A recipe for a Libertarian takeover of Congress on a platform of freedom of commerce, freedom of movement, and freedom of choice.
Dear Friends,
The United States is in a pretty dire state right now politically. Donald Trump’s Republicans are backing him in corruption and violations of the law. Charles Schumer’s Democrats are complaining loudly, but not taking leadership on the issues that resonate with the American people.
Frustration with this political situation has resulted in candidate recruitment organizations like Run for Something are seeing record numbers of young, progressive applicants to run for office as Democrats and push back against a stagnant group of incumbent politicians who are not meeting this moment in America. If the Libertarian Party can’t channel that energy between now and Election Day 2026, libertarians who oppose Trump’s tariffs, ICE raids, and the elimination of abortion rights will be left without a voice in this fight.
That’s why this is the perfect time for a full slate of Libertarian candidates for House and Senate in 2026 around the country. No incumbent politician should run without Libertarian opposition. This class of federal candidates will all run on the same simple platform:
Freedom of commerce (remove trade barriers like tariffs and work restrictions)
Freedom of movement (removing limits on visas and amnesty for current immigrants)
Freedom of choice (protecting rights to abortion and other personal health choices)
Standing up for these three core Libertarian policy goals provide a distinct alternative to the status quo Republican or Democratic incumbents.
This is the most worthwhile political project right now.
If successful, it will put a Libertarian candidate up against an incumbent politician from one of the two old parties in American politics. Campaigning now and through election day 2026 on a simple and powerful message that Americans should be free to trade with who they choose, welcome new neighbors from around the world, and control what goes into or comes out of their own bodies.
At this point, if you agree that this would be a great goal to accomplish, how would it be done? What resources are necessary? What does the timeline look like?
Here’s my outline for how we succeed:
Step 0) – Support Ballot Access – Campaigns will have no objectively measured results without the candidate being on the ballot for the voter to choose on Election Day.¹ Getting on to the ballot will require administrative and sometimes fee or petition requirements to achieve. This can range from a simple form in some states to hundreds or thousands of petition signatures in others.
It’s time to paint the whole map gold.
Any realistic plan for getting candidates on the ballot should include a political action fund with sufficient resources to cover 50% or more of any ballot access requirements for a candidate to get on the ballot. It is reasonable to expect candidates to provide some of those resources as a personal contribution of time or money, but knowing that there will be significant support removes one of the biggest obstacles to people running for office.
Step 1) – Ask Qualified Prospects to Run for Office – Every voter over the age of 25 can run for House of Representatives and every one over the age of 30 can run for Senate. That’s the only mandatory qualification to run under this program.
Contact all of the qualified voters with a letter outlining the three major issues Libertarians are running on in 2026 and asking if they would consider either running for office or supporting a candidate who would run on those issues. This will filter out anybody who disagrees strongly with any of the three issues or those folks who don’t want to participate in electoral politics. Only people who are interested in achieving the goal of having a Libertarian House and Senate candidate to support who will champion one or more of the targeted three issues will respond to that initial marketing.
Step 2) – Track All Responses and Ask Them for Support – Any inquiries in response to direct marketing, organic news coverage of the effort, or referral from a supported, should be tracked and followed up by a direct request for support.
State or regional coordinators should reach out personally to have a one-on-one discussion with people who express interest in running for office. Strong negative responses should be placed on a “Do Not Contact” list and removed from future recruitment and campaign updates. Anyone in the middle is given updates to bring them toward directly supporting a candidate in their district and around the country.
Step 3) – Connect Candidates Together Across the Country – Since all the candidates are running on a consistent message, they will all be running into similar challenges as they move toward Election Day. Conducting weekly national town hall meetings and candidate strategy sessions will create a sense of energy and let those share their experiences and ideas with other people facing the same challenges. A regular newsletter highlighting successes should also be sent out to keep supporters informed of progress and encouraged to recruit others.
Step 4) – Build Locally Supported Campaign Teams – Any national organizing effort provides a catalyst to a candidate in a particular state or district, but campaigns that are dependent on national support are generally ineffective. The first goal is to get a candidate, a treasurer, and a campaign manager in every race who are in the same district or state as the candidate and are trained to be effective. Regional training sessions should be held around the country to show candidates and their teams how to most effectively organize and grow their team.
Step 5) – Change the Conversation – Unified messaging is powerful as a way to change how people think about an issue. As we push for the core American values of freedom of commerce, freedom of movement, and freedom of choice, candidates should be writing and publishing op-eds in local newspapers and talking to local media about how these values can improve our country for everyone. Connecting candidates with experts and professionals who can help them persuade voters to become supporters will amplify our message and maybe inspire some incumbents to change their stances.
