice!
Why should she have lied or failed to disclose who she would vote for? Or resigned? Isn’t freedom of conscience and speech a good thing? What made her an automaton incapable of disagreeing with the national party’s ill advised choice of nominee, particularly when her state affiliate was among others which also didn’t support him?
While chair of the Colorado Libertarian Party, Hannah Goodman publicly said that she would vote for the Republican Party’s presidential candidate Donald Trump[1]. She therefore should have resigned her position with the LP-CO or been removed.
[1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/06/03/4th-congressional-district-third-party-candidates/
Hannah Goodman will be a good vice chair with Malagon as Secretary.
Good. He was a terrible vice chair.
Rutherford’s second term has proven pretty abominable. Sure, he could have been worse, like Harlos, Redpath, Nekhaila, Nanna and Darr were – at least Rutherford abstained once or twice when he could have joined them in voting against liberty, but he could also have done the right thing and voted the opposite way. So his resignation is on balance a welcome thing.
It also suggests that the standoff Seebeck initiated, is indeed leading to unsustainable strain and rifts in the LNC, which will be echoed throughout the party. A prelude to the LP’s requiem. Good!
Hopefully the LNC appoints Goodman to replace him. She gave a very poor showing at the national convention – loud, unrefined, no charisma – and got whooped for it. But her subsequent actions as chair of the LPCO and her harassment by Harlos should have redeemed her and then some.
Besides, such a pick would also add further strain on the committee and consequently the party, hopefully accelerating its disaffiliations and disintegration.
Well shucks! The Mises folks win again.
He’s still listed as VC because the LNC has not yet accepted his resignation. That has to happen by motion per RONR 32:5 – 32:6.