With original credit to Charles Curley, Editor at L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise.
Murphy knows the Libertarian Party has the reputation of being fools, buffoons, knaves and worse. L. Neil Smith, after putting a lot of effort into it during its early years, withdrew and excoriated it for years thereafter.
The recent convention did nothing to improve that reputation. There were the shenanigans of the This Caucus and the That Caucus. Embarrassment enough. I suspect that Ludwig von Mises, kindly soft-spoken gentleman that he was, is spinning in his grave at things done in his name.
But, no, that wasn’t enough. They had to top that. Now if any other political event were live streamed on YouTube, I’d say, good on them. But in this case, even that was an embarrassment. I tuned in to catch the tail end of Justin Amash’s keynote call for unity and cooperation. It was a good speech. But behind him on the stage were a gaggle of convention staff counting something, tokens or ballots or some such. Excuse me, couldn’t that be done in another room? At a minimum, off camera? There’s a military term for blunders of that magnitude, and its first two syllables are “cluster”. The outgoing Libertarian National Committee owes attendees, viewers, and a likely LP presidential candidate a sincere and profound apology, complete with a full proskynesis, followed by ritual sepuku. Their successors should then find someone who actually knows how to run a convention.
And yet….
And yet….
Let us now turn to the wilds of Wyoming, and the dull dry mechanics of how a typical legislature, such as Wyoming’s, works. I promise I will return to the LP.
Wyoming is a heavily Republican states (70% of voter registration), just as California is a heavily Democratic state. In both of those state, the majority party desperately needs a real party of opposition, what the British call a loyal opposition. In Wyoming, that isn’t the Democrats. In Wyoming if you want to get elected you pretty much have to be a Republican. Which means that Wyoming has a large RINO infestation. The result is that the Democrats don’t oppose the Republicans so much as they lead them onward. The Republicans need a party who will oppose that trend.
Most legislative bodies in the world are divided into two or more political parties. What almost all of them have in common is that there is a majority, or ruling party, or coalition. And there is a minority party or parties. The majority party nominates the speaker or president, and other officers. No prizes for guessing who gets elected. Similarly with committee chairmanships.
In addition, Wyoming has what it calls the Management Council. It oversees the day-to-day operations of the legislature, such as hiring staff and funding the Legislative Services Office. It is composed of the officers of the two houses, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the two party leaderships. The practical reality is that the Management Council is almost a legislature within the legislature, much like the Cabinet within the British House of Commons.
Right now the Republicans have a huge majority in both houses: the Democrats have two Senators out of 30. In the House, the Ds are a bit better off: 6 out of 60, plus one “independent” who previously sat in the House as a Democrat. Oh, and one Libertarian, Marshall Burt.
So how’s this for a goal: make the Libertarians the minority party in Wyoming. This guarantees them seats on the Management Council. It guarantees them ranking member status in committees. And it can be done. The Wyoming Libertarian Party has just nominated some 12 candidates for various offices, including for the legislature. That includes nominating Mr. Burt for his second term. And that’s the plan. They only have to flip four D seats in the House to be the minority party there. But the Libertarians are equal opportunity disrupters: they’ll cheerfully take Republican seats if they can get them.
And who, pray tell, is going to pull off this electoral coup? The LNC looks like it couldn’t organize its way out of an open space.
Mr. Burt was put into office by the Libertarian Frontier Project, which raised funds and ran several campaigns. Since then he has been appointed to the Corporations Committee, a plum assignment and a rarity for a freshman. His tripartisan bill reforming motorcycle laws was one of the few personal bills to pass.
It supported Bethany Baldes, who, in 2018, came within 53 votes of unseating the House Majority Leader. Two years later, she came within 33 votes of winning the most competitive race in the state. And she will be running again in 2022.
The Frontier Project also supported city council candidates in other states, some of them elected.
The Frontier project is strongly supported by the Wyoming LP, who are studiously ignoring the national LP’s shenanigans, and several of its county organizations.
