By George Phillies
Our Party faces great opportunities, and even greater challenges.
Opportunities? The American people are exhausted by bailouts, crushing Federal deficits, pointless foreign wars, the absurd war on marijuana, Uncle Sam poking through your bedroom, and every other Republican and Democratic idiocy. Republicans moved to the authoritarian quadrant of the Nolan Chart, and Democrats are hot on their heels. The American people want a better choice, the choice we offer them.
Democrats and Republicans? They’re the dead past. We’re the Party of the Future.
Challenges? Our National Party is lies on its death bed. Since 2000, we’ve lost 60% of our membership. Since 2000, we’ve lost three-quarters of our real-dollar income. Many state parties are shells of their former selves.
We must heal our party, or it will surely perish.
I’m George Phillies, candidate for National Chair. I and my friends of the New Path LNC slate are here to offer you the cure our party desperately needs.
The slate? George Phillies, candidate for Chair.
Carolyn Marbry, former corporate CEO, for Vice Chair.
Rob Power, MBA and Outright Libertarians Chair, for Secretary.
James Oaksun, MBA, for Treasurer.
Regional candidates Rachel Hawkridge, Jim Remmert, Jake Porter, Scott Williamson, and Charles Wilhoit, among others.
Who am I? I’m a long time activist. I’m a former Massachusetts State Chair, Massachusetts Party Treasurer, Editor of Liberty for America magazine, author of eight books (two on our party), and former Libertarian Congressional candidate. Many of you already know me from past National Conventions.
I’m running to do the job of the National Chair. That job is being the Party CEO and leading our National Committee. I’m not looking for a shiny badge or a bigger podium. Elect me National Chair, elect the New Path slate, and we’ll be working to get you a shiny badge–the one that reads “Elected Public Official”. Elect me, elect my friends, and we’ll be working to get our candidates and spokesmen those bigger podiums. Elect me National Chair, elect the New Path slate, and we’ll turn our party around, so we are again on the march toward being America’s majority party.
How will we cure our Party? You can read the details at http://NewPathForTheLP.org/ThePlan. [GP: You are reading this letter early. The launch date is April 21.] We start with short-term quick fixes to channel money
to real politics and restore member confidence. We launch a vigorous volunteer mobilization plan. We’ll change how we raise and spend money, so we spend much more on politics and outreach rather than back office operations. We’ll use data-driven membership recruitment directed at young women and men who already support our message. As Chair of LNC Meetings, I’ll restore the primacy of serious substance over pointless pandering to Roberts’ Rules.
That’s what I offer. A plan, and a team ready to carry it out. This May, please support me, and please support my friends.
George Phillies
George ya think if Melrose Mike wrote and told them why he doesn’t live in the state any more it would be published?
Mind you, we had some quite harsh differences of opinion in that period. It’s just they were not over purity in any traditional sense.
Thank you! I will take a look.
Graphs,
Your source is a Republican mouthpiece, Garret Quinn, who says of himself on the Boston Globe Blog site “About the author
Garrett Quinn began writing for newspapers at age 15 with CNC in his native South Shore. He is a writer and editor with RedMassGroup.com…”
The chance that he is familiar with Massachusetts Libertarian politics is seriously less that the chance that the Massachusetts Republicans will take control of the state legislature this November.
In fact, while we have had a number of internal disagreements this past decade, positions on real issues, e.g., the War on Iraq, drug legalization, you name it…were not part of it. Indeed, the debate between radical and pragmatist people seems somewhat unreal to many Massachusetts readers, because that sort of question does not arise locally.
Readers interested in a more informed perspective on Massachusetts politics should try reading the old magazine Let Freedom Ring!, available at cmlc.org/letfreedomring.htm . It is written from one perspective, but you will note from reading it that there are almost no mentions of disagreements about issues or philosophy. Competence? Financial honesty? Those questions very certainly did come up. The 2002-2006 pages are the most indicative.
