Hornberger also sent a letter to the FEC. The letter included the key phrase that the letter was not a complaint. As released to the public, it was also not notarized. The FEC has extremely specific rules about what it may act on as a complaint (You can find them for yourself at www.fec.gov.). Under FEC regulations, Hornberger’s letter was…
Posts tagged as “Harry Browne”
As written in the early 2000s. To the author, the FEC responses appear to be pro forma assurances to the public that if a person broke Federal Election Campaign Laws, that person would potentially be subject to legal action. From the broad wording used by their spokesman, it is not clear that there was a specific intent by the FEC…
How did the Browne campaign survive these failures? Membership recruitment was said to be a task for the National Party. Failure to recruit members was a failure of the National Party, not the Browne Campaign. To his credit, Browne repeatedly urged Libertarians to support Project Archimedes, so these failings lay not on his shoulders but on the shoulders of his…
With respect to (2), the Browne campaign did almost no public political advertising prior to the 2000 National Convention. There was an extensive direct mail campaign to raise money, but direct mail is not public advertising. Fundraising events and State Party conventions are also not public advertising. Without public political advertising, (2) does not lead to candidacy. Browne did have…
On December 19, 1996, Harry Browne announced that he would be creating an exploratory committee, whose purposes would include raising money. Browne wanted to know if he could begin the campaign with $1,000,000 in hand, and the exploratory committee was the vehicle for making the determination experimentally. However, under (3) and (6) “amass funds to be used after candidacy is…
FEC reporting requirements made it increasingly difficult for the Browne campaign to hide its actual financial status from the Party faithful. Now we come to the Chapter’s main topic: What are those FEC reporting requirements? What burdens does Federal Election Law impose on a Presidential candidate, and when are those burdens imposed? In short, a campaign that receives more than…
These are excerpts from my book Finding Liberty (http://3mpub.com for the ebook). Readers are welcome to circulate either the excerpts or copies of the complete ebook as a free book. Along the same lines, in Fall 1996 Browne had committed for a major speaking tour of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Libertarians invested major efforts in preparing for the tour, which would have…
We can find out what the thermometer meant by comparing it with Browne’s FEC reports. The thermometer matches the amount of money that had been raised by the Browne campaign, not how much had been saved. Browne’s money went out the door almost as fast as it was raised. For most of the campaign, the meaning of the thermometer remained…
Chapter Ten $1,000,000 by 2000 In early 1997, Harry Browne had identified two specific requirements for launching a good campaign: National Party membership needed to increase from 27,000 to 200,000. By January 2000, the Browne campaign needed to have a million dollars cash on hand for a significant advertising campaign. At the end of 1999, Party membership was only 33,000.…
The extent to which LP News was to serve the interests of the National Committee’s staff and their friends, rather than the interest of the Party and its elected governing body, was revealed four years later. An article about the Willis Invoice and its aftermath was to appear in LP News. The October 2001 issue of Liberty magazine, based on…