We are grateful to Paul Darr for supplying a link through a telephone. Signal quality is a bit mixed. There is occasional loud static.
Ter Maat is speaking. He predicts that the country will have a financial collapse in mid-century. Apparently the Board did something yesterday. He is praising them for whatever they did. I am here in part to take questions. I have not had any.
Q: How is the campaign right now? A: Multifaceted. Some facets are total failures. Oliver handles media well. We don’t have any money. Almost everything about the campaign is very unfortunate.
Q: How can we help with fundraising? Why do people not give us money? They give us negative reasons. Ideas that even bring in a little money is good.
Ter Maat is a very slow speaker, with gaps between his sentences. His comments have a lot of adjectives, few nouns.
We are now at 9:20 in the meeting. They are doing board training. They are supposed to break into small groups for 20 minutes to discuss what they will do in the next three years. The objective is to discuss goals.
End of live stream. Thank you, Paul.
We are back live. The sound is less than ideal. I keep hearing parts of words.
SPeaker: “We have reached the financial status and the budget. We need to revise the budget. We are not ready to do that yet. Some of the budget lines we approved last year do not match. We have to change things around. It’s not severe yet. I have a few more questions.” I’m quite sure I heard ‘Nobody’s expressing any concerns about our finances’. We did have $61,000 and will get 31 more…
Second speaker (sounds like Angela): We have no cash reserve. We need a cash reserve. We need additional help. (Part of the issue with the previous speaker was clearly not the electronics, it was that the speech volume wandered a lot.) Hopes she will get Help with fundraising calls. We can do that in the short term. We need to get something operational.
Someone is whispering near the microphone so I can’t tell readily what is being said. At least one speaker is not using coherent sentences. There are a few words, and then things change. Chair wants convention costs to be discussed in executive session. They went into executive session to discuss, I think, the hotel bills.
Something was changed. Ballot access committee reported.
Redpath: Tennessee: 275 signatures were needed. Could not do it with volunteers. Some Tennessee people did not like our nominees. Petitioners who were sent were not known quantities. Production was poor. Redpath went down in midweek, and barely made the signature deadline. Validity was limited. New Jersey. State Party kept saying they would do it. Then they said they were not making it. We ended up paying ten dollars a signature. A lot of signature is based on relationships. Q: people is out of staters. Redpath: answer is standing in front of post offices. Speaker: Our long time petitioners have passed away or gotten old. Some discussion of moving the convention earlier in the year. It might help. Some states do not allow substitution, so we cannot petition until we know who the candidate is. Speaker (I think Ford) advocates for petitioning at festivals.
Texas notes that their convention date is fixed, but they can appoint delegates earlier. Speaker: We need a pipeline for volunteers. All the people who go on line to complain about Tennessee Colorado…are people who are not sacrificing their time or volunteering their money or their efforts. I don’t want to hear. For any one listening to this, I don’t care.
Harlos laments issues with laws setting convention dates. Now local speakers make it impossible to hear. Someone: Volunteers are our first line of defense. State Committees and chairs need to secure volunteers. Needs to be codified in some capacity.
Redpath: We need to beef up our volunteer effort. I’ve tried for 36 years to figure out how to do that.
We should be extremely grateful to Paul Darr for doing this, but you need hi-grade microphone for this to work.
There is a ballot access report. Redpath: I was not consulted on this document. Ballot access is well below budget. LNC for the year spent under $120,000. He critiques the report. He notes at least one petitioner insists on paper checks, because he was concerned about non-payment. Notes that USPS is barring petitioners. We need a first amendment attorney to open up public spaces. Asking petitioners to validate signatures appears unworkable. There is room for improved administration, but you need an activist point of view, not rules.
Several speakers are hard to head. There is discussion of who should validate signatures before they are turned in. Proposal that paid petitioners should validate their own signatures as a step.
Discussion is hard to follow. Suggestions are made as to what state chairs should do. Harlos proposes that each committee be required to have its own policy manual. There is a proposal to add Mr. Malagon’s contractor proposals to the policy manual. Harlos proposes that this should instead be a standing executive order from the chair. Malagon says that the material should be in the policy manual. Harlos argues that the policy manual should not contain the material in question. Motion passes 11-3.
