Last updated on November 2, 2025
Noting the unsatisfactory procedures of the past, Willis explains an alternative process for developing a campaign committee and infrastructure. His approach is astonishingly similar to what Willis and collaborators are now doing with Real Campaign Reform and the American Liberty Foundation, and are in significant respects similar to what Michael Cloud and Carla Howell are now doing with the Massachusetts Income Tax elimination effort.
Willis proposes a new way to develop a Presidential campaign: Identify a candidate and a set of issues that will be attractive to the Party and to donors. Create an educational foundation, potentially with tax-deductible contributions, and use the unannounced candidate as your travelling public spokesman. The travelling spokesman is from a foundation, not a political campaign, which greatly increases his credibility with the press. Politicians are suspected of saying whatever will serve them best. Foundations are expected to be advancing the public interest via their examination of the issues. Readers will recall a period prior to his election as Governor of California during which Ronald Reagan traveled the country giving speeches. There is no need to stay with a single spokesman. The use of a stable of spokespeople gives the foundation’s ideas wider exposure and tests the viability of several possible candidates.
As election year approaches, one spokesman declares as a candidate. The foundation staff developed and tuned at the expense of foundation donors largely changes uniforms and becomes the campaign staff. The contacts and donor lists that were developed at the expense of the Foundation are then rented to the campaign at some cost.
Why is this arrangement politically effective? Because you are running a foundation rather than a campaign, you can hope for a few large donors who will give far more to you than they would have given to a campaign or political party. Even if you are less fortunate, you will develop a list of people who have donated $1000 each, and who can be asked to give again when the campaign starts. Because their prior gift was to the foundation, the donors begin as tabula rasa with respect to campaign contribution limits, so that from many of them you will be able to extract at least $1000 more than would otherwise have been the case. IRS reporting requirements on nonprofit groups are somewhat less tedious than FEC reporting requirements, though the public-information IRS 990 form will reveal how much you paid your primary officers and employees. As Harry Browne demonstrated in 1997-1999, trips to remote cities to give presentations in hotels to supporters and enthusiasts do on the average break even. The trips may not be fundraisers, but they are effective ways for a good candidate to travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, and infect them with the habit of donating generously.
Who, though, is to be the spokesman and future candidate? Here the foundation has an enormous advantage over a campaign committee. The Foundation scheme lets its users field several spokesmen at the same time, each working a different set of constituencies to develop part of a master donor list. The users learn from experience which of the spokesmen are effective at working crowds, and which would not be effective candidates. In the end, one of the spokesmen becomes the candidate, while the other spokesmen become surrogates, the Vice Presidential candidate, or nominal future cabinet secretaries. It is highly probable that Browne would have been one of the spokesmen if the Foundation approach had gone as Willis intended.
[Written in 2001]: However, the clique within the Libertarian Party that gave us Browne 1996 and Browne 2000 has been quietly developing another candidate for 2004. The development methods were as interesting as those used by the Browne campaign. The candidate was about as credible as Browne—never before elected to anything. In developing their candidate, the clique showed no more concern than in the past for the impact of their activities on real Libertarian candidates with far better chances of winning their elections.
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