Oh my:
“The last time there was a real viable third party in Massachusetts was in 2002 when the Massachusetts Libertarian Party was extremely vibrant and it still failed to elected anyone to a state office. Since 2002 nasty infighting and libertarian purity purges relegated the party back to irrelevancy and the typical obscure protest candidates. “
http://boston.com/community/blogs/less_is_more/2010/04/nassour_to_attend_tea_party_as.html
Oh my:
“The last time there was a real viable third party in Massachusetts was in 2002 when the Massachusetts Libertarian Party was extremely vibrant and it still failed to elected anyone to a state office. Since 2002 nasty infighting and libertarian purity purges relegated the party back to irrelevancy and the typical obscure protest candidates. “
@19
The State Chair in question enjoyed the support of a majority of the State Committee. The State Committee for a fair piece of this had multi-year terms. The workaround was to establish a parallel organization “Liberty for Massachusetts” that actually did things, that eventually was able to claim that every single active local Libertarian group in Massachusetts had revoked its LPMass affiliation, and to point out publicly to the membership what was going on. There was then a period of 3/4 of a year in which the state committee did not meet, the newsletter did not appear, and finally the people protecting the state chair faded into the woodwork. At that point, the state chair, who was a good person at heart, allowed the new party leadership to organize the next state convention, which led to a near-complete turnover of the state committee. Near complete? Imagine a new LNC in which the people continuing were Lee, Mary, Rachel, and Jake Porter. There were a few more clogs that needed to be removed from the pipes, but all that was finally fixed.
As a practical matter the lesson here is that turning around the LP will take quite a while, though the national party has the advantage over the state party that all memberships except life memberships are short-lived, so the ‘membership’ metric will respond decently quickly to improvements.
For Galt’s sake, somebody so something! LPers tolerated (if Dr. Phillies is correct), for 4 years, a state party chair who refused to do fundraising, membership recruitment , public outreach or candidate recruitment. Such an attitude should have meant removal in short order not, apparently, re-election.
So LAMA is showing signs of pulling out of a slump caused by no membership recruiting and the chaos of UMP ending.
What would happen to recent LAMA turn around if you were to lose your focus now by concentrating on the LPUS.
GP @16
“Why percentages? Because that’s the way any business, including nonprofit businesses like ours, works.”
Hmmm. Well, personally, I do have some experience in financial reporting… and marketing. A marketing person would choose percentage (and provide a colorful chart) tailored, derived, reintegrated and formatted for their desired effect.
A CIO might choose percentage also if the picture was grim and he wanted to “help the moral of the board”. But percentages themselves only show a rate and are irrelevant data without a baseline. 75% up from 4 to 7 is not very impressive.
Rate information without some anchor number and history is… well… only used when someone is hiding something or they do not understand diligence. I can understand a marketing approach, but I do not make decisions on un-anchored rates. They do not demonstrate performance.
The other problem is that since the numbers are only for one year the rate information is meaningless. Hard data for a single year would be anecdotal at best. Derived data for only one year is anecdotal, obfuscated and without context.
Please Mr. Phillies, post your track record and the track record or some of your more successful slate members in terms of recruiting, fund raising and making fair and balanced decisions: letting personal agendas go second to responsibilities in trust.
Is LAMA on a sound financial footing? Cash on hand and income have until recently been trending upward. The Joe Kennedy campaign soaked up a considerable amount of Libertarian money in-state this winter.
Why only one year on memberships? Because up to then we had an extremely large number of very long-term members, including what were eventually determined not to be life memberships, belonging to people who were no longer even remotely involved with the party. Until their memberships all expired, the membership trend was only in one direction, namely down, even though we were bringing in new people. Since then, our renewal rate has been close to 100%.
Why percentages? Because that’s the way any business, including nonprofit businesses like ours, works. Also, until the end of 2006 there was a substantial party income from UMP, replacing nonexistent state party fundraising — the 2003-2006 Chair successfully opposed doing fundraising, membership recruitment, candidate recruitment or support, public outreach, — and in 2006 UMP came to an end.
@11
In addition, the party newsletter now comes out monthly again, experiment with electronic newsletters shows that about a third of the membership will prefer a PDF newsletter to a paper newsletter and chooses to receive it for a reduced dues rate, experiment with family dependency (e.g. spouse of member @very low dues rate) shows this is a small niche market, and Facebook ads to bring readers to the party open Blog site GoldMassGroup.com show about 10 cents per reader, though few readers become writers.
This is what I have been asking for! Well… almost.
GP @11
“Since last Summer, LAMA membership is up 75%. From 2007 to 2008, LAMA income went up close to 50%. From 2008 to 2009, LAMA income increased 24% on 2008 as a base.”
If I am not mistaken, GP has served in Mass for some time and in several capacities. A timeline of success would be very interesting.
Without trying to be disrespectful I have a couple questions about the stats. Why did you give us derivative data and why for only one year and oddly in the past?
