Last updated on February 2, 2026
Chapter Twenty Seven
Building Toward 2004
A Browne Campaign Without Browne
In 2000, it cannot have escaped the attention of the cabals surrounding Presidential candidate Browne, National Chair Bergland, and their collaborators that a third Presidential campaign by the same candidate would be even less convincing than the first two campaigns had been. Furthermore, Browne was not that young. Even if he were willing to run for President again in 2004, it could not simply be assumed by his coterie that in another four years Browne would be physically able to rise to the intense rigors of a coast-to-coast national political effort. For a wide range of reasons, there was a possible need for an alternative candidate.
One path to finding such a candidate was floated by Perry Willis. Willis proposed using a Libertarian foundation as a way to develop spokesmen as potential Presidential candidates. Willis broached his proposal in early 2001, and appears to have been well on his way to developing it when John Famularo published the Willis Invoice. [Editor: In the Editor’s opinion,if well-executed this would have been a good idea.]
Enter Howell
An alternative path requires that the campaign be handed a suitable potential candidate on a silver platter. Massachusetts’s 1998 statewide election was the platter. Carla Howell received 5% of the vote in a three-way race for State Auditor. She had handled herself well in her campaign. Her campaign revealed no significant difficulties with her presentation or background. She was closely tied to the Massachusetts Libertarian
establishment, which could be counted on to provide her with a substantial cadre of experienced campaigners. Finally, she was the close personal friend of Libertarian fundraiser and speaker Michael Cloud, so she had direct ties to the Browne-Bergland coterie.
Browne had run for President on the basis of no prior political experience. Come 2004, Howell could be seen as a much stronger candidate than Browne had been, because by 2004 she would have run several successful (by Libertarian standards) campaigns for lower office. For better or worse, Massachusetts politics would provide the needed opportunities. There would be a Senate Race in 2000, and Senate and Gubernatorial races in 2002. The Massachusetts Republican Party was extremely weak, making it easier for Howell to capture a substantial fraction of the vote from voters unfrightened by the ‘wasted vote’ superstition.
Howell was the (relatively) strong candidate of a (relatively) strong Libertarian state party. It may well have come as a surprise to many Libertarians when they learned that her 2000 Senate campaign would have collapsed without extensive support from the National Party, support on a scale given in 2000 to no other Senate candidate.
In early 2000, reports on Internet mail lists indicated that the National Party had paid National Voter Outreach (NVO), a petitioning organization located in Carson City, Nevada, $20,000 or so to do petitioning for the Howell campaign. FEC filings for the National Party (“Libertarian National Committee, Inc.”) do indeed show payments to NVO including $7500 on January 26, $12180 on March 1, and $5000 on March 16, 2000. On May 10, 2000, the National Party also paid Kay Pirrello of 6 Goodman Lane, Wayland, Massachusetts $500 for petitioning. 6 Goodman Lane is Carla Howell’s address in Wayland. Kay Pirrello, at the same address, was the Howell Campaign Volunteer Coordinator. The FEC filings do not identify the campaign for which petitioning was being done.
When I publicly challenged the rationale for spending the money, writing:
Another future letter deals with some interesting spending. It seems that your National Party spent $20,000, give or take, perfectly legally, to help one of our candidates get on the ballot. It’s in the FEC reports and my source is unimpeachable. It’s not a winnable race. It’s not the highest profile race for its office. It’s not a ballot access race. Even winning that election would not make it one iota easier for our future candidates in that state to get on the ballot. So why did we spend the money?
I received a response from LNC National Director Steve Dasbach, who wrote on June 5, 2000:
The Massachusetts U.S. Senate race IS a ballot access race. 3% will continue to qualify the LP as a major party in Massachusetts.
I know you are opposed to the LP being a major party in Massachusetts. However, the LP leadership in Massachusetts rejects your position and supports major party status. Our responsibility is to support the efforts of our state parties.
FYI: We have spent significant sums of money helping LP candidates for US House with filing fees—we have also helped raise funds directly for candidates for that purpose.
Steve Dasbach
Dasbach’s response to me, and other sources, unambiguously identified the NVO payments as going to the Howell Campaign.
Dasbach’s claim that Howell’s Senate race was a ballot access race was untrue. A ballot access race is a campaign whose successful outcome improves ballot access status for our candidates. For example, by winning small percentages of the vote in past elections, our top-of-ticket candidate in Indiana made it possible for State or County Parties to place other Libertarian candidates on the ballot with a nominating convention or stroke of the pen. Howell’s race did nothing of the kind. In Massachusetts, “Major Party Status” does not help ballot access. No matter whether Howell received 100 votes or 100% of the vote, in 2002 our Massachusetts candidates would need to collect exactly the same number of signatures. However, “Major Party” status makes it far more difficult to collect those signatures. Howell’s Senate race was actually a ballot denial race, a race that raised the bar for our other candidates. The National Party spent $20,000 on a program whose chief effect if it succeeded would be to reduce ballot access for Massachusetts Libertarians.
Early National Committee support for Howell 2000 stood in stark contrast to its lack of early support for other Federal candidates. There were a few Federal candidates for whom the National Committee paid ‘ballot access’ fees, payments of a few hundred or thousand dollars charged by individual states for the privilege of having one’s name on the ballot. Based on the LNC Political Director’s report for December 2000, Howell was the only Libertarian candidate other than Browne to receive more than a couple of thousand dollars in support from the National Party. Howell received more than ten times as much.
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