George Phillies via the LP state chairs email list:
Joyous Yule! to my Fellow State Chairs!
The message of this somewhat extended analysis is that you have to choose a strategy to match your election laws. Readers in Texas and Indiana, with totally different methods of getting people on the ballot, will choose totally different strategies:
2014 Massachusetts State Elections: Four Political Strategies.
The Massachusetts 2014 state elections showed four distinct political strategies being deployed by the half-dozen substantial political groups in the state. The Democrats and Republicans ran full slates for statewide office and made a notional effort to contest the state legislature. I say notional because the Republicans couldn’t find enough candidates to take control of the state legislature, if all of their candidates won. The Democrats, despite there being huge numbers of them across the Commonwealth, failed to run candidates in several seats. Cynics suggest that the Democrats have cut a deal with the Republican legislative leadership, under which certain Republicans are not challenged, and in exchange the Republicans sit there in the legislature as sheep affecting to be state legislators.
As in many years past, the Green-Rainbow Party ran candidates for the lesser statewide offices. They do a variant on this every four years. As a word of explanation, we have six statewide offices plus the US senator. The statewide offices are divided between the three greater statewide offices and the three lesser statewide offices (Auditor, Treasurer, Secretary). The distinction is that you need 10,000 signatures to put on the ballot a candidate for a greater statewide office, and only 5000 signatures to put on the ballot a candidate for a lesser statewide office. Because the Green-Rainbow Party is a political designation, not a political party, they could use one nominating paper for all three candidates for statewide office. As it turned out, all three of their candidates for statewide office got more than 4% of the vote, thus winning political party status (that’s major party status) for the 2016 election. Because the Green-Rainbow Party will be a major party, they can in 2016 put their presidential candidate on the ballot without petitioning.
Major Party status comes with a big price. First, they have to be sure that in the 2016 Presidential Primary, when their new State Committee is elected, they do not manage to lose control of their own party. The price they pay for political party status is that anyone else who wants to run in 2016 as a member of their party cannot get signatures from Democrats, Republicans, or United Independents. Roughly speaking, in order to get the same number of signatures, the petitioner would need to ask three times as many people to sign their nominating papers, so Green-Rainbow candidates will probably in 2016 be rather thin on the ground.
A completely different political strategy is being followed by Evan Falchuk and his United Independent Party. Falchuk deliberately sought out major party status in 2014. His organization is now working vigorously to retain major party status by persuading something like 45,000 people to register with his party. That 45,000 number will be 1% of all registered voters in the state. If he gets the number, his party will retain major party status after the 2016 election. (Alternatively, his party could run a presidential candidate in 2016 and get 3% of the vote for that statewide office. There is no other statewide office on the ballot in 2016, so it is president or nothing for getting 3% of the vote.) Of course, if the UIP has major party status, they will find it challenging to run candidates for other office. Apparently the party leadership believes either (i) they will have so much popular support they will have no trouble getting other candidates on the ballot, (ii) they can solve the problem of ballot access for each of their candidates the American way, namely they can bomb the problem with money, or (iii) they don’t care if they have anyone else on the ballot in 2016. The UIP has one advantage that we lack: They have an enormously rich supporter who is willing to spend millions of dollars of his own money in pursuit of this effort. How much is enormous? Their party leader is reported to be worth tens of millions of dollars, and a hypothetical alliance with the McCormick campaign might increase that ten-fold.
Finally, there is the strategy that we have finally been able to put into effect, which is also strategy that is being put into effect by the much smaller Massachusetts Pirate Party. We’re trying to build up a serious base across Massachusetts, run candidates for offices where petitioning can be handled in a effective way, and actually become a major party as opposed to having the Secretary of the Commonwealth give us a shiny badge that on the front says “major party” but has printed on the back side “please ignore the anvil we have just chained around your neck”. With that strategy, we are recruiting more and more candidates for local and higher office. We are advancing to set up local organizations of libertarians, people who all know each other and know for whole they are willing to work. More important, local organizations are people who will ask each other to run for office and promise to support the candidates when they do run.
No one would complain if we had statewide candidates who ran but did not destroy ballot access for everyone else. Joe Kennedy effectively showed how this can be done, namely you run on the “Liberty” line, and even if you get enough votes for major party status you have not kept your fellow libertarians from running for office in two years.* The large obstacle to running someone for, say, Governor is that they basically have to pay for their own ballot access campaign. The largest legal amount your state PAC can donate to a non-Federal candidate is $500. That’s $500 more than the LNC can donate. The candidate will need to write the check for $30,000 give or take to get on the ballot. Fortunately, for 2018 I have probably managed to recruit a U.S. Senate candidate who will do this and incidentally bring onto the ballot a full slate of statewide officers, all six of them. Meanwhile, as your State Chair I am hard at work trying to recruit more candidates for 2016.
*Strictly speaking, Joe was not running in a regular biennial election, so under the election law as it then applied he would not have gained us major party status. However the state legislature could always change the law for the next election, not necessarily in our favor.
“The higher level offices (President, Governor, US Senate) should be used as advertising vehicles to get the libertarian message out (including the message about non-electoral politics tactics such as jury nullification, etc…) and win new coverts to the party and movement. ”
Good idea!
That was already clarified earlier in the thread. What are your thoughts on it, since it’s been the subject of speculation here?
