Browne’s Fall Campaign
For the third quarter, FEC reports show that William Winter was paid $1142, again for consulting and reimbursement for office supplies, in three not-quite-uniform monthly payments. Willis was not paid by Browne in the third quarter. For the fourth quarter, FEC filings show that Bill Winter was paid $688 for “consulting and reimbursement for office supplies”. On November 7, 1995, Perry Willis was paid $465 for “consulting and reimbursement for travel”.
By Fall 1995, the campaign plan took on a very different tack. Browne’s October 1995 letter was ‘Our Plan to get Harry Browne’s book on the New York Times best seller list.’ The plan was simple. Every LP member was asked to buy a copy of Harry’s book ‘Why Government Doesn’t Work’, which put Browne’s name on the cover as author. True believers would buy two, three, many copies of Harry’s book. All those sales would put Browne’s book on the best-seller list, making it more likely that non-Libertarians would buy it. The author vividly remembers seeing appeals to loyal Libertarians to purchase many copies of ‘Why Government Doesn’t Work’, enough to give the illusion that the book was extremely popular. In the end the market manipulation scheme failed.
Many Party members began to wonder if Browne was running for President, or using the Party to promote his books. Like the other plans in Browne’s fundraising letters, the ‘best-seller’ scheme failed to transit from the world of ideas to the world of events. The New Hampshire campaign? The outside members? Vast support from the financial community? The support for local chapters? CityVote? Those ideas had sunk without a trace.
Unsurprisingly, many New Hampshire Libertarians who had been generous to the Browne campaign felt that they had been swindled. They had given generously to support an LP Presidential campaign in their home state, and the campaign wasn’t going to show up. Come 2000, when Browne again ran for President, his organization had to appoint Richard Watras, Jr. of Massachusetts to run his New Hampshire volunteer drive, because no New Hampshirite would agree to serve.
