We continue with a coverage of turn-of-the-millennium Libertarian Politics, as taken from my book Funding Liberty (Third Millennium Press 3mpub.com, 2003).
Chapter Nine
Project Archimedes
The ancient philosopher Archimedes is said to have written ‘give me a long enough lever, and a place to rest it, and I shall move the world’. Archimedes is sometimes also associated with the law of buoyancy: Dense objects sink like rocks.
Project Archimedes was the campaign promise of National Chair David Bergland. As laid out by former National Director Perry Willis, Project Archimedes was supposed to increase Party membership from nearly 28,000 in mid-1998 to 100,000 or more by the 2000 National Convention. Bergland had promised that if elected he would launch the Project. He was elected. The Project was launched.
To reach its goals, Project Archimedes needed to attract 6000 new members in its first two months, and 6000 or more members every two months thereafter. Project Archimedes failed. Not only did membership not grow 6000 in two months, but membership has never grown by 6000 from the 27,938 it had reached on June 27, 1998. Indeed, after four years of Project Archimedes Party membership was smaller than it was in Summer 1998.
When Bergland became National Chair, party membership was already increasing-up 5000 in the first half of 1998. Project Archimedes was launched. Membership growth immediately slowed. In the second half of 1998, about 600,000 Archimedes letters were mailed (source: December 1998 LNC Minutes) and membership grew by fewer than 2200. In 1999, another 1.7 million or so letters were mailed (We know the number because Willis was paid in total for about 2.3 million letters, of which 600,000 were mailed in 1998). In the first half of 1999, membership grew by another 2300, from 30,065 to 32,377. Tripling the number of letters mailed had almost no effect on the net number of new recruits, raising the question of whether the program was at all effective in recruiting new members.
Membership growth then crashed to a halt, and has never reached 33,500. The situation grew worse in the New Year. From November 30, 1999 to December 31, 2000, National Party membership fell by more than 650. For the first time in recent memory, the National Party failed to expand its ranks during a Presidential election year. Party membership went into a steep decline, falling to 24,498 in areas with affiliated parties by the end of July, 2002.
Did Project Archimedes succeed? At the 1998 National Convention, David Bergland debated Gene Cisewski. One of the issues was the cost of Project Archimedes. Cisewski estimated that the cost of Project Archimedes was over $100 per new member. Bergland responded that Cisewski was wrong, that ‘the data is there’ and that ‘the cost per new member is $19.46’. The number was repeated, several times. Bergland put this against the average amount received from a new member in a year, namely $57, to show that the program would be rapidly successful.
Based on the record, $19.46 is obviously false as a cost per new member. Even if one resorts to basically dishonest approach of charging against Project Archimedes nothing but the cost of mailing prospective new members, as though the staff, office,… effort tied up in the project cost nothing, it is difficult to get under fifty cents per letter for postage, printing, and list rental. That $19.46 would then cover the cost of mailing no more than 40 letters. To get a new member by mailing letters, the LNC would have needed a return rate on letters mailed through to membership of 2.5%, which is absurdly high. The actual numbers that I have seen reported were under 1%.
So where did the ‘$19.46 per new member’ come from? While listeners did not at the time understand what they were being told, Bergland gave the truth away when he answered the next question. Asked “Should the Libertarian National Office remain neutral in the contest for the Presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party?”, Bergland answered “The national staff should remain neutral in the nomination period. That Policy is already in effect. It has been for a long time…That’s what it should be. That’s what it has been. And it’s been complied with.”
The policy had not been complied with. How could Bergland not have known? National Director Perry Willis had worked pre-nomination for the Browne campaign, and he was not alone on the National Staff in doing so. Bergland was Browne’s campaign co-chair. Sharon Ayres, with whom Bergland shared a residence, had been Browne’s campaign manager. Bergland, by his own admission, knew considerable details of the campaign’s finances. He was able to verify, after all, that the funds given to Ayres were substantially expense reimbursements. Ayres received e-mail from Willis about campaign operations. How could non-compliance have been hidden from campaign co-chair David Bergland?
Bergland indeed gave the truth away when he answered the second question.
His answer to the second question was told in his best, lawyerly style. It was clear and unambiguous.
It was also clearly, inescapably stated by Bergland to amplify his chances of becoming National Chair, made to give Browne and Willis the best shot at the 2000 Presidential nomination.
And his ‘$19.46 per new member’? That was a politician’s campaign promise, too.
As we shall learn later in the Chapter, the actual cost per new member was at least as high as Cisewski had estimated.
I like Chase Oliver’s numbers. The guy who raised enough votes to throw the Kleptocracy’s blackface impersonators into a second dogfight. Oliver beat the crap game out of both machine grabs for a senate seat. He spent a dime a vote, bridged the gap while they spent 200x (two hundred times) as much sucker cash for each bought vote. That’s frugality!