If you want to help make this happen, whether with time, money, or your own run for federal office, let me know.
Yours truly,
Nick
P.S. Which incumbent Representative or Senator do you think we should start with when we begin recruiting candidates?
1 In some states like California, that first Election Day is early in 2026, with the top two candidates facing a run-off election later in the year. In those states, getting on the primary election ballot is what we mean by Election Day.
I like, admire and trust Sarwark, but most of what he suggests sounds wasteful compared to the gains had in 50 years of spoiler vote clout. The force-initiating parties have reverted to what they were in 1900, when prohibition and comunist competitors demanded more coercion. Yet the LP use lost votes as bait for repeal and shifting planks to more closely copy LP planks. To summarize I wrote a short generic speech for libertarian candidates with emphasis on how winning MEANS using votes and our original planks to repeal bad laws:
https://libertariantranslator.wordpress.com/2022/01/01/libertarian-candidate-speech/
Although I think Nicolas Sarwark has interest and experience needed on the National Committee, I don’t agree with his positions on illegal immigration. With the constant news of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens, a focus by the LP on permitting uncontrolled migration into the USA will not resonate with voters. I agree with his positions on the tariffs and protection of abortion and health choices. His plan to run candidates for every Congressional seat is ambitious but not attainable.
It’s a good idea in theory. Hundreds of candidates simultaneously pounding the same messaging drum stands a better chance of getting heard than hundreds of candidates each doing their own thing. And if everyone is on the same page, it would help the weaker candidates by allowing them to copy the style and rhetoric of the more skilled candidates. The downside would be, if the messaging doesn’t resonate with the public, it could cause the entire party to lose, which is why the majors don’t do it. We don’t have to worry about that. But, I very much doubt that Libertarians have the discipline to do it, however much potential it has.
I agree on the topics but, would tweak them a bit by softening the immigration stuff, enhancing the abortion point, and broadening the trade/tax point. Something about keeping out criminals while being much more welcoming to those pursuing the American dream. Pointing out that the Democrats have failed to provide any serious abortion protections in order to try to keep people voting for Democrats just to prevent the ban threat from the Republicans from becoming law. And ending the crazy tariff war while also not burdening the American people with a crazy tax on unrealized capital gains. It’s important to call the policies of both sides crazy in at least one of the three points in order to set us apart. And repeatedly calling them crazy until it catches on with the public is also important. By consistently tying a crazy D proposal with a crazy R policy, the Ds can’t come in and steal any thunder we generated.
Our original platform did not frighten people by demanding to import uninspected terrorists. Many tacked-on planks were pure sabotage–especially the importation of all and sundry with zero inspection using a useful anarchist to praise and push it. The child molesting planks of the 1980s were the cyanide Kool-ade of platform committee infiltrators.
Andy, the Georgia petition for district office is 5% of the registered voters, not 1%. No one has done that in Georgia since 1964, and back then the signatures weren’t checked, weren’t due until October, and the state had no US House districts that crossed county lines.
That’s what I meant. That was a typo.
Ballot access for US House is extremely difficult in some states. Georgia requires 1% of the registered voters in a district to sign which comes out to somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000-25,000 plus valid petition signatures per US House district for ballot access. It is so difficult that no minor party or independent candidated for US House has made the ballot since the 1960’s. Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine to name some of the states, all have relatively difficult petition requirements of varying degrees for US House. The LP of Arizona has statewide party recognition via its number of partisan voter registrations, but the LP does not have enough voter registrations in every county in Arizona to have party recognition in every county. So before the party could run candidates for US House in every county it would have to conduct partisan voter registration drives in the counties where the party currently lacks recognition. Then the LP candidates for US House in AZ would have to petition their way onto a primary ballot, even if they run unopposed, and these petitions can only be signed by registered Libertarians or registered non-partisans, and the signature requirements are high enough tp where this is not easy. If a partisan candidate in Arizona can get write in votes in a primary where they are running unopposed that is equal to the number of petition signatures that it would take to get them on a primary ballot they can proceed to the general election ballot this way, but it is very difficult to proceed to get this many write in votes in a primary. California and Washington have a Top Two Primary (and note that there are hoops to jump through in CA and WA to get on the Top Two Primary ballot) where only the top two vote getters proceed to the general election ballot, which makes it highly unlikely that any candidate except for a Democrat or a Republican will make it through this hurdle to appear on the general election ballot, and Louisiana has a jungle primary system which is similar which also makes it unlikely for anyone but a Democrat or a Republican candidate to make it out of the primary. These are just a few of the hurdles that would have to be jumped through to run candidates for US House in every district of the country, I could go on with more examples from more states.