With respect to my state party associating local or statewide campaigns, there is not an either-or, because the local races are mostly in odd numbered years and the state races are mostly in even-numbered years. We do ask people what they want to support. In 2012 we asked for support for Presidential ballot access, and the response did not pay for the mailing. We have also asked for support at other times for other things, with much better success. This is the first year that we were successful at getting people to run for state legislature in reasonable numbers.
With respect to supporting NOTA, that is part of a letter from Joshua Katz ending his Presidential campaign. Liberty for America regularly publishes statements by people that we do not support, in order that Libertarians know where their fellow Libertarians stand.
“paulie Post author
December 27, 2014 at 6:37 pm
‘I do believe that Libertarians could take over a low population city/town or county’
It was done. Big Water UT. Completely LP run at one point. It was a small polygamist Mormon community that went LP. ”
I remember what you are talking about. They briefly had a majority on the city council there. It did not last long and they did not really accomplish anything. I’m talking about something that would be better organized than this and would be long lasting, and would have a libertarian majority population in the targeted city/town or county.
All the numbers for membership and money trends are posted every month to the LNC list, with a public archive on the national website, and include trends back to the early 90s. You can check all the numbers for yourself. The reports are posted by Robert Kraus and Tim Hagan every month.
“paulie Post author
December 27, 2014 at 6:28 pm
‘The Libertarian Party also raised more money back in 2000 than it has raised since then. The LNC had a budget of like $2 million (maybe more)’
About double that.”
So the LNC had a budget of $4 million back in 2000, and they have a hard time raising even $1 million today. Wow, the situation is even worse than I thought it was. Factor in that there has been 14 years of inflation since then, which means you’d have to raise more than $4 million today to equal what the equivalent of $4 million was back in the year 2000, and the situation looks even worse.
So, fellow Libertarians, what are you going to do to turn things around? A lot of what the party has been doing for the past 12 years or so clearly has not been effective. I believe that the party has the potential to be a lot bigger and more effective than it has ever been, and I also do not believe in just giving up. We are in a struggle for individual freedom, and I do not consider just rolling over and playing dead (as in just laying down and letting government trample all over us to the point where they stamp out whatever individual freedom we still have) to be an option.
It was done. Big Water UT. Completely LP run at one point. It was a small polygamist Mormon community that went LP.
Every attempt to have Libertarians move somewhere and take anything over, whether in the US or not, either hasn’t gotten very far or turned out to be a scam, or both.
“Joshua Katz
December 27, 2014 at 2:58 pm
You might want to look up Glendale, Colorado, in 2013. I would like to see 100 cities do what Glendale did – eliminate one big government law per month for a year”
I was actually just in Glendale, Colorado two or three months ago. I attended the Free and Equal Colorado Governor’s Debate (which received surprisingly little coverage here at IPR when it happened). One of the candidates for Governor in the debate was an independent who had been elected Mayor of Glendale. The other two candidates in the debate were from the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. It actually sounded like there were two libertarians in the debate as the independent candidate who was also the Mayor of Glendale sounded pretty libertarian. I remember during the debate he brought up something about working to repeal one law a month in the city of Glendale. This sounds like a good thing, however, it is not as though Glendale, Colorado has been magically transformed into a libertarian city, and this guy was not elected as a Libertarian, he was elected as an independent, and I’m not even sure how libertarian he is (he sounded libertarian in the debate, but it is not like I know where exactly he stands on every issue). I also do not know what the makeup of the rest of the city council is in Glendale, Colorado, and I doubt that most of the people who live in or near Glendale, Colorado (note that Glendale, Colorado is next to Denver) know who all makes up the city council and what all they are doing either.
While it is nice when a Libertarian, or small “l” libertarian, or even a person with libertarian leanings, gets elected to office anywhere, I really doubt that the Libertarian Party or movement in this country is realistically capable at this moment or any time soon of being able to take over a high population – or even a mid size population – city/town or county. I do believe that Libertarians could take over a low population city/town or county, but this could only happen if a critical mass of libertarians moved to (including some setting up part time residences there for the purpose of voting switching their voter registration status to the targeted city/town or county) the same low population city/town or county and ran candidates for enough offices to “take over” these localities.
About double that.
The opportunity definitely existed, and we blew it big time.
And people do show up, internet or no internet, whether it be the antiwar protests in the Shrub era, the Tea and Occupy and now anti-police brutality rallies under Obama, Obama’s or Ron Paul’s campaigns, union protests up your way, immigration rallies – when the causes draw people they get active, and not only online.
It’s not vague. I was there. It started in the early to mid 1990s and stayed pretty strong thru about 2002. Peak around 1999-2000. Same as other measures.
No, we were running more candidates from the mid 90s through maybe 2002. We also had more party members, more active affiliates, more people at meetings, more people in local offices, more money in the national budget, more state parties with offices and employees, and so on.
Nope. The party’s relative peak in the 1990s was when we were more radical. In the mid 2000s decade we went through a relative nadir of activity and were less strong ideologically at the same time, Now we have gotten somewhat better on both accounts at the same time again.
So to the extent a correlation exists, it’s the opposite of what you are positing.
“paulie Post author
December 27, 2014 at 4:28 pm
Both local races and upticket races have value, for different reasons. We need plenty of both. Anyone who dismisses either type of campaign is only seeing part of the picture.”
I never said that Libertarians should not run for local offices. I was just pointing out that I’ve been hearing this mantra of, “Libertarians should focus on running for local offices,” ever since I joined the LP in 1996 and this strategy really has not gotten us anywhere. Libertarians getting elected to a small number of local offices spread out across the USA means that these Libertarians have little influence on public policy, due to being outnumbered everywhere they are elected, and that these are offices to which few people pay attention.
