The State Board did allow supplemental election of ‘Associate’ members at biennial State Conventions. These elections were beauty contests. In 1998, following the state convention the Party state newsletter Mass Liberty listed addresses for 29 core party activists, ranging from the State Chair and Regional Chairs through to board members. Of these, 18 lived in Suffolk (Boston) or Middlesex (largely north from Boston) Counties, which together account for a third of the Commonwealth’s registered voters. The other third of the State committee came from the other two-thirds of the state. Indeed, after counting close friends on the Committee, the Libertarian party of Massachusetts was really organized as the Libertarian Party of Middlesex County and environs. In 2002, candidates for Associate Member were not even allowed to address the convention before the election took place. The favored candidates were the people who had been written up in the Mass Liberty, the state newsletter whose editorial policies were under the control of the State Party.
The LPMA then adopted By-Laws regulating the right of Board members to vote: In order to vote, State Committee members were required to become dues-paying members of the National Party. This By-Law disenfranchised Sally Howes, the only regular State Committee member elected from western Massachusetts. Howes was registered to vote as a Libertarian, but did not belong to LPUS, so she was under the By-Laws not entitled to vote on the State Board.
2000—Progress for Massachusetts Libertarians
The 2000 elections marked a substantial step forward for Massachusetts Libertarians. Many more people were elected to local office, and nearly 20 Libertarians on the ballot for the state legislature. Ilana Freedman, candidate for State Representative in Billerica, received 25% of the vote, including 42% of the vote in her home town of Billerica, where she had been active on a variety of local Commissions. She had had a significant libertarian triumph: She had persuaded a board responsible for raising money for local industries to dissolve itself. Al Wilcox, running for State Representative, received 35% of the vote in his home town of Monson and 36% of the vote in neighboring Wales, Massachusetts. For the 2002 elections, Wales was gerrymandered out of Wilcox’s District. Terry Franklin of Amherst, whose yearly Extravaganja was the second largest re-legalization festival in Massachusetts, ran as an independent, also getting a substantial fraction of the vote.
National attention within the Libertarian Party went to the U.S. Senate race. Incumbent Teddy Kennedy breezed to an unsurprisingly easy victory, winning more than 70% of the vote with a campaign in which he declined to debate his opponents. He ran almost no advertising until the final days before the election. The Republican candidate, Jack E. Robinson III, was almost knocked off the ballot in June via legal challenges against his petitions by the Democratic and Libertarian Parties. It did not help Robinson’s case that a prominent Republican Party State Official denied that his apparent signature on Robinson’s nominating papers was legitimate. Paul Cellucci, the sitting Republican governor, refused to say if he would vote for Robinson. Robinson’s campaign came to a dead halt after the September primaries, with almost no further spending or campaign appearances in evidence.
The race also included Libertarian Carla Howell, as well as Natural Law, Constitution, and Timeshare-Dot-Com Party candidates. The Timeshare-Dot-Com candidate put himself on the ballot, personally collecting 40,000 signatures of which only 12,000 were valid. Robinson got 13% of the vote, narrowly beating Carla Howell’s 12%. The Constitution Party candidate ran radio ads attacking Libertarian Howell and got 1.5% of the vote. Howell’s 2000 campaign is the subject of the next Chapter.
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