Last updated on August 21, 2025
Chapter Seventeen
Arizona, Land of the Two Libertarian Parties
We now take an aside from Presidential politics to visit scenic Arizona, land of the two Libertarian Parties. Or perhaps one Libertarian Party. The legal and political situation in Arizona has been, to put it mildly, complex. A full recounting of Arizona events might well consume a full book this size. I am not writing that book, so you shall see here a compressed description of events.
I begin with the cast of characters. For the past half-decade there have been two organized Libertarian groups in Arizona, one of which regularly sued the other to gain ownership of the Party. Each group has associated with it a series of different geographic and other names. In the Summer of 2000 names and acronyms included:
Formal name
Arizona Libertarian Party Arizona Libertarian Party,Incorporated
Acronym ALP ALPI
Noted city Phoenix Tucson
Noted county Maricopa Pima
Distinguished member(s)
Ernie Hancock
Liz Andreasen Peter Schmerl
Mike Haggard John Zajac
My sources agree that both groups have supporters in both cities. The ALP and ALPI acronyms are very similar; I’ll refer to the two sides as the Phoenix group (ALP) and the Tucson group (ALPI). My friends who have moved to Arizona uniformly speak favorably of most of the people in both groups.
The Tucson group won the latest round of litigation and is currently recognized by the State as the legal Libertarian Party in Arizona. The Phoenix group has formally dissolved at the moment. The Phoenix group has never filed litigation against the Tucson group, and says it has no intent to litigate at present. It also appears to have little intent of cooperating with or supporting the Tucson group or its candidates. In the absence of third-party litigation that might affect the situation, relationships between the Tucson and Phoenix groups are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
The two groups are split by many issues. Historically, each side has been willing to lay out its position openly, so I can say with reasonable accuracy what each side says it is fighting about. I have spoken to a reasonable number of Arizona Libertarians, members of the Phoenix and Tucson groups. I certainly have not spoken to all of them. These people didn’t all talk about all the same topics, but—in separate conversations—for the most part they agreed with each other. I should specifically thank Paul Schauble and Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, who assembled time-lines of past events. I should also thank Ernie Hancock, Paul Schauble, and Chris Tavares, who sent corrections to an earlier draft of this Chapter.
For many questions there are subtexts and buried issues. The formal question dividing the two groups is ‘who is the legally-recognized Libertarian Party in Arizona?’ A rational subtext is ‘why does anyone care?’. What do you get out of having state recognition? In fact, there are concrete issues that appear to divide the two organizations.
A more Libertarian question might be ‘To what extent can the state regulate the organization of a political party?’ The Phoenix group had conducted its activities while not following a variety of State regulations, many of which could be argued to be inconsistent with Eu vs. California, simply by going about its business and ignoring the state. State officials did not attempt to enforce their own statutes. The ultimate litigation between the Phoenix and Tucson groups was filed by the Tucson group, not the state, and was settled not over the state election code but over the technicalities of Roberts’ Rules of Order as several of the most esoteric of those rules pertained to events at a state convention.
In a traditional detective novel, the hero often makes progress by asking ‘where is the money?’. There are good reasons to suppose that money was a major issue behind the conflict, both at the state level and at the national level.
Money? Arizona has a so-called ‘Clean Elections’ Law, under which public money goes to funding election campaigns, if the State legislature appropriates the money. A candidate has to raise a modest amount of money, and then receives a very large payment from the state to fund his campaign. The ratio of taxpayer money to money raised from private donors could be as large as ten to one. Possession and use of this money became a substantial political issue. Details of the Clean Election law and its municipal equivalents have been the subject of litigation, and have changed over the course of time.
Arizona has such a complex regulatory system on political parties.