I have actually gathered petition signatures in places where there was a local elected Libertarian, and I’ve had people ask me questions about who are some Libertarian Party candidates, or who has the Libertarian Party elected, and then I’ll bring up so and so Libertarian was elected to _______________ (insert the name of low level office here) in the area that they live, and I’ve been met with blank stares. I have never run into one person who lived in an area where there was a Libertarian elected to a low level office who even knew that there was a Libertarian elected to that office, or who even knew who that person was.
Like I said above, I think that “focus on running for local office” strategy would be far more effective if Libertarians focused on taking over a low population city/town or county somewhere in this country. There are plenty of low population cities/towns and counties in this country that Libertarians could take over if only a critical mass of Libertarians would get off their rear ends and move to these places, or at least set up second residences in these places (which could be a tent or trailer (even a pop up trailer) or a motor home or a shared apartment or house) and use this address as their voter registration address. A lot of people who are on the margin for being potential supporters of libertarians would like to see an example of a place that is “run” by Libertarians, yet after 43 years as a political party, the Libertarian Party still has no examples to show.
Having said this, there is still a little bit of value in running for local offices across the country as it can give Libertarians at least a little bit of influence, and it can help people gain experience, however, saying that Libertarians should do this and not run for higher level offices (as in the ones a lot more people actually pay attention to) is an exercise in foolishness.
Andy says: ” I would much rather see a Libertarian Party candidate for President who can get on TV and inspire people, and who informs people about the right of jury nullification in every interview, than see some Libertarian get elected to some local office that nobody cares about where they will have little influence on anything.”
I completely agree with this.
RC says: “many realize that NAPsolutism doesn’t work.”
You keep saying this, but no one else seems to say this. I disagree that NAPsolution won’t work.
By the way, in discussing the Supreme Court: And Joseph R. Biden, a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee before his election to the vice presidency, declared in 2007 that “We have enough professors on the bench . . . I want someone who ran for dogcatcher.”
I agree with you.
I think we need to have more local elected officials and also more candidates at all levels.
The version in the current bylaws is what I go by. That’s not to disrespect Mr. Nolan, but out of hope that, 42 years later, we would have progressed beyond where we started. If you dismiss winnable local races, you are not acting as an entity separate from other parties and organizations – you’re focusing on the work of Mises and FEE. You are not moving public policy by electing Libertarians to office if you dismiss races you can actually win. Supporting the growth and activities of local affiliates, in my opinion, includes, among other things, supporting local races. Supporting Party and affiliate candidates is broad and can be accomplished, in principle, by supporting the Presidential candidate and one candidate of one affiliate, but if understood more holistically and in context, I think it means supporting the Presidential and VP candidates and supporting affiliate candidates as much as possible and where most tactical. The remainder can be done while dismissing local candidates.
I am not dismissing upticket races – I’m pointing out that I’d like us to be better at them, and that the strategy I propose for getting better at them is having more elected officials downticket to support those races.
Both local races and upticket races have value, for different reasons. We need plenty of both. Anyone who dismisses either type of campaign is only seeing part of the picture.
Regarding our mission statement, it lists a variety of reasons we exist, as does David Nolan’s case for the LP published in 1971. Electing people to office is just one of several items on both lists.
The version in the current bylaws reads as follows:
Nolan wrote http://elfsoft2000.com/politics/nolan.htm
You might want to look up Glendale, Colorado, in 2013. I would like to see 100 cities do what Glendale did – eliminate one big government law per month for a year. Of course, I’d like to see more done as well, but it’s more than I’ve seen done anywhere else. There are two reasons I want to see that – first, for the sake of the people living there, and second, so that people everywhere else will note the lack of dead people piling up on the still-existent roads, and the lack of feuding mobs firing AK47s at all hours of the night. As convinced as we are of the virtues of freedom, people sometimes need to see something – like a town rolling back its laws and not falling apart.
Oftentimes, a Libertarian on these boards, especially in states with laws that virtually guarantee it, will find themselves the odd vote among equal Republicans and Democrats. Particularly near elections, this lets the Libertarian run the show, as the Republicans and Democrats hate being seen to agree with each other if the positions are partisan.
You say people don’t pay attention to these races. A lot of that has to do with these races seldom being interesting or competitive. They will pay attention if you make them pay attention. My race was back of the ticket; yet more votes were cast in that race than in any other race on the ballot other than First Selectman because candidates in other races did not, largely, campaign – Republicans assumed they’d carry partisan votes, and Democrats hoped to sneak in on minimum party representation laws. Find something interesting and inspiring to say, and say it a lot, and people do pay attention.
Sure, that’s less people paying attention than in a larger race, but that just means you need more such races.
But I get it, you like up-ticket races. You want an inspiring message in those races. The reason your message gets out in those races is because you’re a candidate – there are dividends to being a candidate as opposed to some guy on the street, as you’d be sure to inform me if I criticized educational campaigns. But that perception depends on being a credible candidate, which generally means being able to demonstrate knowledge of governance. I don’t know about your state, but where I live, I have seen exactly one person win a non-local race without first holding local office. That person was the son of a millionaire, attended Georgetown, and then staffed for Marco Rubio before coming home to run – and had several big-time celebrities campaign for him. That’s another way to establish credibility, and if it’s open to our candidates, that’s fantastic.