I am not sure when the last time a political party that was not the Democratic or the Republican party ran candidates for every US House district in the country, but I know the Libertarian Party has never done it and I am not sure if any minor party has ever done it. I know that even the Democratic and Republican party do not field candidates in every election for every office, and I know there have been times where one of the major parties did not run a candidate for US House in some districts.
So I do not think that this is a realistic plan.
I competely agree with you, Andy.
In Georgia the statewide petition to qualify a party for all offices currently requires 72,680 valid signatures, which isn’t easy but most likely a good bit easier than qualifying 14 districts separately. In Florida, the barrier is more likely to be filing fees, which are a percentage of the annual salary of the office being applied for; there is a signature alternative which is harder for most candidates. I’ll defer to your expertise regarding other States.
As explained in a longer comment last night, I don’t see the plan as realistic either, for several reasons – I mentioned ballot qualification, but didn’t go into detail on that.
That petition does not allow the party to run candidates for all offices in Georgia without each candidate having to gather petition signatures. The petition allows the statewide candidates to get on the ballot without having to submit additional petition signatures, but the candidates for US House and for state senate and state house districts have to submit petition signatures for ballot access.
Although my residential, farm, and commercial building properties are all in Georgia and Florida along the state line, I also own some timberland not far away in southeast Alabama, so I just looked up their law. Their petition currently requires 42,459 valid signatures, but that’s actually a higher percentage of their population than the Georgia petition. I think it does qualify them for every office including federal Congress, however.
And LPAL doesn’t have the resources to handle that. The last time we did that, it was a huge stretch.
The fundamental problem with the idea is simply ballot access hurdles and state party infrastructure and members to make it happen.
Build, baby, build!
I live in Washington state and it is possible for candidates to get through the primary and be in the general election. It requires planning and work. The phrase “Just do it!” is not used in conversation.
How often does thus happen? I check the Washington ballot last year and I saw zero non-Democrat or non-Republican candidates listed on the ballot in the general election except for President, and the presidential race is exempt from Top Two Primary.
As Mr. Seebeck writes the top two sucks, but candidates have been on the general election. The Washington Party has been damaged by infighting over the last few years, That has resulted in significant problems.
I had a Libertarian on my ballot for State Rep in Seattle; he was able to get through the primary because only two candidates filed.
Richard Winger probably has data on exactly how many minor party and independent candidates have been on the general election ballot in Top Two states.
Top Two sucks.
The LP needs to develop the tools to use first. Someone who may have read Simon Sinek, mentioned the need to explain what was being done, why it was necessary to do, and how it was being done. And that is the best place to start. 200 to 250 word summaries of some issues, maybe ten to fifteen that can be copied and pasted then printed to be used as handouts would be a big start.
Now on the LP website there is a comment about getting rid of the “War on Poverty” but nothing about the policies that keep people from getting ahead by closing the market to opportunities in the first place.
Sarwark is openly calling for far left candidates to win. That’s scary and will mean the end of our country.
On the contrary – Sarwark is openly calling for *freedom*. Period.
The LP doesn’t deserve to be in existence if it doesn’t advocate for freedom.
Please define what you mean by far left.
You’re not likely to have any measurable success in uniting your party around issues which have divided it for decades. Abortion and immigration have never been unifying issues for libertarians, to the point that they have now been removed from your platform.
I’ll intentionally avoid my own positions on those issues here, which shouldn’t be relevant anyway, since your party ran me off twice and I’m now quite happy to not be a libertarian and remove from consideration calling myself one ever again. Those of you who want to salt the earth and say I never was are more than welcome to it. I remain a “pledge signer” since 1987, a dues payer and convention attendee 1987-9 and 2008-9, and have at various points before, in between, and even since those years voted for some of your candidates, but don’t worry, I won’t be darkening your doors or sending anyone your way in the future.
Supporting “free” international trade, regardless of national security consequences or fairness and regardless of how tariffs compare to other actual or potential sources of government revenue, is probably more unifying as an issue among libertarians (self described, registered, dues paying, etc). It’s not necessarily unifying for those relatively more likely than others to sometimes vote for libertarian candidates based on the average public impression of what their party represents across a broad spectrum of issues, though.
