Last updated on February 3, 2026
Tuniewicz Speaks
Substantial evidence that Howell received undue support from the Bergland-Browne faction of the National Party was provided by former National Treasurer Mark Tuniewicz. Writing in an email message sent on Wednesday, June 13, 2001 to members of the Libertarian National Committee and others, Tuniewicz discussed the LNC and third-party intermediaries. Tuniewicz was responding to a recent missive by Jacob Hornberger, criticizing the National Party, and claiming that Tuniewicz had yet to answer certain questions. Hornberger referred to Tuniewicz by saying:
“LNC members serving on the Bylaws Committee included LP National Treasurer Mark A. Tuniewicz, who recently and without explanation resigned his post and his membership in the party and who so far has declined to come forward and disclose whether or not he has information about the use of third-party intermediaries to funnel money to third-party beneficiaries.”
Tuniewicz responded:
“With the exception of the recent disclosures by Mssrs. Famularo, Willis & Browne, I don’t recall LNC, Inc. or the Browne campaign utilizing 3rd party intermediaries to funnel money to third-party beneficiaries …with one exception:
In the first quarter of 2000 LNC, Inc. paid about $20,000 in two payments to petitioning firm National Voter Outreach on behalf of the Carla Howell for Senate campaign after having received a similar-sized soft money contribution from a generous Massachusetts donor. The first of these payments took place on 1/26/00, just five days after the donation was received. The payments in question were made on the authority of National Director Steve Dasbach and without the knowledge of any LNC officer, including myself and to my knowledge then-National Chair David Bergland.
The issue in this case, raised by me after learning of the transaction several weeks later, was whether or not it constituted an illegal “directed” contribution—whereby a campaign solicits a soft money contribution payable to a national political party while making clear that the donation is to be “passed through” or “directed” to the benefit of a federal candidate’s campaign, presumably in violation of individual contributor limits.
Interestingly, during one of the executive committee teleconferences where this transaction was discussed, then-chair Bergland repeatedly attempted to move the discussion into a closed, executive session. Since this would have prevented me from disclosing information about it (as I’m doing in this message, for example)to our membership, I strongly opposed this and had to threaten to leave the conference call if that was done—a fairly extreme situation.
While our general counsel later gave a verbal opinion at my request that the transaction was legal “given the current state of campaign finance enforcement,” I continue to question some the facts upon which he based his opinion-facts provided by Mr. Dasbach.
For example, Mr. Dasbach denied knowing who had solicited the $20K contribution, which I found to be hard to believe, and claimed that the decision to fund the ballot access expense (originally classified on the LNC’s books as “campaign support” then changed later to “ballot access” after the transaction was questioned) was made independently from the contribution, despite the coincidence of dates and the fact that the expenditure was not part of our ballot access budget presented just a short time prior in 12/99.
In the interest of full disclosure, my recollection from discussions at the time is that Massachusetts LP state chair Elias Israel, as well as Howell campaign manager Michael Emerling Cloud, were both aware of this transaction around the time it was happening.
Other than this item, I don’t recall any use of intermediaries from 1996 when I joined the LNC through the end of my term as National Treasurer earlier in 2001. I’d like to stress that these issues have absolutely nothing to do with my resignation as Treasurer and from the LP. Any suggestion to the contrary is libelous. I strongly recommend that Mr. Hornberger share this message, it its entirety, with his email distribution list, so as to correct any misconceptions his readers may have inferred from his prior message.
With best wishes,
Mark A. Tuniewicz”
The LNC payments to NVO were a direct violation of LNC Policy. According to Tuniewicz, the payments were at first kept on the books as “campaign support” and then redesignated as “ballot access”. No matter how named, LNC Policy forbids the National Party to give support to anyone who is seeking nomination but is not yet the Party candidate. The payment was in January. On that date, Howell was seeking the nomination. The State convention was not until April. The State Primary was not until September. Howell might well have had opponents within the party, and thus might not have been the Party’s candidate on the November ballot. The LNC payments to NVO constituted Party support for a candidate seeking a nomination and were therefore in violation of LNC rules.
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