The Libertarian Party predicts their 2026 National Convention to be a healing moment, but that requires accountability for why it collapsed.
Editorial note: This commissioned guest essay by Kimber Fountain is published as commentary. To learn more about her work, visit her Linktree. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Political Report or the Outsider Media Foundation. Readers may share submissions, responses, or contributions with the editorial team.
When something is broken intentionally, the healing process becomes more complicated. The salve of blaming fate, circumstance, timing, coincidence, or luck is unavailable, and relief can be found only in the arena of accountability. If the offending party refuses to acknowledge wrongdoing and exhibit remorse, any repair will be superficial. If the truth remains secreted, the same mistakes are likely to be made again. The ones who tore it down, the ones who were complicit in its demise, do not get to rebuild it.
In 2015, the late David Boaz wrote an article for TIME magazine, “Libertarianism is on the verge of a political breakout.” With unbridled optimism he outlined how doors were rapidly opening for the spread of libertarian ideas across the nation because of “the expansion of government during the Bush and Obama administrations, particularly the civil liberties abuses after 9/11 and the bailouts and out-of-control spending after the financial crisis.”
In 2016, Libertarian Candidate for President Gary Johnson received a stunning 3.3 percent of the popular vote.
In summer of 2020, libertarians were riding a social media high of Hawaiian prints, hibiscus, and viral Jorgensen/Cohen memes when suddenly, they emerged as such a dynamic force in the presidential election algorithm that their accounts were targeted and locked from engagement for months, often merely for expressing nonviolent, nonaggressive libertarian viewpoints (i.e. for being the best meme-makers on the internet).
Five years later, in November 2025, Steven Nekhaila, current Chair of the Libertarian Party, admits in a mass email that “membership and fundraising [has] collapsed.”
One of these things is not like the others.
“I think the 2026 convention is going to be sort of hopefully a healing moment for the party,” Nekhaila says. “I think the people [who] have lasted that came in a few years ago have stuck around and a lot of the old heads are starting to come back in and take back some of their ownership in the party and re-engage.”
He continues, “But, you know, I have to hand it to the Mises Caucus. One thing they did do right is they brought in a lot of young people… Now there’s more of a diverse nexus of libertarians in the party.”
Moments earlier, when asked for the second time to offer his version of events regarding the trajectory and eventual decline of the Libertarian Party since Gary Johnson’s campaign, a ten-year time frame that correlates to his time in state and national LPs, Nekhaila admitted about the Mises recruits, “After a few years, those new people got burnt out and they left.”
It would be unfair to interpret Nekhaila’s political persona as a personal failing, especially since what has happened within the Libertarian Party directly mirrors what is happening in the White House, and even across the globe—the circumstances are a symptom of the respective collective psyches they represent, not the disease itself. This political double-speak is not only the antithesis of libertarianism but also a diagnosis of the infection that has taken hold of the LP.
Nekhaila writes about how infighting within the party must desist. A worthy goal, except that standing up for the whole of the LP platform as it was butchered was not infighting, neither was the way dissenting voices against Mises were allegedly threatened and harassed into silence. That was manufactured chaos to which he had a front-row seat and hats to throw into the ring.
In another instance, Nekhaila writes with the tone of a eulogy for a toxic parent, mourning the fact that the President has not done what he promised to do, as if half the country has not seen this coming for a decade while somehow the party of critical thinking missed it. He mentions warmongering and then itemizes grievances such as insurance premiums, national and household debt, and housing, oozing with the deliciously rich irony of a libertarian astonished that a politician lied to them.
Editorial note: J. Mark Barfield is vice chair of the Outsider Media Foundation, which publishes Independent Political Report. He is quoted here in his individual capacity, not on behalf of the Foundation or IPR.
