More Michigan Convention News

The new news does not always agree with the old news.

Your Editor had a pleasant conversation with long-time Michigan Libertarian party supporter Greg Stempfle, who among other things was the lead author on their party bylaws. We discussed the March 9 Convention, which among other things chose delegates to the National

Convention. LPMichigan Bylaws provide for a series of different regular conventions, not all of which are held in every year, and has a separate Bylaws section dealing with special conventions, specifying how they can be called. The March 9 event was one of the regularly scheduled conventions. Stempfle indicated that there has never been any doubt that the Delegate Selection Convention is a regular convention.

There were 111 delegates in attendance. That number makes it one of the larger state conventions to have been held this year. The convention room seated 80, so the meeting was Standing Room Only. The convention chose 33 delegates to national, the 34th Michigan delegate being their state chair.

The meeting came to order. State Chair Chadderdon handed the gavel to State Vice Chair Leah Dailey, permitting him to make motions and participate in debate.

There was a credentials report. The Credentials Committee met. There were challenges to the Wayne County delegation (largest in the state) and the Macomb County delegation (third largest in the state). The Wayne delegation was challenged because it had a member or members from out-of-state. The credentials committee removed the out-of-state members and admitted the remainder of the delegation. State Chair Chadderdon challenged the Macomb delegation; he claimed that the meeting that selected them lacked proper notice.  There was an hour of contentious debate. No member of the Credentials Committee would offer a motion to reject the Macomb County delegation, so the challenge died in committee. State Chair Chadderdon repeated the challenge in the State Convention. The challenge involved 9 of the 111 State Convention delegates, one of whom was other State Chair Mike Salilba, who is currently being sued by the LNC. Our source indicated that of the 9 delegates, one was a supporter of the Mises Caucus and 8 were not. The Convention spent an hour on this point, during which time acting Chair Dailey was reportedly visibly being coached by Caryn Ann Harlos on how to run a meeting and what to do.

In some order: The convention voted to remove Caryn Ann Harlos as parliamentarian. Harlos quit as parliamentarian. (Note that these two actions have different effects.  The latter could be reversed, with consent, but the convention chair.  The former can only be reversed by the convention as a whole.)

The convention eventually adjourned for lunch. At this point Dailey stepped down as Acting Chair. The convention chose long-time activist Bill Gelineau to chair the meeting.

A motion to approve the minutes of the prior convention was tabled, as this action would take a position on the eight Michiganders being sued by the LNC. Four of the eight persons being sued had their memberships suspended by the LP Michigan trial committee. These persons were Mike Saliba, Dave Canny, Angela Thornton, and Joe Brundgardt. The convention voted to overturn the suspensions and exonerate the members in question. At this point, 2+ hours had been spent in internal issues.

The National Convention Delegates other than the state chair were elected. There were more than 70 nominees of whom 33 were elected. Our correspondent reports that none of them support the Mises Caucus. This most successful Mises Caucus candidate finished 39th in the voting. While ballots were being counted the three districts whose state committee positions were vacant caucused to choose new members. None of the new state committee memebrs were Mises supporters. Stemple observed that in 2022 the Mises supporters had resorted to block voting for new members over long-time activists, while the opponents had not. This year the non-Mises people also voted as a block and outvoted the Mises people.

Several resolutions were passed. There was a resolution identifying the Lansing rather than the Wixom convention as being valid. No one, in the opinion of our correspondent, expected that the resolution would persuade the Chadderdon Board to go away.

There was concern that the convention elections would be appealed to the state Judicial Committee, perhaps on the grounds that 9 of the 111 convention delegates were improperly selected. Caryn Ann Harlos, writing on X.com, has claimed that two such appeals have already been submitted. There was further concern that the Michigan convention delegates would not be seated at the national convention, for the same reason.

Mention was made of the Liberal Party. Most Michigan Libertarians want to rescue the Libertarian Party, not create a new party. Also, the general feeling was that ‘Liberal” was not a viable name for a new party.

References have been made to the bank suing both factions. The issue is that there are two sets of claimants to a bank account, a challenge for which the legal process in Michigan is for the bank to sue, to force each set of claimants to attempt to prove that their claim is valid.