Convention Oversight Committee and Employment Policy Committee report were apparently in Executive Session.
We reach discussion of something. They appear to have reached a proposal to adopt a strategic plan. There is a specific proposal is to recruit 500 candidates over three years. Increase our annual budget to two million in three years and 1.5 million in two years. Chair?: We are at $800,000 for this year. (may be so far) They are discussing trying to reach $1.2 million. If we want 2 million in two years, we need to reach 1 million for this year. We currently aren’t doing it. If zoho gives us 25% a year we reach $2 million in three years. Executive session. Recover to 17,500 members in three years. We were there not very long ago. We are currently at 12,000. Proposal to increase dues is shot down by Harlos. There is a discussion of ‘affiliate links’.
We have transferred most of our operations to ZOHO. The Unified Membership program has not transferred yet. We expect to be complete in 1-2 months. We will then build out various operations. Membership data should be working by September. Program costs $45/month/user. We can do automated reports on your schedule. To look at the CRM you need a login. That’s a user. I think.
They are discussing a ‘leader board’. Conversation is hard to follow.
They are discussing membership cards, and pins for larger donors. Chair is reading proposals from a brainstorming session.
They are discussing Project Radical D…. Redpath condemns Project Radical something. We need to speak out on the great issues. Building the party from the bottom up will not work. Argues for proportional representation in elections. We should work to change how elections advance.Ford: We have spent a huge amount of effort and money being a national party. We failed. We don’t have the people who can challenge in major races. We don’t have people who could go out and run the government. They can get the needed experience in local races. There is a discussion of the Dillon Rule, which sets powers of local government.
Roll Call vote. No- Redpath, 1 abstention. All other were Yes, the Chair abstaining.
Mister Haman move that this Board adopts the following resolution: McKee, Ford, Malagon to investigate allegations of misconduct against Caryn Ann Harlos which if true cast doubt on her fitness to continue in office and report resolutions if allegations are well founded.
Harlos: I don’t think the committee is unbiased. I could move to amend. Haman asks to speak to his motion. I did not hear a second.
Harlos Moves to amend to add Nanna, Nekhaila, Redpath to the committee. Harlos: we’ve been down this road before. A lot of this has to do with Colorado. No matter what happens there will be great disagreement with the party. These people have good reputations. She complains that she was not warned in advance.
Haman: Committee should be an odd number.
Nanna was inaudible.
Haman says board needs to look carefully at what Harlos has done recently, especially her actions as Secretary.
Nekhaila: I’ve run businesses, done investigations of senior people. I can add value by my experience.
Haman says that many of the chairs in his region are on board with his motion.
Harlos claims most things are grounds for removal.
Hanna: I did not propose a motion to removal.
Arguments about the policy manual contents. Someone says the policy manual is not important for this. Motion to add a seventh member to add Boss.
Passes 8-7-1
Much background noise.
Harlos, talked about shrink committee.
Haman Strike Malagon and Redpath.
Nekhaila mentions having been on a criminal investigatory committee in Florida. Committee has a fixation about having an odd number on the committee.
Motion to strike Nanna and Malagon. I think the motion failed. I did not hear a count.
Harlos: proposes a substitute motion for the amendment.
Haman speaks against. Something is wrong. We need to do something.
Motion was apparently failed. Next vote is on Harlos amendment. Motion defeated 6-8-1
Vote on original Motion. Chair is explaining to Ford that all motions have been called.
Nanna reads his original motion again.
Vote passes 8-6. Chair said she is not voting.
Harlos moves for one week limit on the report. Chair objects to the motion. Someone is proposing an amendment, but the background noise is impossible
Malagon speaks against the one week limit. A fast track is a bad idea. We have to do it in the time we need to do it.
Nekhaila: One week is not adequate. Present at our October meeting is sensible if it works.
Harlos withdraws motion.
Chair: Proposes we let Colorado work things out and be available to mediate. I think she said that her meeting with Colorado was not hostile but they were not interested in changing. Acoustics are challenging.
