Last updated on May 14, 2025
As written in the early noughts:
My sources with old issues of Mass Liberty, the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts newsletter, quote from ‘An Interview with Harry Browne’ published in the June, 1995 issue: “As far as money is concerned, I don’t know how much we’ll raise, but we are aiming at 50 million dollars… We have a lot of avenues available to us like the investment community that didn’t exist before. We have on our campaign committee Doug Casey, Robert Prector, Mark Skousen, Adrian Day, almost all of the leading hard money investment writers who have a tremendous circulation and who will help fundraise for us and so on… And as far as organization is concerned, we have Sharon Ayres running the campaign.”
For the second quarter, the Browne campaign again paid Perry Willis and Bill Winter. Willis received $2,000 on June 24 and William Winter received $885 in smaller payments spread over three months. Willis was compensated for ‘consulting and reimbursement for travel’, while Winter was compensated for ‘consulting and reimbursement for office supplies’.
The July 1995 fundraiser went to a new topic, ‘Our plan to use the CityVote to achieve national publicity’. The September 1995 fundraiser followed up on the issue, heralding ‘Our plan to distribute 6 million flyers to CityVote voters.’ CityVote was a non-governmentally organized primary concocted by Democratic pollsters and activists. The intent was to counter the bias in the early primaries toward small and rural states by running a non-governmental Presidential primary in urban areas. CityVote’s objective was to try to look like a primary, to collect large numbers of votes, and to generate extensive publicity for the opinions of urban voters. Many of these voters were presumed by CityVote’s liberal Democrat organizers to be liberal Democrats.
For Browne, CityVote was an opportunity to engage in retail politics, generate publicity for the Libertarian Party, and concentrate the campaign’s limited resources on a small number of geographic areas. CityVote happened as promised, but Browne’s role in the event was minimal. Browne raised money for CityVote, but does not appear to have used it effectively.
August 1995: Dasbach Defends Willis and Winter
The relationship between the Browne campaign and the National Headquarters was discussed in an exchange of emails between then-National-Chair Steve Dasbach, LNC Regional Alternate Jesse Markowitz, and long-time LP activist Dean Ahmad. In a response dated August 6, 1995 and supplied by Ahmad in a 2001 public statement, Dasbach claimed that Willis had produced a ‘document’ for the Browne campaign, while Winter did ‘graphical layout work’.
There are three difficulties with Dasbach’s claim, one relating to the National Committee, the second to the FEC filings, and the last to the actual documents from the Browne campaign. In summary: The National Committee difficulty is that the National Committee had had clear conflict of interest rules in place for more than a decade. The FEC filings difficulty is that we have Browne’s FEC filings, and these reveal why Willis was actually paid. The documentation issue is that publicly available documents—if authentic—show that Willis and Winter were both heavily involved in managing the Browne Campaign.
To deal with conflict of interest, Dasbach quoted from the rules reproduced above. Dasbach admitted that Willis and Winter were providing technical support to the Browne campaign. To excuse this behavior, Dasbach observed in his memo to Markowitz that Willis produced Browne’s document “…on his own time and he was paid market rate for the work.” Dasbach then advanced the claim that “…Since this work neither constituted ‘support’ nor an in-kind ‘contribution’, Perry was not prohibited from performing it as a vendor.” Dasbach’s statement that Willis did not provide an ‘in-kind “contribution” ‘ is a red herring, because the LNC Policy manual does not refer to in-kind contributions. The Policy Manual reference to contributions is the phrase “contribute any money”.
Dasbach also claimed that Willis was paid market rates for producing “one document for the Browne campaign which dealt with issues similar to those that he provides general advice on.” The nature of the document and its exact topics were never specified by Dasbach. How much was Willis paid? The ‘one document’ description was also used at the April 1995 LNC meeting, by which date Willis had been paid $578 by the Browne campaign. Was $578 a legitimate market rate for document preparation? Dasbach’s position that $578 was the ‘legitimate market rate’ for preparing a document leads to interesting questions when compared with what the LNC paid Willis in 1997-1998 for document preparation..
A further difficulty with Dasbach’s claim comes from the FEC filings. FEC filings require that campaigns report the “purpose of disbursement” for each expenditure. Winter’s work for the campaign was characterized as “consulting”, which could certainly include graphics for a series of documents. According to Dasbach in statements going back to April, Willis was compensated for preparing “one document”. However, in the first quarter of 1995 Willis was paid not for “consulting” but for “travel, supplies”. The question one asks is: Where did he travel and what did he do there? The other question one asks is: How is the travel compensation related to Dasbach’s claim that Willis was paid for writing “a document”? It is now clear that Willis was paid for document preparation in the Second Quarter of 1995. The First Quarter payment had a different motive, one not identified correctly to the LNC by Dasbach.
