All from my book “Funding Liberty” available at 3mpub.com.
Below the Presidential level, candidates are determined by primary, based on petitioning for ballot access. Thus, both groups could run candidates in the Libertarian primary by petitioning. They did it in 1998. Candidates either do or do not take matching funds. That’s an individual decision, candidate by candidate, not a Party decision. So far as I can determine, nothing in State Law precludes a situation in which some candidates accept matching funds, while other candidates reject them. Some people in Arizona will not like this situation, and will not endorse candidates if they take matching funds, but non-endorsement is not an insuperable obstacle. On the other hand, Arizona has an active referendum system. The groups differ on several issues, so if both groups were active the party would not speak with one voice.
- Is there energy wasted in lawsuits? The ALP members flatly maintain they have never sued the ALPI. They claim that they have been sued by the ALPI, and have always won. The ALP or its members have, however, sued the state of Arizona with some frequency about state ballot laws.
Having said this, various ALP members noted two complications that might lead people to think they had sued the other group: [If you don’t like legal fine print, skip ahead]
(a) A suit against the state by the ALP had a significant effect on the other group and one of our Presidential candidates. An Arizona legal process then gave the other group and the candidate entrance into the suit, because the topics being adjudicated could affect the other group and the candidate substantially.
(b) A county official, to perform her legal duties, needed a legal ruling as to which group was the Libertarian Party recognized by Arizona. The official sued, so the courts would tell her what to do. Meanwhile, the ALP with the support of the Democratic and Republican parties was suing the state, over issues that affected every political party in the state. The judicial system merged the two cases, leaving opponents of the law on one side, and supporters on the other. The two Arizona groups were now in the same suit on opposite sides, but that was the judge carrying out Arizona legal procedure. The contest was over the constitutionality of a state law; the two groups were not suing each other. The two state government groups involved then bowed out, leaving our two Arizona groups as active litigators. By standard legal policy, the side opposing the law was termed the “plaintiff”, that being the ALP, the other side being the “defendant”, that being the Tucson group, but the suit was over the law not against the other side.
9) What does the ALP want at this point? The message I think they heard is that they want to be left alone to do activism. They view their methods as being more guerrilla or theatrical than the methods used by other parties. For example, on one occasion they raffled off an AK47 as the fundraiser. However, the ALP has accepted the LNC’s decision that they are cast out from the Libertarian Party. They will therefore run the Presidential candidate that they like and can support, and expect our affiliate to do the same.
From the people I have listened to, accusations against the ALP of vindictiveness or spite do not sound to be generally correct. The ALP people view ‘You get to live with your decisions’ as being fundamental to a working Libertarian society. People who complain about the consequence of their decision, namely that it is somehow the fault of the Phoenix group that the LNC has the wrong affiliate, after they urged the LNC not to strip their ballot status, are viewed as showing their lack of belief in Libertarian Principles. The ALP is very strong on our being the Party of Principle.”
That’s what I learned at the time, in Summer 2000.
In 2000, the Phoenix group did vote that if the LNC restored its affiliation that their governing body was required to put the National Party’s Presidential candidate on the Arizona ballot. At the 2000 National Convention, the National Committee proposed an agreement between the two Arizona groups and National. The Phoenix group asked for an explanation of certain language, or so I was told, and then signed the original form of the document. The Tucson group declined to sign the unamended document, and instead signed a document that they had amended.
The Phoenix group then invited Harry Browne to come to Arizona and explain why he should be the Arizona LP’s candidate, even though the Phoenix group was no longer part of the Party that had nominated Browne. Browne did not accept the invitation. With Browne absent, the Phoenix group as the legally-recognized Arizona Libertarian Party would put the best available Libertarian candidate on the ballot. In the end, the Arizona State Party chose to run L. Neil Smith as their 2000 candidate for President.
The National Party petitioned to put Harry Browne on the state ballot as an independent. The 2000 report of the LPUS Political Director describes these efforts to petition for Harry Browne in Arizona after the National Convention. The National Party eventually spent more than $63,000 on petitioning and legal efforts. The petitioning, done after the legal deadline, collected enough signatures and led to a lawsuit which at latest report is still being litigated.
Writing of support from the Tucson group, the LPUS Political Director said in his annual report “The onsite management from Peter Schmerl and Alexis Thompson did not materialize. Schmerl took almost two weeks to come up with the slate of independent electors and to draft the petition….When I arrived we had less than 3,000 signatures…I managed to organize the collection of some 19,000 signatures in 8 days.”
At the time of this writing, in late 2001, the Tucson group is running a State Party, and the Phoenix group is working on alternatives, notably local elections and guerrilla theater leafletting attacking the Homeland Security Office, with leaflets being distributed in airports.