This is made even more patently absurd by the embedded expectation to disregard his own role in the demise of the LP and possibly even the election of Trump. J Mark Barfield, former investigative journalist and Vice Chair of Outsider Media who served with Nekhaila in the Libertarian Party of Florida, witnessed the germination of the Mises Caucus from the beginning. “Steven was instrumental in the advent of the Mises Caucus in Florida, and eventually their takeover of the state party,” says Barfield. “Ultimately that led to a downfall of membership participation and donations in the LPF.”
But by then, Nekhaila and the Mises Caucus had moved on to the national party, where the final results were unsurprisingly identical. “He was a regional representative and ultimately chairman, and the results in the LP speak for themselves,” Barfield continues. “With a little bit of research, you’ll find out what the impact on membership has been since then.”
More than tanking membership rolls and donation rosters, the Mises Caucus singlehandedly and inarguably weakened the Libertarian Party, the libertarian message, and the LP candidate’s reputation and visibility, all of which could easily be interpreted as facilitating Trump’s victory in the 2024 election.
Now, activists are being shot in the street by masked federal agents. Democracy is on the verge of collapse. Congress has checked out. Executive power is unfettered and completely lawless. The Supreme Court is a partisan joke. Yet the Libertarian Party bears no remorse, responsibility, or even recognition for its role in endangering the nation, and the Chairman writes emails about credit card debt.
Fortunately, full resolution of the logistical and leadership failings that deflated the Libertarian Party is not necessary for the party to continue. Hopefully, future and further investigations will elicit justice, but until then, the next step forward must be an immediate and unwavering realignment with libertarian values, reflected in the leaders and board members chosen during the upcoming 2026 Libertarian National Convention later this month to carry the party forward from here.
The stark divide between the movement and its political representation, between libertarians and the Libertarian Party, has decimated the reputation of the one sociopolitical philosophy that has the ability to rouse this nation from the slumber of cognitive dissonance. Thus, until investigations bear viable fruit, the LP must recalibrate or else be abandoned by the libertarian movement, because the movement is unstoppable. Libertarianism is baked into the very DNA of the nation, and the current, quiet incarnation emerging in the form of independent voters aligns with a prosperous culmination of the Great Experiment, but not with the present version of the Libertarian Party.
In a separate email in November 2025, Nekhaila includes a list of various surveys and polls that place the percentage of libertarian-minded Americans anywhere between 11% and 22%, optimistically citing these statistics as fodder for the LP’s potential growth. Another study from the Cato Institute in 2006 reveals that the numbers are even higher when the word “libertarian” is removed from the survey question, and more importantly, it points to a glaring oversight by current party leadership in regards to the pool of potential supporters.
That study, overseen by Boaz, parceled out two separate survey questions—one that defined libertarianism succinctly, and the other that identified that definition as libertarian. Fifty-nine percent of respondents fell in line with the succinct definition, and surprising even the surveyors, there was a mere 15 percent drop-off when the word “libertarian” was added to the question.
The discrepancy in numbers, however, is not the pertinent takeaway from this study, rather the question that was posed: “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal?” The other half of respondents were asked the same question with added clarification at the end, “also known as libertarian.” Fiscally conservative and socially liberal, emphasis on the “and.” Nekhaila writes that his strategy to increase membership is “finding and activating dormant libertarians” while LP leadership blatantly alienates them by batting around a hollowed-out carcass of good intentions in an exhausting game of “keep-away from actual libertarianism.”
The LP claims in its communications to desire a return to being a big-tent party, but that is a circus-themed pipe dream unless the massive blind spot that has morphed into the current chasm between the libertarian movement and the Libertarian Party is addressed—commonality with the left, both the social justice principles they share as well as the left’s emerging awareness of the perils of government overreach. For nearly the entirety of its modern existence, libertarianism and the LP have been largely defined by their disdain of the left because of its fondness of big government, but libertarians who have maintained their critical thinking skills despite the breakdown of the LP currently find themselves having more in common with the leftist populace (not necessarily politicians) now that the right is the unequivocal embodiment of authoritarianism.