If you try to define libertarians as being solely or primarily those who “oppose Trump’s tariffs, ICE raids, and the elimination of abortion rights” as their sole or main motivating and unifying issues, you won’t even come close to unifying your own current party activists and candidates , much less the general somewhat libertarian leaning or considering public.
Those in the public at large who are most motivated by their opposition to President Trump and the current GOP leadership on those particular issues primarily and understandably run as and vote for the Democrats, regardless of other issues. Most partisanship as it stands in the US today is primarily negative – opposition to President Trump and MAGA or opposition to the woke left – not positive.
Certainly, there’s no shortage of people who feel the Democrats are not standing up strongly enough to President Trump, on those particular issues, or in general. The vast majority of those will either vote for Democrats anyway (because otherwise Republicans win) or not vote at all regardless of what any minor party without billion$ at its disposal will say or do in the next 18 months. Some of them will vote GOP/MAGA out of accelerationist considerations. Those few in this category who are apt to vote for a non duopoly option will be most likely to vote for a left leaning independent candidate or one from a party of the left such as PSL, Socialist Alternative, Working Families where they don’t cross endorse Democrats, Green, Forward, Progressive, etc, etc.
The libertarians aren’t likely to substantially crack, much less significantly enlarge, the market for minor party leftist congressional candidates in 2026, such as it is. For rough equivalent example, see how Oliver Chase performed in the most recent presidential election against the various major party candidates as well as against all the leftist minor party and independent candidates combined (Stein, DeLaCruz, West, to some extent Kennedy in those states where they were all on the ballot).
“Contact all of the qualified voters with a letter outlining the three major issues Libertarians are running on in 2026 and asking if they would consider either running for office or supporting a candidate who would run on those issues. ”
You mean contact all registered (or in fact eligible) voter’s over age 25, which you preceded this statement by saying are the only qualifications? That sounds rather expensive. What wealthy relatives will leave you the resources to contact that many folks, much less repeatedly? Perhaps Mr. Sarwark is secretly the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin – but if so, he’d better uncloak as such in short order if he plans to deploy sufficient resources for such a plan to succeed in time.
He’d also still face the difficulty that there are Libertarians running state and national party committees, and in some states and districts planning to run for those very same congressional offices, who don’t agree with him on some or even any of those issues – or perhaps just merely disagree that those are “the three major issues Libertarians are running on in 2026.” This would still be the case if Mr. Sarwark was still your party’s national committee chairman, and is all the more the case when he’s not.
Given what I know of libertarians based on both personal experience and reputation / research, more of them would come out of the woodwork to challenge any and all resulting candidates in primaries or nomination conventions precisely due to disagreement over the strategy of uniting around and emphasizing and or personal disagreement on some or all of those three issues. They will also do whatever they can to disseminate countermeasures through their own communications, counterrecruiting of candidates, media strategies, etc., and by vigorously opposing anyone in line with this strategy for internal office at the state and national levels.
That’s merely a prediction, not a statement of any factional preference – I have none for your party.
To my knowledge, nothing bristles a libertarian as much as someone or some other libertarians claiming something like “these are the three major issues Libertarians are running on in 2026,” regardless of what the issues are, and especially when at a minimum 2/3 are long time internal controversies in their party and have more recently been removed from their platform. This isn’t to argue whether they should be in your party’s platform or not – not my party, not my problem. I’m merely stating facts which are easily verifiable and public .
I suspect Mr. Sarwark harbors no illusions as to anything I stated above, so what’s he really after here? Another run for national committee chair? Fundraising for his policy institute or some future organization? Influence over your future party platform? Building his lists? A dry run at a strategy he hopes to implement in some future cycles? Several or all of these?
“Connect Candidates Together Across the Country – Since all the candidates are running on a consistent message, …”
This implies a level of coordination I find difficult to imagine in your party. Not even Democrats or Republicans come close to this level of message discipline among all their congressional campaigns nationwide, much less libertarians. The PSL and other explicitly Marxist Leninist parties would even find this level of unity challenging, which may be why they concentrate on presidential campaigns.
Even if you were to succeed in recruiting a bevy of candidates who agree with you on all.three of those issues, agree to run as Libertarians, succeed in getting on the ballot everywhere, succeed in winning their primaries or nomination conventions – each part of that will be a challenge or struggle in various places – think for yourself how likely it is that all of them will consistently deemphasize their positions on every other issue and keep their campaigns disciplined to ignore their differences among each other on all of those for the entire length of their campaigns at all stages. Let’s just say very politely that it seems rather extremely unlikely to me.
