Browne didn’t even pretend to return the Party’s favor. The Browne campaign could have asked its volunteers to help with ballot access petitioning. It didn’t. Of course, there is some question as to how many volunteers Browne actually had, but at several dollars a signature every volunteer mattered. Browne and his campaign didn’t try to help the National Party.
And now we come to the—perfectly legal—political scam of the century.
In the October 26 LibertyWire, Brown’s Campaign announced that they were ‘about to file a lawsuit to have the Federal Election Commission…declared unconstitutional’. Once again, they were about to file. Once again, they needed money: To file the suit, which was too late to have any effect on the race, Browne needed to raise $100,000 as soon as possible. Browne’s email newsletter LibertyWire covered the fundraising, which rose from $15,000 on October 27 to $95,000 on November 6.
The $95,000? The $95,000 did not go to the Browne campaign. The money went to the U.S. Justice Foundation, East Valley Parkway, Escondido, California and apparently in some manner to Real Campaign Reform, with web address www.RealCampaignReform.org. For the last few weeks of the campaign the Browne Campaign focused on raising money for Browne’s foundations, not on raising money for his campaign. Given the speed of the Federal Court system, the Foundation could do nothing substantial before the 2000 election. What was the hurry? Cynics noted that under Federal Law the Browne 2000 Campaign could not legally pay Browne a penny beyond his expenses. However, a non-profit foundation is not a Federal political campaign committee. A foundation could legally pay not only Browne’s campaign staff but also Browne himself in perpetuity.
Before your very eyes, you have just seen the Browne campaign commit the political crime of the century. Browne took a valuable intangible asset, the Libertarian Party’s Presidential nomination. He converted that asset to his own private purposes, using it to raise money for his post-election activities. The author has never heard of another Presidential campaign still weeks from the general election that used its status to raise money for a candidate’s foundation, to be operated after the election. Browne undoubtedly did nothing illegal. The conversion was political free speech, Constitutionally protected.
Nonetheless, Browne had been given the nomination so he could run for office. In late October, well before Election Day, he quit. Gave up. Fled the fray. The illusion of a campaign appeared on the Internet, but:
Browne’s FEC filings show that on October 18 his campaign stopped buying TV ads. Browne TV ads were purchased between October 18 and Election Day because the National Party spent more than $97,000 of its own money to run them. For the election campaign as a whole, Browne had spent more than $109,000 to run TV ads. The National Party, despite being starved for money, despite an interest in supporting other campaigns, had spent nearly twice as much, more than $209,000.
Browne substantially ceased to campaign—in terms of his media-based campaign plans—well before election day. Browne’s surrender was a surrender with few precedents in American history. Even Bob Dole, facing an insurmountable Clinton lead in the polls in the 1996 election, spent the last days and hours before election day in a flurry of campaign appearances. Dole did everything he possibly could, so no one could ever say that he had let his party down. Browne did rather the opposite. Weeks before the general election, Browne effectively terminated the campaign he had promised to run.
Oddly, Browne’s Campaign kept paying Polaris Productions for more ads, even though no ads were being broadcast by his campaign.
A variety of bits of camouflage were deployed to mask what was being done. The October 30 LibertyWire ran a statement from former LNC Chair David Bergland, who had done so much to secure Browne the nomination—after Browne had secured for Bergland the National Chairmanship. Bergland opened his remarks “I am happy to contribute $1,000 to the Harry Browne and the Libertarian Party lawsuit against the FEC….”.
Bergland’s statement was deficient in one minor attribute, namely factual accuracy. There was no Libertarian Party lawsuit against the FEC. The Party was not involved in Browne’s litigation. In fact, Browne was not involved in the ‘Harry Browne…lawsuit’, because there was no lawsuit, not in October, not in November, not even in November 2001.
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