The left is now talking about the fundamental pillars of our founding. Pete Buttigieg is on The Late Show asking, “Where are the libertarians?” in regards to the despotic nightmare culminating inside the White House. Liberals are astonishing everyone by using the word “bootlickers” and are for once worried about their tax dollars while finally waking up to the perils of unchecked power.
Simultaneously, libertarians must also be acutely aware of the caveat that the leftists’ worldview is utterly reliant on who is in power, and so is their politicians’. Quite likely the reason Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have flitted about making political origami with their strongly worded letters, is because they are arrogantly willing to exploit the present for the increase in executive and congressional power they know will soon be theirs. And most likely, the democrat populace will love it. They will salivate just as the right has done at their opportunity for revenge, their tribalism conveniently erasing any notion of authoritarianism, unless the libertarian movement takes a monumental and decisive step forward before the next Presidential election to win over independents and educate voters on the real problem—the entire system, not the party in power.
Also consider that the Republican Party is currently barreling down a theocratic highway to extinction. The entire basis of their core belief, that the United States is a Christian nation, is a whitewashed version of USAmerican History pedaled by 1950s propagandists in an overly zealous response to communism which created the foundation for generational societal conditioning. Their unquestioning acceptance of this historical rewrite does not make it true; it makes those in power who believe it highly vulnerable. The very foundation of the party and their so-called “project” is fundamentally, historically, and factually flawed, their vision decries nearly a century of societal evolution, it is oblivious to the fundamental reality of progress, and this willful ignorance will cause their self-destruction with no need for outside interference.
That leaves libertarians and the left, who are at present the two largest parties whose ultimate aim is a prosperous, peaceful, and free United States constituency, although a rather cumbersome disconnect admittedly exists between the two regarding exactly how this prosperity should be achieved. However, debating the particulars of how to achieve a common goal is much more fruitful than spending more time trying to convince Republicans that non-white, non-cis people are humans and that their Donna Reed future is a delusion.
Thus, while current leadership of the LP has set the bar at competing with both Republicans and Democrats, a rebuild of this magnitude requires a vision beyond maintaining status as the third-largest political party or even equalizing with the Democrats and Republicans, stated as the goal of the LP’s Parity Project. The Libertarian Party should cease complacency, harness the power of the independent voting populace that is desperate for leadership, and work to overtake Republicans as the second-largest political party in the United States.
The historic and generational reluctancy of the voting population to accept third-party candidates quite possibly means that the only way in, is through. Dismantling the two-party system could first require rearranging its roster, but regardless of how the duopoly is eventually and inevitably dismantled, the country at least deserves in the meantime two parties who have the same intrinsic goal: making life easier and freer for the people. Libertarians must accept that the right is no longer their ally. They have abandoned all sense of fiscal responsibility and small government, and the window to align with the sudden anti-authoritarian wave of the left is incredibly small.
However, if the LP continues to abandon the social justice arm of libertarianism, the “progressive” principles such as women’s rights and LGBTQ rights as happened during the Mises takeover, then their quest to represent actual libertarianism, reach independent voters, and become a vital, viable party again is dubious at best. Marginalized persons across the United States—women, the LGBTQ community, minorities, immigrants—are all seeing their bodily autonomy practically erased as settled law. Certain groups are demanding that women be stripped of their voting rights. Immigrants are experiencing some of the worst human rights violations ever seen in this country. Yet the LP has either backpedaled or been silent on all these issues and continues to ignore them completely, hiding behind a misinterpretation of the platform’s directive to “reject the notion that groups have inherent rights.”
Groups may not, but groups are comprised of individuals, and furthermore, every group-rights issue is nothing more than a specific branch of the overall tree of human rights. No well-adjusted American could ever say that the Civil Rights Movement was not necessary. Feminists are now on their Third Wave Movement, the first two resulting in the right to vote and economic and financial freedom, the third still fighting for bodily autonomy, hardly stances that are objectionable to libertarianism.
