Last updated on June 24, 2025
These claims are conclusively rejected by the Minutes of the December 12-13, 1998 LNC Meeting, held at the George Washington Inn in Washington, D.C. The Minutes are entirely explicit in showing that Project Archimedes was a project of the LNC. To quote from the very long Minutes:
“National Treasurer Mark Tuniewicz said that he had referred Brick Mill Studios to management as a possible new Archimedes vendor … Tuniewicz said that although recent Archimedes mailings have been successful, he is concerned that as these mailings grow larger, the risk associated with a less-than-expected response grows significantly in dollar terms … Dasbach agreed that Archimedes was a possible source of budgetary volatility. He said that, absent FEC problems, he proposes to set up a separate bank account for Archimedes expenditures and receipts to make it simpler to track the results of this project. Dasbach discussed several targets for the Archimedes Program. He said that if response rates can be increased, it will be economically feasible to mail to large numbers of new names.
Lark asked Dasbach to comment about the perception of some members that Archimedes is not doing very well. Dasbach said that Archimedes mailings generated fewer than projected new LP members because the number of names mailed to in the second half of 1998 was reduced from the projected 1,000,000 to about 600,000. The reduction in mailing size resulted from having less than anticipated working capital after the convention. Fylstra said that LP News has an article on Archimedes which provides a great deal of information supporting Dasbach’s presentation. Smith asked whether a separately-defined Archimedes account would receive both initial contributions from new members as well as subsequent contributions from the same individuals. Dasbach said that only the initial contribution would be deposited into the Archimedes account. Subsequent contributions would be deposited into other accounts, as appropriate.
Crickenberger said that we should explore “opt in” email lists as a possible electronic extension of the Archimedes approach to membership growth. Dasbach informed the Committee that Jack Dean had acquired the web addresses “libertarianparty.com”, “libertarianparty.org”, and “libertarianparty.net” and was willing to release the first two of these to LNC if LNC desired to acquire them. He said that Dean intends to retain rights to “libertarianparty.net” for commercial purposes.”
Bergland’s campaign material made much of emplacing a ‘dream team’ of National Staff members, including Steve Dasbach, Ron Crickenberger, and Bill Winter. Win or lose, Browne’s campaign significantly increased the likelihood that these men would go into place as the new National Staff. The delegates were of course unaware that Winter had been part of the inner circle managing Browne’s 1996 campaign.
It is decidedly peculiar for a Presidential aspirant and his National Chair candidate to be campaigning for the hire of particular staffers. Even viewed in a positive sense, making the campaign staffers a campaign issue put the staffers in an embarrassing position. Would Libertarians believe that the LNC staff was neutral in internal elections when partisans of one faction had gained them their jobs? Was such a belief defensible, even if the staff was neutral? Viewed less positively, Browne reasonably expected competition for the 2000 nomination. A National Staff that was indebted to Bergland and his eminence grise Browne for their jobs had a variety of options for repaying their debt.
The most peculiar aspect of the Bergland campaign is that it is not apparent from the record why he wanted the job. In his campaign letters, Bergland announced that “My first act as Libertarian National Chair will be to appoint Steve Dasbach as full-time, paid CEO of the Libertarian Party.” Dasbach was to have Ron Crickenberger as National Director. The promised appointment of Dasbach as CEO foundered on a single difficulty, namely that National Party By-Laws specified that the National Chair is the elected CEO, and the delegates refused to change the By-Laws. Bergland then appointed Dasbach as National Director and appointed Crickenberger as Political Director. So far as was visible from outside Bergland then handed over the reins to Dasbach.
