What is the significance of the P Transaction for the Browne Campaign?
Once again the National Party had given Browne’s campaign a direct subsidy of substantial value for Browne’s 2000 effort. Browne donors, in addition to the letters and the books and other tchotchkes, now had received Party membership extensions, which some of them believed had been paid for by the Campaign, but which were actually gifts in kind from the Party. Those positive memories should reasonably be expected to have a cash value for Browne’s Campaigns in the years to come. In 1997, Browne would again ask his donors for money. By rewarding Browne’s pre-1996-convention supporters with Party memberships, the Browne donors were given happy memories by the LNC, memories that would still be in place when Browne launched fundraising for his 2000 Campaign.
There is room for doubt as to who actually approved the delayed payments and special rental rates for Browne’s uses of the LNC mailing list. There is absolutely no doubt that the $58,050 gift in kind to the Browne Campaign, in the form of members having their dues made current, was voted by the LNC Executive Committee. Allard and Butler voted in favor; Famularo voted against. As Chair of a small committee Dasbach had the option under Roberts’ Rules of Order to defeat the motion by voting ‘no’ and making a tie. Dasbach’s ‘abstain’ was the vote that passed the motion.
Election 1996
At long last, Election Day came and passed. William Jefferson Clinton crushed Robert Dole, but narrowly failed to get a majority of the popular vote. Ross Perot, in his second run for President, finished third at 8%. Ralph Nader beat Harry Browne and finished fourth. Nader had refused to allow fundraising for his campaign. The Browne campaign spent two-thirds of a million dollars. Browne finished fifth, receiving 470,000 votes, one half of one percent of the total. Browne’s performance was mediocre for a Libertarian Presidential candidate. He hadn’t obtained the near-million votes of the 1980 Clark campaign. He had not fallen to the dreadful near-quarter-million votes of some previous efforts. However, he had done better than he would do in 2000.
Soon after the election attacks were circulated on two of Browne’s predecessors. As recalled to the author by Bill Woolsey: David Nolan published a critique of the 1980 Clark campaign for not being adequately libertarian. A major criticism was that the Clark campaign hadn’t called for immediate abolition of the Income Tax. (Clark had called for cutting the income tax in half.) According to Woolsey, Nolan explained to him that there had been a request that Nolan write the critique. David Bergland criticized the 1988 Ron Paul campaign for not knowing how to work with Libertarians. Bergland had been Browne’s 1996 Campaign Chair. Whatever the actual motive for these attacks, they had the secondary effect of making many Libertarians feel worse about 1980 and 1988, and thus less bad about 1996.