Those local officeholders, if they make enough noise, get to be known to their constituents. If people aren’t paying attention, they still get to be known by the actual decision-makers within the region – the nearby government officials, the local journalists, etc. – these people can make or break up-ticket campaigns. If we’re running someone for an up-ticket race who is not a local officeholder, as we often do, it’s quite helpful if every town within their district has someone known, liked, and trusted, who will come out and campaign – particularly if they aren’t up for election that year.
But perhaps most importantly – you cannot govern if you do not win. Our statement of purpose is to move public policy in a libertarian direction by running candidates for office – it is reasonable to take ‘candidate’ to mean person who seeks office, I think. Others will disagree, but to me, this sounds like we’re saying that we wish to place people in office who will then govern as libertarians, and hence move policy.
I ran for Comptroller in 2010. I got 1%. I had a libertarian message, and even got a fair amount of press. You can say it’s a personal failing, but I did not inspire all that many people. Part of the reason, I think, was that I was easy to dismiss as a non-CPA with no government experience. I had fun, enjoyed seeing my name in the paper, and did what I could to get my message out, but I do not believe that freedom advanced one iota. On the other hand, since 2013, I have repealed some zoning laws (I believe zoning laws to be among the top 5 most destructive laws that exist), amended others in a libertarian direction, cast the deciding vote on many permits for local business, prevented at least 2 sweetheart deals by insisting on the use of outside appraisals before purchasing land, and convinced my fellow commissioners to not pass a proposed (absurd) law to ban charitable donation bins because of “aesthetic concerns.” Small potatoes – I agree. I have done nothing about the Fed, bailouts, war, torture – etc. If I had chosen to run for a different office, I also would have done nothing about those issues, but wouldn’t have my small consolation prizes either.
I am hopeful about getting some friendly bills introduced this session in the state legislature. Why? Because I have the ear of a freshman representative – a representative who, while running for the Republican nomination, sought me out (we were at a hospital grand opening fair) and asked for my help locally. We talked issues, I liked him, and we didn’t have a candidate for that race. He sought me out because he was following exactly the strategy I discussed above – wanting one elected official in each town. Because we have so many unaffiliated voters, he actually wanted two – one Republican, and one non-Republican. I was his best shot at a non-Republican, I guess.
Given your comparison of a Presidential candidate who gets on tv and inspires people vs. a local elected official who accomplishes nothing, I agree. I think the comparison stacks the deck a bit, though.
I would much rather see a Libertarian Party candidate for President who can get on TV and inspire people, and who informs people about the right of jury nullification in every interview, than see some Libertarian get elected to some local office that nobody cares about where they will have little influence on anything.
“Joshua Katz
December 27, 2014 at 1:24 pm
RC: Because spending doesn’t equal contact. The number would vary if you didn’t live in the US and were getting bombed by the federal government, certainly, but as a US resident, most of our actual contact with the government comes in the form of trash collection, car registration, schools, fire/ems,…”
Yes, and electing a few Libertarians spread out around the country to low level local offices that few people pay attention to is not going to do a damn thing to change anything.
Focusing on taking over a city/town or county would change something, but this would require a critical mass of Libertarians to move to the same city/town or county (or for some of them to at least set up second residences there, and to use that address as their voting address), but so far in the 43 year history of the Libertarian Party, Libertarians have failed to accomplish this (as in establishing a Libertarian majority in a city/town or county, thus taking it over and “running” it). Libertarians have even failed to do this in the Free State Project in New Hampshire, which is a good idea that has been poorly executed thus far.
Libertarians sitting out of the Presidential races and other high profile races and just running for local offices across the country would be a disaster for the Libertarian Party. It is the high profile races that reach the most people and actually build the party and movement. Most people do not care who is running for the Park Commission or the Planning Commission or the Soil and Water Commission, etc…, and even for the few that do, unless you elect a Libertarian majority to these boards/commissions/councils the Libertarians on them can still be outvoted and therefore have limited influence in these low level positions.
JK, OK, I see your point. The word used was “interact,” btw.
“paulie Post author
December 27, 2014 at 1:02 pm
Yes, that was in Phillies newsletter, but it’s a quote from Joshua Katz. We published the same article at IPR.”
I scanned through the newsletter quickly late at night and I must have missed the part where he was quoting Joshua Katz. Regardless of this, I think that it is a horrible strategy.
RC: Because spending doesn’t equal contact. The number would vary if you didn’t live in the US and were getting bombed by the federal government, certainly, but as a US resident, most of our actual contact with the government comes in the form of trash collection, car registration, schools, fire/ems,…
jk: 90% of a person’s interaction with government is with local government, and a strong network of local officials is a party’s most important as-set.
me: I’d like to see the math for this conclusion. Per capita federal spending is far more than 50% of total government spending. Local government looks to be about 25%.
Yes, that was in Phillies newsletter, but it’s a quote from Joshua Katz. We published the same article at IPR.
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/11/joshua-katz-will-not-seek-libertarian-presidential-nomination-endorses-nota/
You can do a text search of the article, you will find the same quote. As you can see from my many comments on that article, I agree with you about NOTA.
Still looking for an affirmation or denial of Phillies endorsing NOTA. He said he wished Katz would have explored the idea of running more thoroughly before abandoning the idea, so that indicates he is at least open to having a breathing presidential candidate at a minimum.
