Browne announced in 1997 that he needed a much larger Libertarian Party, a party that by December 1999 would number 200,000 members instead of 22,000 members.
Could the Party possibly recruit 200,000 members by the end of 1999?
No matter what method the National Party used, Browne’s recruitment objective appeared unattainable. On one hand, to reach Browne’s objective, the National Party needed to recruit 5,000 members per month for three years, and replace every member who did not renew his membership. The non-renewal rate for new members is supposedly around 50% after the first year of membership, with additional percentages in further years. The Party actually needed to recruit more than eight thousand members per month, every month, for three years. Historically, the Libertarian Party had recruited more like a fifth or a tenth of this number of members, per month, in good months. Browne was demanding a staggering ten-fold increase in recruitment rates.
To make matters worse, the recruitment scheme under consideration was direct mail advertising. The recruitment yield on direct mail advertising was typically less than one per cent of letters mailed. Recruitment on the needed scale would require mailing perhaps thirty million letters. While a person who was a gun owner, a foe of the war on drugs, and an opponent of corporate welfare rape of the National Forests might usefully be sent several very different recruiting letters, returns eventually diminish. A direct mail campaign aiming for 200,000 party members needed to target ten or twenty million different people. It is by no means clear that in 1997 the United States had ten million people who were both open to the Libertarian message and not already firmly committed to one of the other political parties.
Nonetheless, 200,000 by 2000 was Browne’s announced objective. The Browne Campaign worked vigorously to attain it. The Campaign faced a complication: The Party and the Browne Campaign were nominally distinct organizations. The Browne Campaign had paid National Director Perry Willis under the table. It had resorted to money laundering to hide at least one further payment. It had placed Willis’s girlfriend on its payroll. To recruit 180,000 new members, that wasn’t enough. Now the Campaign needed a Party that it controlled, a Party that enthusiastically supported Browne’s goals.
To increase Libertarian Party membership nearly tenfold in less than three years, the National Party machine would have to stay totally focused on recruiting members. A National Party whose primary goal was not membership recruitment would almost certainly not recruit the vast hordes of new Libertarians that Browne demanded. Either the LNC recruited 180,000 new Libertarians and their replacements, or a critical component of Browne’s plan would be lacking. If that component wasn’t there, Browne’s campaign would lose credibility.
It was by no means certain that the National Party would even try to do what Browne wanted. There were and are other models for National Party strategy. Instead of recruiting new members, the National Party could focus on supporting local candidates in local winnable races, and on building local organizations county by county across America.
How would the Browne Campaign persuade the Libertarian Party to focus on recruiting members? The answer lay in the Party’s form of governance. Between National Conventions, the Party—the Libertarian Party of the United States (LPUS)—is run by its National Committee. The Libertarian National Committee (LNC) consists of four National Officers, five At-Large Representatives, nine or so Regional Representatives, and their nine or so Alternates, all elected every two years for two year terms. [The Regional Representatives and their Alternates, in most Regions, serve at the pleasure of their State Chairs.] The four National Officers are the Chair (who under the By-laws is also Party CEO), Vice Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer. The National Committee has an Executive Committee, consisting of the four National Officers and other LNC members as chosen by the National Committee. The National Committee has regularly employed a paid staff, in recent years including a National Director. If the Browne Campaign wanted the National Committee to support Browne’s strategy, the Campaign or its friends had to control the National Committee.
For 1996-1998, the National Officers were Stephen Dasbach, Karen Allard, Gary Johnson, and Hugh Butler. At different dates, At-Large Representatives included Sharon Ayres, John Buttrick, Ron Crickenberger, Steven Givot, Barb Goushaw, Bill Hall, and Steve Winter. At different dates, Regional Representatives included Joe Dehn, Paul Smith, Chris Gardiniere, Ken Bisson, Candi Copas, Tim Moir, Mark Tuniewicz, Robert Franke, Gene Cisewski, and Geoffrey Neale.
By 1997, the Browne Campaign must have known that it needed a National Committee that focused on membership recruitment. Without that focus, without 200,000 members by 2000 or some reasonable semblance thereof, the 2000 Browne Campaign would lack credibility. How could it obtain that focus? If the Browne campaign elected a friend as National Chair, many difficulties with the National Committee would be removed. On the other hand, a hostile National Committee might ask inconvenient questions about the relationships between the Browne campaign and the National Committee Staff. The National Chair was the key. The Libertarian National Committee had historically often deferred to the National Chair, especially when the National Chair was deploying the internal technical platform on which he had run.