For 2022, the Frontier Project has renamed itself the Libertarian Legislative Campaign Committee (LLCC).
There, dear reader, is the Reality Caucus of the Libertarian Party. Nurture it. They have set a goal they can achieve: to give the Wyoming Republican Party a real party of opposition.
True as far as it goes, but the real reality is that the reality caucus needs to completely separate from the Libertarian Party. It should pick off as many state organizations as it can, especially if they have retained or better yet continuous ballot access which would be hard to get otherwise. But the Libertarian Party brand is about to become more toxic than most people have even begun to imagine and the national party will not let state parties secede and manage their own state affairs in peace even if that was not true.
They will pursue maximalist harrassment including through the highly expensive and time consuming legal system and appeals to the hilt everywhere they can. They may have dark GOP funding to pursue this. Given that they will make the LP brand nationally and internationally toxic, why bother? Let them have the name, at least where state law does not preclude it. For example, try Frontier Party. Or your state name (if allowed by state law and if another party by that name does not already exist) such as Wyoming Party. Montana Party etc. Independent or Independence is a good choice again where not banned by state law or already taken. Freedom or Liberty are good. There are other choices. For instance Utah has or used to have a Personal Choice Party.
The LNC’s brand ownership claims over “Libertarian Party” may be legally flawed, but that does not mean they won’t win in court. Despite the name, the justice system is anything but just. Judges are either elected or appointed, and thus tend to be (increasingly so) partisan hacks. Both Democrats and Republicans (especially but not only Republicans) believe that Libertarians hurt them in their increasingly nasty fight with each other. But even in those cases when Democrats think Libertarians help them they don’t want precedents that will help e.g. Greens. State party ownership of their ballot lines, party name etc usually prevails, but not always. For example Americans Elect of Oklahoma was overruled in their election to place a presidential nominee on the 2012 ballot because the national party chose otherwise and sued. If partisan judges deem it in their interests to reject precedent and give the Rockwell/Heise Cucks national brand name supremacy extended to all states, who will stop them? Things have only gotten worse and worse on that front since 2012, especially at the top levels where appeals end up, and you can count on appeals if the alt white Hoppe-Rockwell-Heise Cucks lose at any level.
Even if they don’t end up losing they will eat up massive amounts of your time and money trying to wear you down in every way possible. And even if you win in the end what will you win? A name and brand they will make nuclear level toxic and radioactive in the meantime,. so again why bother? let them have it.
What about states where a party can’t change names without losing ballot access like Michigan? Bite the bullet. Just start over and get on the ballot. After you establish a track record of success in some other states first.
“There, dear reader, is the Reality Caucus of the Libertarian Party. Nurture it. They have set a goal they can achieve: to give the Wyoming Republican Party a real party of opposition.”
Leave statewides for a minute and discuss counties. In Indiana in 2020, Donald Rainwater took 11% of the vote, finishing 3rd. But he took 2nd in 32 of the 92 counties in the state ahead of the Democrat, and that was in a state with straight ticket voting in a presidential election year. (The Democratic nominee Woody Myers took 32% for their worst-ever performance in the state and only won 4 out of 92 counties.) There are wide swathes of this country that with the main parties having nationalized politics, the Democrats in hundreds of counties across the country are a dead organization that cannot win a local election. Focus on these areas in the Midwest, the Plains states, and the Rocky Mountain states to give the by fact one-party political system a jolt.
Hey, if I was in a major city, I could make the exact same argument on how dead Republicans are there. Why the Working Families Party clings to fusion in New York City elections for example is idiotic in my opinion.
This is excellent. Party-building has to be a ground up effort, and the discussion on the LNC seems to be more about national kinds of stuff rather than figuring out how to support local parties in doing practical politics. I appreciate the article, and Wyoming’s focus on the reality of winning elections and governing once you’ve won.
Thanks for informing about Marshall Burt and the strategy in Wyoming. I think that it could be successful and hope the Libertarian Party candidates will win election. I have contributed to Mr. Burt’s re-election campaign. And I will check out Bethany Baldes.