OK, I just found where George Phillies said that he’s endorsing NOTA for President in 2016, and where he also says that the party should focus on local races. It was in the current issue of Liberty for America, a link for which was posted on a recent article on this site.
Here is the link to the newsletter (scroll down for the article after clicking the link):
http://libertyforamerica.com/201412.pdf
Here is a quote from the article:
“I am endorsing NOTA because I would like this party to focus its attention on electing local candidates – 90% of a person’s interaction with government is with local government, and a strong network of local officials is a party’s most important as-set.”
I do not agree with this strategy for the reasons that I mentioned above. I also think that it is too early to endorse any candidate or NOTA being that we do not even know who the candidates for the nomination are about to be in 2016.
I believe that the focus should be on recruiting and supporting better candidates for the nomination. I think that not running a candidate for President in 2016 would be destructive for the party and movement.
Andy Craig said: “and it’s another measure by which we’re at/near historic highs. (unless I’m mistaken about the total number of candidates in past years.) ”
I think that you are mistaken here. The LP had more candidates for office in 2000, and the LP also had more candidates elected to office in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s than it does now.
The Libertarian Party also raised more money back in 2000 than it has raised since then. The LNC had a budget of like $2 million (maybe more), and I remember the Harry Browne campaign raised around $2 or $2.5 million. I also remember that the LP of California raised like $350,000 in a year back then. The LP of California today can’t even raise $50,000. Keep in mind that these amounts need to be adjusted for inflation when compared to how much money the party raises today, which makes the party today look even worse by comparison.
The LP peaked in membership around the year 2000 with around 33,000 and something dues paying members. The LP today has like 12,000 and something members, which I believe is less dues paying members than the party had in the mid 1990’s (which looks even worse when you consider population growth).
Oh, and some people may say, “Well Gary Johnson got more votes than Harry Browne got.” Yes, this is true, however, consider these facts:
1) Browne ran in 1996 when two higher profile minor party candidates were in the race in Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, and then in 2000 when two higher profile minor party candidates were in the race in Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan. When Gary Johnson ran in 2012 he was the highest profile minor party or independent candidate in the race, and he was on more ballots than any other minor party or independent candidate.
2) There were a lot more people on the internet in 2012 when Gary Johnson ran as compared to 1996 and 2000 when Harry Browne.
3) A lot more people were familiar with the word libertarian and self identified as libertarian when Gary Johnson ran in 2012 (primarily thanks to Ron Paul’s runs in the Republican primaries in 2007-2008 and 2011-2012) as compared to when Harry Browne ran in 1996 and 2000.
If the LP had kept up the momentum that it had from around 1996 until 2000 I think that the party would be a lot bigger and more successful right now.
I won’t necessarily disagree with that, in that we certainly need to be better at those things. And we need to get a Libertarian back in a state legislature- anywhere, anyone- as one of our highest priorities. I think the things you rightly complain about though, are also part of broader social trends. Nobody in the, broadly speaking, same business as us hasn’t been affected by the same phenomenon of it being harder to turn people out “in real life” as online civil society has flourished (which is a more charitable spin than many would put on that trend, I’ll grant). Whatever missteps and missed opportunities there were from 2000-2010, I don’t think the party would have on the whole been able to do a whole lot to buck that trend, aside from growing exponentially faster. And it’s important to note that total number of candidates is another measure of people “showing up”, and it’s another measure by which we’re at/near historic highs. (unless I’m mistaken about the total number of candidates in past years.)
At the same time, I do hear from many party members that our local meetings as some vague time in the past did have much higher turnout. It’s something I hope to help turn around myself here in Milwaukee, as I take the reigns of our county affiliate with the New Year. So I don’t disagree with your conclusions, just your impression that the LP is truly smaller/less-effective/etc. on the whole in 2014 than it was in 1999.
I think the issue being expressed was not so much with the number of votes we get as with the number of members, budgets, volunteers who can be turned out for things like going door to door. The LP is not terrible at getting people’s votes, if they vote for libertarian leaning people in any party (although the LP has yet to elect anyone to congress, while allegedly libertarian Republicans have done it several times, and it’s been a long time since the LP has had legislators anywhere). But it needs to get better at organizing people and getting them to become regular donors (regardless of whether they are called members or not) and volunteers, showing up at events, and staying involved in between elections. That was happening better in the 1990s than it is now.
So far as the growth or decline of the party, a lot of that depends on which metric you use. By vote totals and number of candidates, we’re certainly up from the 1990s, and in particular up over 2010 and 2012, and isn’t that the ultimate measure of the party, particularly given how imperfect the various estimates of total membership or registration are? That some states have gone through cycles of growth and decline I won’t dispute, but I’m not sure it’s an accurate characterization for the party as whole. Also to the degree a major party has become more open to having a libertarian presence within it than they were in the late 90s, that’s not necessarily a sign of the failure of the LP, even if “working within the GOP” is still not a viable strategy and has the effect of drawing away from the LP’s potential base.
The late 90s/early 2000s might in retrospect seem like an exciting period of growth, because the LP was finally getting some degree of mainstream attention and support, there was much less pressure on libertarians to try to “work within” a major authoritarian party, and what followed was a few years of relative ineffectiveness and missed opportunities. But I don’t think it’s actually true that the LP was more influential or effective at that time than it is today, on the whole.