LP leadership has forgotten that the definitive purpose of Individualism is not to elevate or enshrine the individual itself, but to fortify the collective. The point of personal autonomy is to strengthen self-reliance, because when a group of self-reliant individuals come together, the result is a rapid, beneficial evolution of community in principle, efficiency, prosperity, and enlightenment. Community evolution then coalesces in the same way to propel the advancement of the nation.
The founders were well apprised of this nuanced paradox, and it is why they chose to create a Republic, because the smaller the demographic group gets—country down to state, county, then city—the more impactful the individual’s voice. Just like an individual is not banned from expressing his singular viewpoint to a city council, a municipality is not barred from expressing its needs to the state government simply because it represents a smaller, more specific group in comparison to the entire state.
Recognizing that women, the queer community, and immigrants are having their basic human rights challenged still, after 250 years of innovation and development in this country is not a threat to individualism, it is an opportunity to reclaim the purest part of libertarianism, its humanitarian compassion, as well as its place on the correct side of history.
The way to successfully grow membership is organically, by returning to the values that broke election records, not by regurgitating tired marketing schemes and arbitrary recruitment efforts that focus on quantity not quality. LP membership has taken a nosedive while independent voter rolls are skyrocketing, because independents became independent through keen observational skills that allowed them to see beyond the established system. They are intelligent, they are aware, and thus unsurprisingly, they have not been buying what the LP has been selling the last five years.
Critics can blame caucuses and opportunistic former chairpersons eternally, but that will not change the fact that the underlying reason the Libertarian Party cratered is because when it mattered, when the country needed it most, the party was recklessly usurped by people who abandoned an entire half of core libertarian values and chose instead the last thing independent voters desire: a small-minded, watered-down version of bigoted Republican tribalism with directions on the package that read, “just add weed.”
In the truth-bound, honest world where most libertarians and independents reside, integrity is what sells. Conviction is what drives the masses. Contrary to common protestations, the party was not destroyed by infighting; that is a convenient detraction from the fact that the breakdown was entirely due to the ease with which external forces infiltrated. An unwavering message that is impervious to outside noise and influence, is what will once again make the Libertarian Party, libertarian. If the LP truly wishes to heal the divide it created, then it must prove that it is trustworthy enough to self-correct and cease the cherry-picking of libertarian ideals to suit personal ideologies.
Restore the abortion plank, and make it stronger. As high as 64% of the voting population approves of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. Among independent voters, it is as high as 67%. Libertarians should be at the forefront of this discussion, not withdrawing out of abject cowardice and veiled misogyny. Bodily autonomy is the cornerstone of individual liberty, far more important than property rights; no other liberties exist without self-ownership. Even if abortion was a moral issue (it is not), that argument still carries zero weight within a political philosophy that is expressly against legislating morality and insists prohibition is never effective.
Return to an unapologetic representation of all human rights. The founders were wise enough to create a document that would evolve to correct the blind spots of the very men who wrote it. Taking it backwards in any way is the opposite of its purpose. This is fundamental libertarianism.
Support an outright rejection of the Being Libertarian page, even if it is temporarily symbolic, while forming an active plan to discredit, dismantle, or take control of it. Nearly one million followers on Facebook alone, by far the largest reach of any libertarian page, and it is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the current administration with exactly one thing that separates it from the dregs of the right-wing manosphere—the actual libertarians in the comments (carry on, soldiers).
Delegates, return human rights advocates and social justice warriors to the board overwhelmingly. Vote out any disrupters, anyone who participated or sat idly by while the only political party to fully represent both the origin and the future of the United States was exploited, undermined, and hollowed out.
Boys as young as fourteen froze to death in Morristown in 1779. Homes, fortunes, families, lost. For freedom. By the end of the Revolutionary War, as many as 25,000 soldiers perished from combat, disease, or the elements, for the very principles upon which libertarianism was founded. They died for liberty. The least the Libertarian Party can do is live for it.
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