We return to 1996-1998.
I allowed that because the Party had managed to get its candidates on the ballot in 1994, we would also do so in 1996. I do not remember reservations being raised by other members of the state party. Indeed, the-then-State-Chair proposed that after we got me on the ballot, we should try to get a second person on the primary election ballot for the same office: A contested Senate primary would generate positive publicity. This would have been a really excellent idea, if we could have pulled it off.
What we did not at first appreciate was that getting candidates on the ballot under the Major Party rules would be far harder than getting candidates on the ballot had been in 1994, when we had Party Designation status. To get on the ballot, I put up a substantial amount of my own money, raised rather more, recruited volunteer petitioners, tried to coordinate things, and collected some of my own signatures If everyone had come through with the promised number of signatures and the signature validity rate had been as high in 1996 as it had been in 1994, I would have been on the ballot. None of these issues worked out quite right. I didn’t get enough valid signatures and missed ballot access. Since 1996, the LPMA has placed candidates on the statewide ballot under Major Party rules, but that took far more resources than we had available in 1996.
The back-up plan for ballot access was a sticker campaign to win the Libertarian Senate primary. For lower office, this is a workable path to getting on the ballot. In 1996 one of our State Representative candidates got on the ballot via a sticker campaign. The obstacle was that State Law required that I get a minimum of 5,000 votes to advance to the November ballot. I did not get the votes, but my campaign was an opportunity to do outreach for the Party. That year I spent almost as much on advertising the Party as Harry Browne did—around $6000.
What if I had had enough votes, and been on the November ballot? The Kerry-Weld election was heavily funded. The news outlet that actually runs statewide debates is prejudiced against the Libertarian Party. It regularly promises that it will let our candidates into their debates, some other year. It was unlikely that I would be able to debate Kerry and Weld, unless they were both seized with the idea that I should be brought on board as a participant.
The record suggests how I would have done in a debate. In 1998 I ran for Congress and faced off against my opponents nearly a dozen times. My incumbent opponent, Congressman Jim McGovern, is a vigorous, thoughtful Democrat, a rising star of his Party, and a much better debater than either Weld or Kerry. (He is now ranking member on the House Rules Committee.) My Republican opponent had spent terms in the State Senate and was the strongest candidate his party could find. The Attleboro Sun-Chronicle said of three 3-way debate: ‘Libertarian is Surprise Winner’.
The Massachusetts ballot access laws in the past were worse than they are today, but we tremendously improved them with a ballot initiative, question 4, in 1990. The voters supported our initiative in 1990. There are still big problems with Massachusetts ballot access laws (especially getting candidates on a primary ballot) and I wonder if we could again do an initiative to fix those problems. The Republican Party might help us. Even Republicans suffer from the existing laws. In 2024 there were Republicans on the ballot for US House in only two of the nine districts.