Roughly 2 million people voted for Ron Paul in 2012. Just under 1.5 million voted Libertarian top-of-the-ticket in 2014 (or 1 million for Johnson in 2012, if you prefer). Given that Paul’s base was somewhat broader than just libertarians, and also some people vote Libertarian but didn’t vote for Paul in their GOP primary, I think it’s a reasonable extrapolation that the LP regularly gets somewhere between one half and two-thirds of the ideologically-libertarian vote in general elections. Another way to look at is most polls don’t find more than 5-7% of people willing to self-describe as libertarians (vs. extrapolation based on issue questions), and the LP regularly gets 2-4%, so we are in fact getting the majority of those ideological libertarians.
I agree the party absolutely needs to do a better job of reaching out to the broader movement and capitalizing on the growth of libertarianism, but I don’t think the LP is quite as bad as people think at “getting libertarians to vote Libertarian”. I think they’re just overestimating the actual number of libertarians out there, because all of the other efforts take place in contexts where our small minority can look more impressive, like a lower-turnout primary or non-electoral advocacy efforts, instead of being expressed as a percentage of all voters.
For all the reasons to be optimistic, the fact is that libertarians are still a relatively small minority no matter how you slice it…
a: The fact that the party is smaller now than it was back then just goes to show what an utter failure the LNC has been, as well as what an utter failure many of the state committees have been in this party since then….There are more people who are self identifying as libertarian now than ever, thanks to people like Ron Paul, Andrew Napolitano, John Stossel, and a few others, yet the Libertarian Party is currently smaller than it was in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
me: Or it could be the cumulative effect of people realizing that the LP is built on an unserviceable construct. The construct seemed compelling to folks like me at first, but on reflection, many realize that NAPsolutism doesn’t work.
Instead, liberty-lovers are gravitating to more grounded, realistic approaches to L-ism.
BCRA (McCain-Feingold) has had something to do with it. National, state and local parties can’t cooperate nearly as well as before, and all suffer as a result of losing that effective synergy. A lot of other things have happened as well, and there’s no need to belabor the point by listing them all at the moment. From the perspective of a state LP it doesn’t help much to piss and moan about national not being bigger or more helpful at the moment, it is what it is, and state parties have to do the best they can with what they have, not with what they once had, wish they had, etc. There are a lot of factors that went into the conditions that made it possible to do what was done in the past that are different now. As for libertarians and quasi-libertarians gaining more traction outside the LP, in some ways that actually makes it more difficult for the LP to organize, because a lot of people believe they can reform the Republicans and make them libertarian, or that they can work in other ways for liberty that don’t involve supporting the LP, much less getting actively involved.
Paul said: “The whole national LP was bigger at that time, and Michael Cloud raised money very effectively while Carla Howell did a lot to maintain and use the LP database to coordinate volunteers. It would be very difficult for the Mass LP to do that again. Obviously it can be done, since it was done before, but I understand why there may be other approaches they prefer to take right now.”
The fact that the party is smaller now than it was back then just goes to show what an utter failure the LNC has been, as well as what an utter failure many of the state committees have been in this party since then.
There are more people who are self identifying as libertarian now than ever, thanks to people like Ron Paul, Andrew Napolitano, John Stossel, and a few others, yet the Libertarian Party is currently smaller than it was in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. This is a pathetic disgrace and it illustrates how badly the party has been managed.
Massachusetts should be one of the easiest states for mobilizing volunteers to gather petition signatures since it is so much easier to obtain access to venues that have public foot traffic as compared to most states. The law in Massachusetts specifically protects the right to go to places that the public has access to for the purpose of asking them to sign petitions or to register to vote. Like most laws, it is not always followed by the police, but it is followed most of the time.
True, but if you have to do it in the winter and screen out people who are registered with other parties that makes it a lot harder, whether paid or volunteer. It also makes it a lot harder to go door to door, even with a list, as you would be doing more walking to get to the eligible signers.
If you are specifically referring to door-to-door petitioning, it would not really cost anymore due to the fact that you would not have to pay for as many extra signatures for padding to survive a validity check since door-to-door produces a higher validity rate. So you’d have to pay a higher rate per signature to get people to go door-to-door, but you also would not have to pay for as many signatures, nor would you have to spend as much time checking validity since you could see where the signatures came straight off the walking list of registered voters.
The difference in price per signature would be greater than the validity difference. You can typically get an average of 2-3 times as many signatures per hour at a public location, and there are more hours in the day when you can be effective at a store than going to houses. Door to door in the winter is especially hard. I know you did it, but you had high paying petitions. Volunteers, or petitioners getting paid not too much more than regular storefront LP petition rates, are a lot less likely to want to do it.
And either one would give up after shorter times on average than if they can be at a storefront, due to the weather and the slippery streets, besides the fact that there are just fewer hours you can effectively work.
If you are talking about major party status petitioning in general in Massachusetts, yeah, it would cost a bit more because it is more difficult, but once again, it is not an insurmountable task, as the Libertarian Party successfully overcame this hurdle with multiple candidates in Massachusetts back in the Carla Howell days.
The whole national LP was bigger at that time, and Michael Cloud raised money very effectively while Carla Howell did a lot to maintain and use the LP database to coordinate volunteers. It would be very difficult for the Mass LP to do that again. Obviously it can be done, since it was done before, but I understand why there may be other approaches they prefer to take right now.
Massachusetts should be one of the easiest states for mobilizing volunteers to gather petition signatures since it is so much easier to obtain access to venues that have public foot traffic as compared to most states. The law in Massachusetts specifically protects the right to go to places that the public has access to for the purpose of asking them to sign petitions or to register to vote. Like most laws, it is not always followed by the police, but it is followed most of the time.