I loved the graphs made of the LPUS finances. The primary doubt that I have is that most of the GP slate is made up of people who in my experience, expect others to do the work for them and have no track record at building organizations.
@12
Let me see if they work first, or if there was coincidence. They are both a bit labor intensive.
@ 11 George writes “We have just found two new membership recruitment/renewal tools whose utility is being explored. The first brought in three members in 24 hours, though I suspect that was partly luck.”
George care to share those tools?
@10
Mind you, I am the party treasurer here, not the chair. It’s a different role. Nonetheless:
Since last Summer, LAMA membership is up 75%. From 2007 to 2008, LAMA income went up close to 50%. From 2008 to 2009, LAMA income increased 24% on 2008 as a base.
This year, LAMA has five libertarians who say they are running for Congress and are making a significant effort to get on the ballot. This is an all-time record in the memory of anyone in the state party. The previous number was 0 or 1. Getting on the ballot in MA is a chore; each of these people will need about 3000 raw signatures.
We have just found two new membership recruitment/renewal tools whose utility is being explored. The first brought in three members in 24 hours, though I suspect that was partly luck.
I’m certainly one of those who prefers that a Chair of an organization have worked his or her way up through the organization. This provides continuity for on going programs and the person’s track record is pretty well known.
As Dr. Phillies points out, however, the declining fortunes of the LP may mean it is time for an “outsider” to become CEO. Happens all the time in the corporate world when a new direction or new enthusiasm is needed.
So then the question becomes one of track record. Did the candidate walk the walk in his or her own career? Has Dr. Phillies been able to put the Mass. LP on a firm financial footing, grow membership, etc. etc. as he proposes doing for the National Party?
I can’t be at St. Louis to participate this time, but hope the delegates unemotionally decide to make officer and LNC choices that can swiftly put the LP on a growth track to become a real factor in American politics.
With respect to supporting candidates, the LNC should support its own party’s candidates, as vigorously as party resources allow. I do not think we should apply ideological filters to sort between some Libertarian Party candidates and some other Libertarian Party candidates*. There is nothing we all agree on, other than the spelling of the party’s name, and we should live with that.
*Some common sense must prevail. Yes, if the Libertarian Party of Hoople is taken over by the Revolutionary Socialists and the KKK, we look for solutions; we do not support the Commies in Bedsheets.
And, no, to shorten that point of discussion, I am running for Chair. One race is enough for one convention. I have friends running for At-Large, folks like Mary Ruwart and Lee Wrights, plus a few others not yet announced, who seem to count up in total to five, and I will not be running against them.
With respect to the folks who think we should always elect a current LNC member as Chair, well, we’ve been doing that for a long time now, and perhaps if you believe that you should consider how well your opinion has worked so far.
The Nolan, perhaps, but we want George’s whole slate to win, don’t we? The Milnes.
Carolyn Marbry has my enthusiastic support. I think she’s a much stronger candidate than Phillies, who can win even if George loses.
Marbry being a cellist = awesome. Marbry being a homeschooling parent = awesome (though that doesn’t differentiate her from Wayne Root).
to paulie // Apr 11, 2010:
——– Please fix the “the those” typo for the LP News version ……..
——— from paulie: I fixed it here. Hope that’s OK.
——— from don lake: could some one plz update the California AIP thread on FORMER Director of “Save Our State” Chelene Nightingale ………..
Brian, from Carolyn’s announcement
Carolyn’s first career was as a cellist. By the time she was 21, she was CEO of her own custom software company, creating applications for
signature recognition for banks, pressure and flow calculations based on pipe fittings for a mechanical engineering firm, dyslexia diagnosis
and therapy software for audiologists and custom accounting packages for unusual businesses. She was recruited to Artisoft where she was an engineering supervisor, opting after a few years to retire from that career to homeschool her son. During those homeschooling years, she was not idle, however, launching a career in theatre as a playwright, actor and stage director in Tucson, AZ. She starting her own Shakespeare Theatre Troupe for homeschooled teenagers. In 2003, she produced and edited an internationally distributed independent film with English director Rob Walker.
I fixed it here. Hope that’s OK.
George, you are doing fine. But I do not see any path to actually win-esp. upper level races-other than PLAS/FET/FDS. So, the sooner you come out in support, the better. Widening credibility gap is a problem here.
I like George’s focus on specifics at the New Path web site.
Please fix the “the those” typo for the LP News version.
What corporation was Ms. Marbry CEO of? What were its headcount and revenues? Is there a form 10-Q online?