Dasbach’s response to Markowitz and Ahmad was extensively coached by Perry Willis, who in a July 19, 1995 memo to Dasbach discussed possible responses. In the memo as released by John Famularo, one finds Willis’s particularly telling suggestion: “For that reason I think that the first step to be taken is to tell Jesse that the matter is being reviewed by the Executive Committee and that a full report will be forthcoming immediately following the July 2, EC meeting, and could he please wait until then. This would give us (the EC members) time to discuss it in private and see if we could come to a unified position.” Such a unified position, of course, would be found by Willis’s presumed supporters; only then would Willis’s critics have any input. If Willis could obtain unified Executive Committee support for his position, a half-dozen influential voices would speak as one in defending Willis against a few critics.
From the tone of the memo, Willis clearly believed that Dasbach would support him. The memo is clearly addressed to a political ally, not to a high party official who might possibly have wondered if the Party’s interests were the same as Willis’s. In his memo, Willis critiqued possible reasons for saying that he should not work for Browne, notably “Because the LP owns all my productive capabilities, and doesn’t wish to share them with anyone else”, “My outside work conflicts with my fiduciary responsibilities”, and “Because I can’t do similar prospecting work for Tompkins or Schiff”. No matter the reason, Willis found a justification for his conduct. Between 1995 and 2001, Willis’s thinking on this topic changed little.
Willis’s memo to Dasbach does not list Willis’s activities for the Browne Campaign. However, members of the Campaign’s core staff are listed in an 8/1/95 memo from Perry Willis, discussing the relative merits of first and third class postage. The memo as published by John Famularo is directed to Michael Cloud, Sharon Ayres, Jack Dean, and Bill Winter. Allowing that the memo is authentic:
Willis gives a careful explanation of the merit of mailing third class, as had apparently just been done, and then says “this is clearly Michael’s area”, “we should consult with him before making changes in his area”, “We made that decision…”, and refers to a “written analysis” from “Michael”. The only “Michael” named in the memo is Michael Cloud.
From the text of Willis’s memo, the address list is clearly the tactical leadership of the Browne Campaign. The absence of Stuart Reges confirms Reges’s 2001 statement that there were things going on that he didn’t know about. The presence of Ayres in the discussion should surprise no one. Jack Dean’s firm was later to be the conduit of funds to Perry Willis. The statement “we made that decision” in a memo addressed to Dean implies that Dean was an active part of the Campaign’s inner circle. There are two surprises on the list: Bill Winter and Perry Willis. Many Libertarians believed that Winter and Willis had helped the Browne 1996 campaign in minor ways, preparing a few documents or generating some graphics. The 8/1/95 memo shows Winter and Willis as members of the ultimate inner circle running Browne’s Campaign.
In discussions before the National Committee, Steve Dasbach claimed that Willis had simply prepared some documents at market rates. From the Invoice and Dasbach’s confession, we know that statement was partly true. Willis had written fundraising letters for Browne. The 8/1/95 memo shows that Dasbach’s statement was incomplete. From the memo, Willis was in fact one of perhaps five principals running Browne’s campaign. Willis discusses which postage was used for a mailing, saying unambiguously “we made that decision”.
The belief that Willis remained substantially active with the Browne Campaign appears to be corroborated by a 1995 Calendar, alleged to be for Perry Willis and released by John Famularo, showing Willis’s Work and Evening schedules for June 14—ca. June 30, 1995 (with fragmentary futureward entries). The list gives a wide variety of tasks performed by Willis for the Browne campaign as part of his “Work” schedule, i.e., his schedule of work done during the day on what ought to have been the LNC’s time. The Perry Willis who had lobbied against National Director Cisewski for not working hard enough for the LNC spent part of his own day hours working for Browne.
In discussions before the National Committee, Steve Dasbach asserted that Winter simply did graphics design. From the 8/1/95 memo, Dasbach’s claim about Winter and Willis were apparently equally incorrect. The memo—if authentic—shows that Bill Winter actively participated in running the Browne Campaign. Unlike Willis, Winter remained until late 2002 on the LNC payroll, editing the National Newsletter, LP News.
On 8/1/95, all across America, hundreds of supporters of Ohmen, Tompkins, and Schiff could have contemplated the dues they had paid and the donations they had given to the National Party–dues and donations they had voluntarily given to support the Libertarian movement as a whole. One can only wonder: What they would have thought if they had learned that their money had instead supported the Presidential campaign of Harry Browne, by paying two of his apparent principal operatives?
