Browne also gave Bergland direct access to LibertyWire. The 18 June 1998 mailing of LibertyWire was “An Important Message from David Bergland to Delegates to the 1998 National Convention”. In this message, Bergland laid out his substantial qualifications to be National Chair. He also made clear—by being allowed to use Browne 2000’s LibertyWire message —that he was the chosen candidate of Harry Browne.
In case anyone had missed the point, at the 1998 National Convention Harry Browne himself gave the nominating speech for Bergland. Prominent Browne staffers worked hard to elect Bergland. They also had a secret weapon. Two years before, the Party National Committee had allowed the Browne campaign to pad the membership roster, using the P Transaction to inflate the rosters of state parties where Browne had numerous donors. Of course, some of these donors had allowed their memberships to expire, but others had renewed. The states from which these donors came were more likely to send pro-Browne delegates to the National Convention, and the number of delegates that those states were allowed to send had been artificially enhanced. In practice, the value of that weapon was more limited than might have been hoped in 1996. In almost every state, every respectable Libertarian who wanted to be a delegate and could reach Washington was able to sit on the convention floor.
After a vigorously fought political battle described by Liberty magazine as ‘an especially bitter campaign’, Bergland defeated Cisewski and was elected National Chair. Especially bitter? Your author was personally lobbied in a private conversation by a leading Browne supporter. Speaking of Cisewski, the supporter assured me ‘He’s incompetent.’ Competence is in the eye of the beholder. No standard of comparison was specified. Cisewski and his team did not recruit a slate of candidates for the National Committee. Supporters of the Bergland membership recruitment strategy had only modest difficulty making a nearly clean sweep of National Committee posts.
The Browne-Bergland clique also tried to tamper with the National Party’s By-Laws to prolong its control of the Party. First, they proposed to increase the term of the National Committee from two years to four. This change would have extended Bergland’s term through 2002, so that the Browne-Bergland clique would not need to defend its hold on the National Committee in 2000 while it was trying to capture another Presidential nomination. Second, they proposed to change the By-Laws so that the appointed National Director rather than the elected National Chair would be the Party’s CEO. At the 1998 National Convention, the Party’s delegates saw through the maneuvers and rejected both of these proposed changes. To keep control of the Party through Election Day 2000, Bergland or a successor would have to capture the National Chairmanship in July 2000. The National Chair would remain as Party CEO.
Bergland won the election. Browne’s Campaign, working through Browne’s 1996 Campaign Co-Chair, had de facto control of the National Committee. The Party as a whole remained divided between Bergland and Cisewski supporters. Cisewski openly offered his services to assist the Party in its campaigns and projects in whatever manner Bergland requested. Cisewski was never contacted by Bergland, the National Office, or the Browne campaign to ask if he would help them. Bergland made no effort to heal the split in the Party. This motif was to repeat in 2000, when the Browne machine elected Jim Lark as National Chair, and Lark’s chief opponent—your author—offered to assist Lark when requested. No such request was ever made.
Following the convention, the Libertarian National Committee appropriated funds to implement Project Archimedes. There was no debate within the LNC on the wisdom of the strategy. Strictly speaking, the Libertarian National Committee had not endorsed Project Archimedes by name. They just voted to spend large amounts of money on steps that exactly matched the Project Archimedes direct mail strategy. They also raised no objection when the Party’s national newsletter, LP News, called the direct mail campaign on which they were spending money ‘Project Archimedes’. There may have been some smoke and mirrors around its adoption, but there can be no legitimate doubt that the National Party tried to put the Project Archimedes into effect. Nonetheless, when it became obvious that Project Archimedes had failed, some former backers disingenuously claimed that Project Archimedes could not fail because it had never been adopted.