The situation is worse in most states, even though there are court rulings and federal statutes which are supposed to protect the rights of individuals to go to places where the public has access for the purpose of asking them to sign petitions or to register to vote, as most states ignore these court rulings and statutes. It is hard enough to get people to volunteer to collect petition signatures or voter registrations, but it is even more difficult to do this when your volunteers are chased out of public venues by the police, security guards, store managers, or government bureaucrats everywhere they go. You are less likely to encounter this problem in Massachusetts (or California or Washington) than you are in most of the rest of this country.
“Martin Passoli
December 26, 2014 at 6:38 pm
Wouldn’t that be way more difficult and/or cost a lot more?”
If you are specifically referring to door-to-door petitioning, it would not really cost anymore due to the fact that you would not have to pay for as many extra signatures for padding to survive a validity check since door-to-door produces a higher validity rate. So you’d have to pay a higher rate per signature to get people to go door-to-door, but you also would not have to pay for as many signatures, nor would you have to spend as much time checking validity since you could see where the signatures came straight off the walking list of registered voters.
If you are talking about major party status petitioning in general in Massachusetts, yeah, it would cost a bit more because it is more difficult, but once again, it is not an insurmountable task, as the Libertarian Party successfully overcame this hurdle with multiple candidates in Massachusetts back in the Carla Howell days.
Also, it should be pointed out that if the party mobilizes more volunteers to collect petition signatures, that is less signatures for which you have to pay people to gather.
Wouldn’t that be way more difficult and/or cost a lot more?
Another thing that the LP of Massachusetts could do if it had major party status and they wanted to petition to get candidates on the ballot is to do door-to-door petitioning with walking lists of registered voters, and to only knock on doors of people who are registered Unenrolled or registered Libertarian. If they wanted to knock on doors where people were not registered Unenrolled or registered Libertarian they could carry voter registration forms and ask them to register Libertarian or Unenrolled, after which they could sign the petition. Door-to-door petitioning is slower than public venue petitioning, but it also produces a higher validity rate than public venue petitioning. People who are registered to vote Unenrolled (which is known as registered independent or Decline To State A Political Party in most states) are more likely to sign petitions for Libertarian Party candidates (or other alternative party or independent candidates) than most Democrats or Republicans are anyway.
If so, I missed it. If you know what thread that was, or can find it, please let me know.
Paul said: “I didn’t see George say that. I know that sentiment does exist among some in the LP, but I didn’t see it in this particular discussion.”
I thought I saw him endorse NOTA for President on another thread. Regardless of this, I have seen others on this site make comments such as this, as in, “The Libertarian Party should not run a candidate for President, we should just run people for local offices,” as if electing more people to Soil and Water Commissions, or to Library Boards of Trustees, or to other low level offices which are spread out across the country, with none of them having a majority vote in any of their positions, is going to somehow make us more free, which it is not.
I understand that Massachusetts has some screwy ballot access laws, but even so, it is not one of the worst states for ballot access in this country. It is actually one of the best states in this country for protecting the rights of people to go out to places where the public has access for the purpose of asking them to sign petitions or to fill out voter registration forms. Getting access to venues where there is public foot traffic makes a huge difference on a petition or voter registration drive.
If a minor party obtains major party status in Massachusetts, their Presidential ticket gets automatic ballot access (as in they do not have to petition to get on the ballot), but they still have to gather petition signatures for all of the other offices, and having major party status means that only people registered under your party banner or registered with no party (which they call Unenrolled in Massachusetts) can sign the petition, whereas if your party has minor party status, or if your party is not ballot qualified, or if you run as an independent, any registered voters can sign the petitions. This does make ballot access more difficult when you obtain major party status, however, it is not an insurmountable obstacle. The petition circulators just have to ask everyone how they are registered before they sign, and if they answer anything other than registered Libertarian or registered independent (aka-Unenrolled), then do not have them sign the petition. Sure, some people will screw it up, but this can be caught by doing a validity check against the voter registration rolls before you turn in the signatures to the election officials. I know that in Massachusetts petition circulators can carry voter registration cards for people who are not registered, and have them fill out the registration and then sign the petition, and the petition signature will count as valid so long as the voter registration form is turned in before the petition is turned in to the city/town clerks (all petitions in Massachusetts get turned in to the city or town clerks before they get turned in to the Secretary of State), so you could also have petitioners carry voter registration forms and they could ask people to register Libertarian or Unenrolled so their names will count on the petitions. Not everyone will do this, but at least some of the people will do it, and it will improve your validity rate. I know that the Libertarian Party has overcome the major party status petitioning obstacle in the past in Massachusetts, such as when Carla Howell ran for office, so it is something that can be done.
Exactly. Building strong local affiliates and focusing on local campaigns has nothing to do with opposing running a presidential candidate. Some people fantasize that not running a presidential ticket would strengthen local campaigns and organizations, but that’s a separate matter altogether.
Where did Phillies say anything about not running a Presidential candidate? All I see him saying is focusing on building local county affiliates and recruiting local candidates.
“Not having a candidate to run for President and just running people for local offices is not a good strategy at all for the Libertarian Party.”
I didn’t see George say that. I know that sentiment does exist among some in the LP, but I didn’t see it in this particular discussion.