Move to adjourn at the call of the chair. They will have a meeting at 8:30 EST with executive session with the Colorado Board.
They adjourned, I think.
Hi George,
My question to Mr. Redpath that led to a discussion about conventions was: Do we think it’s at all possible that moving our convention to earlier in the year would help with Ballot Access drives? I used New Jersey as an example because I grew up in Philadelphia, and know that many of the people inside New Jersey during the summer months do not actually live in New Jersey, whereas registered voters may travel to other states. Adding in that in New Mexico for example, it was apparently as high as 109 degrees some days for the petitioners. The question was whether getting the nomination done earlier could help mitigate some of these issues. I believe either Ms. McArdle or Ms. Harlos mentioned that Texas’ convention is set by state law, not the LPTX. Mr. Darr had an answer for how this doesn’t necessarily have to be a problem, because their bylaws allow their ExCom to nominate national delegates (going off memory here). So that’s how that discussion came up.
“Redpath: We need to beef up our volunteer effort. I’ve tried for 36 years to figure out how to do that.”
Mr. Redpath has been of inestimable value to the Libertarian Party for four decades. Only he knows the financial and other sacrifices he has made in the cause of the LP. Rational folks probably would have advised him years ago that the hope and promise of the LP was not being realized and to give it up. Membership of 12,000 is just about where it was 30 years ago.
This stagnation has to have affected morale for things like petitioning and running for office. In 1980, New Jersey LP was so strong they could knock out their signature requirements on a weekend and then send volunteers to Penna. to help in the Clark signature effort. More than 40 years later, they have trouble getting 800 signatures??
Bless Bill Redpath’s heart, his dedication, his stubborn refusal to ever concede defeat. It is well beyond time for the LP to have a heart to heart discussion on what its future, if any, is going to look like, and what can realistically be accomplished in the political arena.
One of the first people that I met at the first national convention I attended in 2006 was Mr. Redpath where he ran for chair.
I feel honored to have been able to serve with him for two terms on the LNC while he was chair, followed by my good friend, Mr. Hinkle from California.
If the libertarian party had a Bill Redpath in every state, a third of Congress would be libertarians. He has been tireless in his dedication and sacrifices to further the cause.
Yes, there are thousands of other dedicated activists, and they also deserve credit for their work. But I have witnessed Mr Redpath in action. His knowledge and opinion on when conventions should be held should be listened to and strongly considered.
I saw a reference to ZOHO. Did they move the membership database from Civi to ZOHO?
Apparently the transfer is mostly complete except for UMP and a few related items.
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This year I ran for US House of representative as a Libertarian in California. (I lost in the primary. California is a top two state.) To get on the ballot I needed to get about 300 signatures from registered Libertarians. How is it that I was able to get on the ballot and we (the state Party of Tennessee, the National Party, and Chase Oliver for President campaign were not able to get Chase on the ballot in Tennessee? Explain that to me. I do not understand. Make me understand. I was able to do it. Make me understand.
I believe that Tennessee is still up in the air.
Here’s my guess: Because TN is only 250 signatures, it is normally handled by the people most involved in the party (the state committee) without issue. The people on the state committee did not like Oliver, so they sat on their hands without telling anyone they weren’t going to do anything. The Oliver campaign and/or the LNC realized this at the last minute and had to scramble to get it done.
The Ballot Access report says they ended up submitting nearly 500 signatures and expect TN to be successful.
Perhaps something similar happened in New Jersey, but success is more in doubt.
To get on as a libertarian in TN, you need 44,000 signatures. To get on as an independent, you need something like 200-250. So the belief is that Chase will make it on in TN, but as an independent. Even with that lower threshold though, there have been issues.
Looks like all that time & money was wasted with the consultant they hired for board training. Too bad – should have been used for Chase & ballot access.
From everything I have been reading, here and elsewhere, they don’t really want to fund their candidate’s ballot access.
By “they”, I mean the majority of the LNC in control. There appears to be at least one rational person on the LNC this term that I respect for his years of service and dedication. That of course is Mr. Redpath.