The severance clause covering voluntary resignations directly financed the Browne Campaign’s efforts. Willis received a salary from the LNC for a half-year, and was able to work nearly full time for the Browne Campaign without the Browne Campaign needing to pay him for his efforts. The Browne juggernaut that defeated Gorman and Hornberger was thus paid for, in significant part, by the supporters of Gorman and Hornberger, via their dues and donations to the National Party.
A memo dated February 19, 2001 from Libertarian Party National Director Steve Dasbach to “Interested LP members” revealed parts of the money given to Willis by the LNC. Dasbach’s memo was a response to an open letter to the Party’s membership from long-time Libertarian activist Bumper Hornberger. Hornberger described payments by the Libertarian National Committee, as revealed in the LNC’s FEC reports, to Perry Willis, Stephanie Yanik, and Optopia—a business entity sharing a mailing address with Willis and Yanik—and also to Browne’s regular publisher ‘Liam Works’.
Dasbach traces at length the relationships between Perry Willis and the National Committee. Before 1993, Willis was a political consultant, at times doing business as ‘Optopia’. Dasbach describes the 1993 events:
“When I was elected National Chair in September 1993, then National Director Stuart Reges had given notice that he planned to resign 30 days after the convention, and that he would not be available to provide transition assistance after that date. Not surprisingly, thirty days turned out to be far too short a period to provide for a smooth transition. After Willis was confirmed as National Director at the December 1993 meeting, we sat down to write up an employment agreement. Salary increases were written into the agreement based on performance…”
Dasbach’s presentation omits a critical historical issue, namely that Reges was succeeded not by Perry Willis, but by Gene Cisewski. National Chair Steve Dasbach discharged Cisewski on November 7, 1993. According to John Famularo and his documentation, lobbying for the firing were Willis and Harry Browne’s future campaign staff, including Bill Winter, 1996 campaign co-chair David Bergland, and 1996 Browne Campaign Manager Sharon Ayres.
And now the question that was never asked: How did Willis’s agreement compare with Cisewski’s? After all, Willis and Cisewski both came with good recommendations, and were hired under very similar circumstances. If the two agreements had been written in the best interests of the Party, one would expect that the agreements would be very similar, down to the salaries and severance clauses.
From 1993 to 1997, Willis was the Libertarian Party’s National Director. According to Dasbach, after Willis’s confirmation in office by the LNC, he and Dasbach worked out an incentive-based contract: The two measurable elements in the incentive were the membership of the National Party and National Committee’s budget. The maximal objectives were 20,000 members and $2 million in yearly expenditures by the National Committee. When Willis reached those objectives, his salary would rise to $100,000 a year. The two objectives were in fact reached almost simultaneously in Fall 1996. Because the Party was financially stressed, Willis postponed receipt of part of his salary until Party finances recovered. According to Dasbach, Willis only received some money he was owed in late 1997, after he had resigned as National Director.
Willis resigned in September 1997. Under the alleged contract between Willis and the LNC, Willis was to continue working for the National Committee for another six months, assisting the new Director with the transition process. Between October 1997 and April 1998 Willis was paid approximately $34,000 for his work for the National Committee.
Between Summer 1998 and 1999, Willis continued for the LNC as a consultant managing the National Committee’s Project Archimedes mailings. More than 2.25 million letters were allegedly mailed. Willis received a management fee of one cent per letter or more than $23,000 for his management of the program.
The size of the ‘management fee’ is anomalous.