If you’d like to continue conversing I’ll be at ballot access news
Standard surrenderist cant. Individual rights for pregnant women was the best vote-getter. Comstockists understood that a court capitulation at J6 1973 would buy time and lull complacency. Forcing women into the involuntary labor of reproduction by calling them Siamese twins is dishonest and cowardly, and attracts the same voters George Wallace attracted. Infiltrators have from the outset attacked out rights, defense and energy policies. Letting them succeed in sabotage encouraged the “other” socialists to redouble their efforts. A return to original principles is a return to steeply increasing vote share, hence law-changing spoiler clout.
I don’t see how this approach differs greatly from the what the party has done since inception. Why will it work this time?
The libertarians have had a much more scattershot and undisciplined approach on messaging, coordination between campaigns, and campaign organization since their inception. I shared my opinion about the likelihood of success this time in a much longer comment I just submitted. Hopefully it will be approved.
Libertarians like to quote Bastiat who wrote the “The Law” as I recall.
He was inspired by Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League, which focused on repealing the tariff on grain being imported into England. It took about 20 years but they won and the repeal helped to break the back of the potato famine that hit Ireland hard. When it was over a large portion of the public benefitted and kept more of their earnings. What the Anti-Corn Law League did should be an example for all of us.
Something similar was done in Sweden in 1850, in Germany after WWII, and in other nations.
It is not difficult. It just needs to be done.
I responded to Michael Wilson but it got kicked out to top level reply – please approve this one and not the top level version of this comment:
This list of issues is very different from your list which you recently shared in a few other discussions here. “Something similar” is hard to define.
When you say something isn’t difficult, what is the “it” you are referring to? Opposing tariffs? Message unity across all libertarian candidates and campaigns, regardless of what the particular list of chosen issues is? The entire detailed plan as herein spelled out by Mr. Sarawak for 2026?
I’m sure I don’t have to explain to anyone reading that the political systems of all those countries and historical time periods were different in many respects from the US in 2025.
In 1850 Sweden repealed most of their regulations and simplified their taxes. In the 100 years that followed income went up significantly.
Standing on a street corner with a sign, working a booth and handing out brochures, wearing a shirt with a slogan on the back of it, writing letters to the editor, your state representatives, or media releases, or updating information on a computer website. None of this is difficult.
[Let’s see if this fixes the apparent issue the editor has with a prior version of this comment. If it doesn’t, would you please [..
edit it down further …] and post any parts you don’t object to?]
True enough, as far as that goes – I’ve had plenty of numerous occasions to do each of the things on that list over the decades. You can count those decades back to the 1960s, or the 1950s if you wish to count such activity when I tagged along with or was used as a prop by my parents and their friends. I’m not sure when exactly to draw a line between the two but I think by some point in the early to mid 1960s I was there of my own accord.
I find that overall my efforts on most issues have not succeeded at stemming so called “progressive” social change .I’m all for repealing most regulations and simplifying taxes, and a good portion of those six or seven decades of political activity was towards those ends, on which the “progressives” have nevertheless by and large far outscored us as well.
As I mentioned last round, the political system of Sweden in the mid 19th century had significant differences with the USA in 2025. Mr. Sarwark’s plan is significantly more specific, but if your sole point is that being politically active in real life is a necessary precondition for political victory on any issue or set of issues that’s generally true. I would not, however, say it’s sufficient, based either on personal experience or reading of history and current events.
I’ve done all that–and this was before finally understanding that 2% of the vote is all it takes to repeal bad laws and enact protection of freedom. Read “The Case for Voting Libertarian” …online since 2007.
The income tax and prohibition amendments were produced by similar persistence–albeit on the part of fanatics bent on increasing coercion and not freedom. Bastiat and Spooner have, like Rand and Heinlein, been positive influences fostering our success. Ayn reverting to the Nixon who handed her a hot mic at HUAC did little to wreck the forward momentum put in motion by ideas and VOTES. Thanks for bringing up someone who corrected errors of Danton and Robespierre.
Not a new idea, but it is still a good idea.
But let’s not wait until 2026. In each state, local municipalities, school districts, etc have APPOINTED openings on their various committees and commissions. These openings are there for the taking by any Libertarian (or Green or Constitutionalist). There’s no petitioning to get on any ballot nor is there any fundraising. All you need to do is apply at your local clerk’s office to be on the Planning Commission, Board of Health, 4th of July Committee, etc. Even if 20 Libertarians in each state did this, that’s 1000 more Libertarians in office by the end of 2025! Being on one of these committees wouldn’t prevent you from running for Congress. It would actually enhance your candidacy.