Not having a candidate to run for President and just running people for local offices is not a good strategy at all for the Libertarian Party. The Presidential campaign is the best advertising vehicle for the Libertarian Party and movement that there is, because it is what is most likely to draw attention from the general public. Most people pay little to no attention to local offices. The offices which draw the most attention are President, Governor, and US Senate. These are the offices where Libertarian Party candidates can get the most attention, and can therefore win over the most converts to the Libertarian Party and movement. State wide offices, generally President and/or Governor, can also help the party maintain ballot access in a lot of states.
I’ve been in the Libertarian Party since 1996, and I’ve heard the mantra of, “Focus on running people for local offices” ever since I’ve been in the party. Sure, it is nice when the party elects people to local offices, but unless a bunch of Libertarians get elected to local offices in the same locality, it really does not accomplish much. Very few people pay attention to these local offices, and there are a lot of people in the general public who do not even know that some of these local offices exist. What does it really accomplish if say the Libertarian Party elects 10 or 15 people to local offices, and they are spread out across a state or across the country, as in say one person on the Simi Valley Park Commission in California, and one person to the Soil and Water Commission in Hillsborough County, Florida, and one person to the Library Board of Trustees in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and one person to the Borough Council in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, etc..? Sure, it is better than electing no Libertarians to any offices, but the fact of the matter is that all of these people will be in a minority everywhere they are elected so they won’t be able to accomplish much, and these are also low level positions where they can’t do much anyway. If a bunch of Libertarians were to get elected to local offices in the same city/town or county, they could actually accomplish something, but electing a handful of people to local offices spread across the country accomplishes very little.
The Libertarian Party has been around since 1971, yet we still have not taken over even one city/town or county, not even with the Free State Project in New Hampshire. I think that the Free State Project is a good idea, but it has been poorly executed so far. There are plenty of low population cites/towns or counties in this country that Libertarians could easily take over if enough Libertarians moved into these cities/towns or counties and ran for enough local offices to where they would have a majority and could take over. Libertarians would not even necessarily have to live in these cities/towns or counties on a full time basis, as they could set up a second residence there (even if it were just a pop up trailer or an apartment shared with other Libertarians) and then make that address their voting address. If Libertarians elected a majority to say a county commission, and also elected a Sheriff, Libertarians could “run” that county (and remember, and Libertarian Sheriff could fire all of the existing Deputies and they could Deputize and unlimited number of Libertarians as Deputies, and the Deputies do not even have to live in the county where they are Deputies, and you could pay them a salary of $1 per year). Imagine a Libertarian majority on the County Commission (or County Board of Supervisors as they call it in California, and a Libertarian Sheriff with Libertarian Deputies (and yes, I know that in some states like Massachusetts, the counties governments are weak and most of the power is with the cities and towns, and in those cases, imagine Libertarians taking over a city or town).
Remember, libertarians are outnumbered everywhere in this country. I’d say that around 1/3 of the population are die hard big government types who will never support libertarians, and around another 1/3 of the population are apathetic and just “go with the flow” and can not be relied on to be active or consist defenders of individual liberty. So I’d say that only around 1/3 of the population is even open to the libertarian message, and even with a lot of these people, it would take a lot of money to be able to reach them, and even after reaching them, some of these people would only be passive supporters. So having a “shotgun” approach of having a few Libertarians around the country running for low level offices that few people pay attention to and that have little power does not do much to make us more free.
I too have been disappointed by the last couple of Presidential campaigns, particularly the one in 2008, but the solution is not to not run a Presidential campaign, but rather to recruit better candidates for the nomination.
I really do not believe that electoral politics alone is going to save us, however, combining electoral politics with outside-of-electoral politics tactics such as jury nullification, alternative currencies, home schooling, stocking up on guns and ammo, etc…, would greatly increase our chances of having at least some success. I see participation in electoral politics as way to get the libertarian message out and to do some damage control, but believing that we can go to the polls and vote ourselves free is naïve. Elections can be rigged, and the Democrats and Republicans have stacked the deck in this country to the point to where it is difficult for anyone or anything that the controlling establishment does not want to get elected or to pass, even if they do not flat out rig the election.
The higher level offices (President, Governor, US Senate) should be used as advertising vehicles to get the libertarian message out (including the message about non-electoral politics tactics such as jury nullification, etc…) and win new coverts to the party and movement. I do not think that the party is in a realistic chance to win any of these high level offices at this time. The highest office we could stand a chance of winning would be US House, and even there it would take the right candidate in the right place and they need at least a $1 million – $2 million campaign budget, and the money would have to be spent wisely. I do think that there are state legislature seats around this country that are winnable, and it is rather disgraceful that the Libertarian Party has only elected people to seats in the state legislatures of Alaska, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and the last time that happened was more than 12 or 14 years ago. This shows how poorly organized the party is, and how badly the LNC and the state committees have failed in this party. If anyone thinks that I am being too harsh, consider that the Green Party has elected people to the seats in state legislatures more recently than the Libertarian Party has. Getting one or a few seats one or a few state legislatures is not going to do much to make us more free as the Libertarian legislators would be outvoted, but it would get us more publicity and be a good morale booster for the party. I also think that the Libertarian Party could realistically contend for the office of Sheriff in some counties in this country. A Libertarian Sheriff that had a lot of balls would be in a position to accomplish something.
There’s some good discussion on the subjects broached here on the statechairs list. I can forward the conversations to other IPR editors on request if they would like to make a more comprehensive post.
Phillies 2016!!!