On December 19, 1996, Harry Browne announced that he would be creating an exploratory committee, whose purposes would include raising money. Browne wanted to know if he could begin the campaign with $1,000,000 in hand, and the exploratory committee was the vehicle for making the determination experimentally. However, under (3) and (6) “amass funds to be used after candidacy is established” is an activity that demonstrates campaigning. By late 1996, Browne had already announced that he would be performing activities that would make him a candidate.
When his exploratory committee began performing those activities, he became a candidate.
On December 24, 1996, discussing limitations on campaigning, Browne asked Libertarian readers of lpus-pres@dehnbase.fidonet.org “Will you please help us raise more money the next time”. That’s a request to Libertarians to help Browne amass more money for the 2000 campaign. That statement by itself potentially made Browne a candidate.
Furthermore, Browne began his activities in late 1996 and early 1997. At some ill-defined point in the next year or two, those activities had ‘persevered for a protracted period of time’, so under (4) Browne was no longer testing the waters but was in fact campaigning.
We thus have identified multiple points at which the Browne effort appears to have started campaigning in the sense specified by the FEC. The FEC also lists other actions that can be identified as campaigning, but which the Browne Campaign did not perform:
With respect to (1), Browne’s campaign committee, through its name, might have shown that Browne had approved steps that showed him as a candidate. However, Browne took the precaution of referring to the committee as an exploratory committee, so it may reasonably be argued that the Committee’s name by itself did not make Browne into a candidate.
With further respect to (1), Browne was entered into several primary elections, including California and Massachusetts. As we will see in a later Chapter, Browne was crushed in California. However, the outcomes of the primaries were meaningless.
Meaningless? In the Democratic and Republican Parties, many primaries are at least somewhat binding. In some states the candidates through the primaries run their own slates of delegates. In other states the delegates are chosen at convention but are required by party rules to support the candidate who won their state’s primary, either on the first convention ballot or until released.
In contrast, the Libertarian Party’s Bylaws and Convention Rules guarantee that each delegate has freedom of conscience. Under Libertarian Party rules, no seated delegate may be bound to support a particular candidate. If bound delegates appeared at a Libertarian Party National Convention, the convention would refuse to seat them. Libertarian Primaries are meaningless beauty contests. Browne could reasonably argue that running in primaries was not for him a step toward becoming a candidate, because primaries have no role within the Libertarian Party in the nomination process. Furthermore, most Libertarian Party members are not influenced by primary outcomes, especially in states like Massachusetts and California where people who are not registered in the Party are allowed to vote in the primary.
By contesting a primary, a Libertarian candidate can gain publicity for his party, but running in a Primary Election does not advance a candidate toward nomination. You can win all the Libertarian Primaries you want, but they aren’t worth a single delegate vote. Indeed, I personally received a letter from one state party inviting me to run in their Presidential Primary, if I satisfied their requirements. I’m not sure the letter was serious. At least one requirement appeared to be written specifically to keep me personally off their ballot. The state in question later put on the ballot people who had not satisfied their alleged requirements. Harry Browne, in particular, was placed on their ballot even though his campaign did not satisfy their requirement that only candidates who had filed with the FEC would appear on the ballot.
