We quote their X account
The Montana Libertarian Party has officially rejected Chase Oliver as our presidential candidate.
We have maintained that we will always prioritize Montana first, and we do not believe his campaign advances our goals in this state.
Similarly situated states should follow our lead, and we call upon the LNC to consider suspending and replacing him.
Chase is on the ballot now in MT. The Board decided to do so. Apparently everyone is smarter than Colorado.
Unless something changed this weekend he ultimately made it on in Colorado as well. They failed or didn’t try in New York, DC and Illinois and somehow botched Tennessee. Illinois is registered write in. They are (as far as I know still) attempting to dispute the verification results in Tennessee. If courts don’t change anything – that window is rapidly closing – they’re on for 477/538 electors, which is better than I expected but is, as I thought it would be, the least for them since the 1980s.
Not all measures are in, but those that are all point to their least well performing presidential campaign since the 70s or 80s depending on measure used. I expect the remaining ones to follow that trend once results are in. The aftermath doesn’t look bright from here. But we’ll see.
So there was a formal decision of the party that was voted on and there’s a record of said vote with names? Do we have that record and names?
I don’t quite understand what their problem is. Anyone can read Chace’s platform on his website to see for themselves how libertarian he is.
Is there any other candidate out there more libertarian than Chase?
They don’t want someone more libertarian. They’re PaleoLibertarians. They want someone who will engage in right wing culture wars, which Oliver won’t do.
There’s no question after reading this – & the comments on the LNC business list – that states are free to essentially follow the LP’s Chair’s lead & choose trump over Chase. There will be no repercussions & no disaffiliation. In any other political party both the Chair & affiliate would be removed immediately.
I do appreciate the very few LNC Members who have come out with their full fledge support for Chase -as they should – but better if the entire LNC & their so called Chair put out a statement not only stating their 100% endorsement, but show their support financially & also make it very clear that any affiliate that doesn’t do the same with be removed immediately.
If you – like me – are sick of these shenanigans & the hypocrisy of the LNC so called Leadership – then please join me here: https://www.liberalpartyusa.org/
That’s a mistake on LPMT’s part. Nobody ever claims the Presidential candidate represents the state party. That’s the state chair’s job.
They may not like Oliver, but they and he still wear the LP jersey, and as such, they should support their teammate in the efforts for the team.
To put it another way, you don’t have to like someone personally to work with them professionally.
Having a snit over it doesn’t do them any favors.
Disguising personal animosity as political differences doesn’t, either.
The better play is to say that they’ll make sure he’s on the ballot and then stay silent otherwise. Neutrality and Party over personal objections.
Wasn’t George Phillies himself an alternate candidate for President in 2008, rejecting the national choice in New Hampshire?
Didn’t Arizona do this too? Montana is clearly within their rights in reject Oliver.
But the timing is backwards. The New Hampshire LP had to run their petition drive before it was known who the LP National Convention would choose as their candidate, so they invited anyone who wanted to be their nominee to appear. This event took place while it was snowing. I won their nomination and promised to run if chosen. We got on the ballot…I did a little bit of the work … and I ran. I keep my promises.
There were 2 LP POTUS candidates on the ballot in 2008.
I’ve been told that Arizona in 2000 had effectively disaffiliated from national which is what allowed them to run a different candidate.
Ummh, not really. Read my book Funding Liberty, in particular Chapter 17 http://cmlc.org/fundingframes17.htm for more.
We really should remove that from the bylaws that the LNC can remove him. Its silly, invites shenanigans, and if the LNC ever tried to, it would be a state-by-state electoral law nightmare.
No, they should not remove that.
I call out the 2002 US Senate race in Colorado, where the candidate, one infamous Richard Stanley, wound up getting arrested for being stupid, and then winding up in federal prison after the election for threatening a judge. The LPCO Board at the time used its authority to try to rescind his nomination. The vote failed and he got censured instead.
If the provision is removed, the whole party gets stuck with a candidate that could commit mass murder and couldn’t do a thing about it.
Pass on that idea.
At the state level, the LP attracts all kinds of ridiculousness because the barrier to candidate entry is low. And many times state law won’t even allow a party to remove its own nominee post-primary or post-convention because that decision was made by the members / registered voters. The example you came up with here was more than 20 years ago, which signals how rare this situation is, and even in your example the party failed to remove the nominee. So how likely is this scenario for a national party nominee needing to be removed? Extremely low, even for the LP.
There is also nothing in the DNC Bylaws or the RNC Rules (their equivalent of LNC Bylaws) that contain any provision allowing their national committees to involuntarily remove a presidential or vice presidential nominee after the convention. Interestingly, however, both do contain this provision:
DNC Bylaws, Article 2, Section 5:
(b) After notice and opportunity for public hearing and upon grounds found by the National Committee to constitute good and sufficient cause, the National Committee may remove a member by two-thirds vote of the National Committee.
(c) Failure of any member of the National Committee to declare affirmatively his or her
support for the Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees within thirty (30) days after the adjournment of the National Convention shall constitute good and sufficient cause for removal.
RNC Rules, Rule 4
(b) The Republican National Committee shall have the power to declare vacant the seat of any member who refuses to support the Republican nominee for President of the United States or Vice President of the United States.
If we’re going to keep a provision allowing the LNC to suspend a presidential campaign, the language needs to be much firmer and less ripe for potential abuse, especially in this kind of environment where we have LNC members and whole state parties not backing the nominee. The threshold to remove could be raised to unanimous or at least 7/8th’s. Or it could stay at 3/4th’s but require ratification by a majority of state party executive committees (either one state, one vote OR states weighted by most recent delegation count). If the need to suspend is so blatantly obvious, such a hurdle should not pose a problem.
Congratulations on missing the point.
Since you missed it, here it is again:
Removing the provision in the Bylaws to ax a terrible candidate will allow candidates to run amok and damage the Party reputation and ballot access.
There are some currently in the Party who wish to do that now with Oliver, based on emotive personal biases and not rational strategic or tactical thinking. That is why there is no interest in the LNC doing that, *even though 3/4 of them are MC.*
Get it now? Even the MC leaders don’t want to go there. Why not? Because they’re responding strategically and tactically, not emotionally. It’s a nuclear option, undoubtedly. I explained the process elsewhere on these pages. To “purge” the ticket requires 8 steps encompassing months that will prevent many states from having a replacement on the ballot. That is far worse than status quo.
The correct approach to this is exactly the same that as done with Barr/Root in 2008 in several states: put them on the ballot as nominees, but then do nothing else except indicate that they are their own entity separate in voice and organization from the state affiliates. That fulfills the state affiliates obligation to the entire LP membership whose delegates made the nomination, while preserving their own position. Then for 2028, get better candidates. In 6 months the Presidential campaign will be another afterthought, but damage to the Party’s reputation by doing these temper tantrums will last far longer. It is better to keep quiet, grimace, and bear it, for it too shall pass.
As far as 2002 goes, it was used to illustrate the point that the mechanism was there and used, even if it failed. But it had gotten to the point where it was necessary because as a candidate he was doing damage to the Party despite my best efforts as Media Director at that time to prevent it. The entire LPCO Board was tired of cleaning up after him, but for reasons known only to them, did not vote to rescind his nomination. I brought that motion and voted for it. The mechanism is there to try to prevent things from getting that bad. In 2002 it had gotten that bad. In 2024 it currently isn’t, and hopefully it won’t be.
Any word from Oliver? As in, plans to sue if this isn’t revoked?
This could cost the Montana LP 7 of 20 delegates to the next couple of national conventions
This could the current MTLP 20 of 20 delegates forever.