The Continuing Story
We are at the end of my description of the 1996 and 2000 Presidential campaigns. It is a sad tale. We should be the Party of Principle. We seem instead to be behaving as the Party of Principal, with interest to inside traders.
In 2002 the Libertarian Party was significantly divided. One faction proposed that it was time to stop talking about the scandals and move on, leaving in place most of the people whose votes and endorsements gave us the 1996 and 2000 scandals. Another faction proposed that it was time to stop supporting the scandal-makers and move on, replacing the leadership that gave us the 1996 and 2000 scandals with leadership that will restore integrity and propriety to the National party. That decision was up to the membership of the National Party.
In July 2002 through their delegates to the National Convention the membership chose Geoffrey Neale as National Chair. Neale had been an LNC member during some of the worst scandals. He had not been visible as a voice raising concerns about known events. On the other hand, the faction that had loyally supported Browne, Cloud, Willis, Bergland, Ayres, Dasbach and collaborators supported not Neale but Eli Israel, state chair of Massachusetts. Despite powerful nominating speeches by Harry Browne and Chris Azarro, Israel finished second and withdrew from the contest.
All the time the factional disagreements continued, yet another group of Libertarians was hard at work, taking steps visibly aimed at replacing Browne 2004 with the Presidential candidacy of a very different Libertarian, a Libertarian with a different name, a different origin, but a record of campaign spending style very similar to that of Browne and company. Given that the prospective campaign manager has already announced at a state convention that the Presidential candidacy announcement will come, albeit later rather than sooner, there when I wrote this appeared to be very little left to doubt.
Of course predicting the future is harder before it happens.
The following Chapter is also of interest in showing how people can wreck a state party.
For the sequel opener, we take you now to…
Chapter Twenty Five
Scenic Massachusetts
A Personal Perspective
We now come to Party history in which I myself played a modest role. I shall try to emulate Thucydides, the father of historical writing, who described what happened even to himself, seeking to say what was true even if it did not enhance his name. This is not an entirely simple task.
In 1994, Massachusetts Libertarians were organized as the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts (LAMA). LAMA had annual conventions and a regularly published newsletter. That year, the Massachusetts Libertarian Party gained Major Party status: One of its candidates for statewide office got more than 3% of the vote. Major Party status meant LAMA could put the Presidential ticket on the ballot in 1996 without doing any petitioning. Major Party Status also had other consequences. In 1994, the party had few campaign plans beyond running a President in 1996. Those other consequences seemed much less important.
[Massachusetts election law has different rules for independent candidates, Party Designations, and Major Parties. The Appendix to this Chapter describes our election code. If you are a serious activist, you should read the Appendix, if only so you can ask yourself ‘OK, how is this different from the election code in my state?’]
In 1995 I appeared at a meeting of the LAMA State Committee, which then met at MIT. I carried some maps of Massachusetts. The maps showed all the State Representative and State Senate Districts, color coded to show where there had recently been both Democratic and Republican candidates (a moderate number of these), only a Republican candidate (rare), or only a Democratic candidate (the largest number). I proposed that we should make a targeted effort to run candidates in Districts in which there historically had been no contest, because these would give us clearer shots at winning elections or at least getting lots of votes. The thought of inciting members to run for lower (below statewide) office, let alone run candidates in targeted districts, was a bit radical for some members of the State Committee.
We also discussed retaining major party status after 1996. Retention required that one of our 1996 statewide candidates get 3% of the vote, or that we register 1% of the voters as Libertarians. The latter alternative was logistically unattainable. Retaining Major Party status thus required running someone for U.S. Senate, since it seemed unlikely that any Libertarian running for President in 1996 could get 3% of the vote. We never discussed whether or not it would actually be desirable to retain major party status. We had no other candidate. I agreed to run.
It seemed reasonable at the time.
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