Having declined to seat the PVLA representative, the State Board used the meeting to take a de facto stand on local organization. Presented with nearly 20 candidates whom they had recruited to run for the State Legislature, the State Board agreed at the meeting to give those candidates no help in getting on the ballot. If the candidates wanted to be on the ballot, they would have to handle all of their own petitioning and fundraising. Most prospective candidates had never run for office before, had never been in a campaign before, and had no idea what to do next. Unsurprisingly, few were able to qualify themselves as candidates.
The LPMA’s practices on campaign spending were very different for the campaigns of the people running the State Party. In 1998, the State Board mobilized extensive resources to help statewide candidates—a majority of whom were State Board members—with ballot access. When the Howell 2000 campaign hit a ballot access crisis, and ran to the State Board for help, Howell 2000 was given thousands of dollars.
Could the State Board and its statewide candidates have helped the candidates for local office? The statewide candidates could perfectly well have taken their extensive set of paid petitioners, sent them to appropriate districts, and had them collect a second signature form, thereby putting the legislative candidates on the ballot. There would have had to be adequate financial compensation to the petitioners for the extra work, but the cost per candidate would have been minimal relative to the overall cost of the campaigns. The legislative candidates would have strengthened the campaigns for statewide office. The state slate chose to ignore local campaigns. In the end, the PVLA put its member-candidate on the ballot. I put myself on the ballot. The 1996 State Rep candidate who ran again put himself on the ballot. Most other Libertarians did not qualify for ballot access.
Might a larger slate of state legislative candidates have had consequences? In Massachusetts, a substantial majority of State Legislators and Congressmen run unopposed. A political party could try to field a full slate of candidates for lower office, including 160 State Representatives, 40 State Senators, 8 members of the Governor’s Council, and 10 Congressmen. This would not be a trivial effort. The Party would need to find more than 200 candidates and collect as a Party Designation perhaps 100,000 signatures [as a Major Party, 200,000+ raw signatures would be needed]. However, the Party that did this would have an excellent chance of outpolling the Republican Party.
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