As a longtime Libertarian activist, I know as well as anyone the burnout that can accompany election results. I can totally understand how many of you are feeling right now. Another election season has come and gone, and the LP doesn’t have much to show for it except for a couple of Soil and Water Board seats.

Just look at the dismal numbers. The Libertarian candidates considered the strongest of the pack turned out to be anything but strong in the results. Texas’ much vaunted Bob Smither couldn’t defeat a write-in candidate! Michael Badnarik’s well-funded campaign went down in flames. For all the money his campaign spent, his results were not much better than virtually unfunded campaigns.

Some other “noteworthy campaigns”:
Bruce Guthrie, who pumped in over a million of his own dollars to his campaign couldn’t crack 2%. Phil Maymin and Bill Pierce despite some local coverage, also could not crack 2%.

Just another depressing election for the Libertarian Party. But, hey, we’re still the 3rd largest political party in the United States, right? We’ll show them in 2008!

Riiight.

If this was your first election supporting LP candidates, I hope you didn’t get your hopes up too high. “Burnout” is a very real problem after an election is done. I know it well. It’s one of the reasons why I joined the Free State Project.

After busting my ass for campaigns down in Florida and getting the same dismal results year after year, I joined the FSP. The Libertarian Party continues to fail and each election year picks itself up, dusts itself off and does the same thing all over again.

Three decades of failure means it’s time to do something differently. It’s clear the problem with our movement is we’re spread too thin. 1% here, 2% there. And only a percentage of the people voting LP are actual activists.

Enter the Free State Project.

The FSP is a plan to move Libery loving activists all to the same state: New Hampshire. While only a hundred and fifty “early movers” have arrived, they are already laying the groundwork for activist networks (Like NHFree.com and NHLiberty.org.) that new arrivals will simply be able to “plug-in” to and get active. The early movers are already holding the line for Liberty. They were, for instance, critical in defeating the smoking ban that reared its ugly head this year.

The Free State Project is an idea that’s time has come. Don’t burn out. Channel your anger and disappointment about the LP’s results away and investigate the FSP. Sign the First 1000 Pledge. I suggest you move sooner rather than later. Things are just starting to get interesting up here. I just moved here two months ago and I only regret I didn’t come sooner.

Explore the FSP in person at the upcoming Liberty Forum in Concord this February. John Stossell, Michael Badnarik (an FSP member!), and the Advocates’ Sharon Harris will all be there, and so should you.

Should you choose to stay where you are, expect future election disappointments as all of the best activists from your area continue to move to NH as part of the Second American Revolution.

See you in NH!
-FTL_Ian

Happy Tuesday! As Collin County chairman, I will be very busy with poll watching and a multi county election night return watching event. Most of you know that I went to bed quite late last night. (See previous post timestamp.) Matthew Moseley and I did a last minute push to get his signs out at every polling location in his district.

I don’t know how much you have heard abut Matt, but he has run a very professional libertrarian campaign. I am very excited about his race because it is a two way race with a Republican Party opponent. Matt’s opponent did virtually no campaigning- I think he expects to be re-elected based on his poor service. I met up with Democratic Party candidates/volunteers while putting out signs and they were excited to see libertarian signs going up. David Hanschen, candidate for Family Court Judge actually said that he votes libertarian when there is no Dem on the ticket.

I don’t want to just run on about Matt as we have so many candidates who have worked their tails off this year. Let’s see, there is Badnarik, Hess, Smither, Claytor, Maymin, Machia, Schlosser, Guthrie, Peirce, Hayes, Sanders, Chambers and many others. There are simply too many to name here- a more detailed list can be found out LP.org.

I do want to say “Good Luck!” to all of our candidates and “Thank You!” to every volunteer who helped them. If we take any seats, it will be because of your efforts.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: Eric Dondero comments that we should wish good luck to GOP Libertarians. I suppose someone will come along and suggest we wish good luck to DNC Libertarians as well. Frankly, if they wanted our good wishes, they should have run on our ticket. NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Sad, but true. Courtesy of Phil Maymin.

Because of Libertarian presidential campaigns I’ve worked and my current work at the LP office, it’s a rare day indeed that I don’t hear Stephen VanDyke’s “Libertarians need to…” or comments like this one:

LP headquarters, are you awake? [snip]
Geez! I am getting soooo tired of LP inaction!

(It’s somewhat ironic that the person who left this comment did so on an LP blog posting bringing attention to this particular issue.)

Pundits are repeatedly suggesting that if the GOP maintains control of either the House or the Senate, it will be because of VoterVault, their database application which assists local Get-Out-The-Vote efforts for the Republican Party. Despite having considerably fewer financial resources than the Republicans and the Democrats, the LP is not being inactive. As a matter of fact, I just drove from Houston to D.C. so I can stay awake day and night for the next few days to help with our GOTV efforts around the country.

Libertarian National Committee chair Bill Redpath was just on C-Span (no video link available yet). One of the things he discussed was the Libertarian Party’s BallotBase operation. It provides an easy way for people across the country to make telephone calls to help support Libertarian campaigns immediately before Election Day.

That’s right, if you have Internet access and a telephone (or cell or Vonage or Skype or whatever), you can help LP candidates greatly increase their vote totals. We’ve already proven that BallotBase helps in test cases. In our first test case in California CD-50, we tripled the vote of Libertarian Paul King in the special election there. In the Vermont primaries, one of the races for which we used BallotBase won by one vote! BallotBase does work, but it can’t work without you.

Depending upon your time zone and the exact time you read this posting, we’ve got around 72 hours to place absolutely as many phone calls as we can in support of Libertarian candidates. You’ll get your choice of race (in some cases even specialized target lists) which you can assist. Here’s some of the races (different campaigns have different rules and start and stop at various times thoughout the day) which could use your help: see more…

According to Maymin’s campaign:

Phil Maymin, candidate for U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 4th District, will appear on Tucker Carlson’s show on MSNBC, Wednesday at 4pm EST. Tucker played Maymin’s “I Approve This Massage” ad on his show a couple of days ago. Watch
the clip.

Note: The clip is best viewed with Internet Explorer.

Previous coverage of Phil Maymin here.

Update: For those of you that live in Maymin’s district, be sure to vote for him on this online poll.

Update2: Maymin’s interview on MSNBC here. (best viewed with Internet Explorer)

Libertarian candidate for Connecticut’s fourth Congressional district, Phil Maymin, was not only included in the debates, but his performance has been quite impressive. Here is a clip of some highlights from one of the six debates he has attended so far:

Maymin is currently ranked #2 on the Libertarian Party’s Candidate Tracker and is running in a four-way race against a Green and two mega-party candidates.

UPDATE: Phil Maymin’s closing statement after the jump.

see more…

Browbeating third parties with their psuedo-science poll methodology:

“We would include them if we felt the candidate could have a significant impact in the race,” Schwartz said. “We consider their fundraising, press coverage and how the district voted for the party in the past.”

If the voters felt strongly about Maymin, they would volunteer his name in polls, Schwartz added.

I see… it’s the voter’s obligation to inform the pollster if they don’t include all the candidates. Just like the journalist’s view that it’s the voter’s obligation to inform the media. How does this factor into the publicity giving wall to wall coverage of the major parties with not even a mention of the other candidates on the ballot? Beats the fuck out of anyone not in the polling or media industry (good luck voter).

And by the way, they aren’t going to listen to you anyways because they base their decision on their counterpart anyways:

One pollster said candidates should focus less on polling methodology and more on their campaigns.

That’s right… shut the fuck up and start campaigning for attention to your platform from uh… the pollsters and media. Oh shit.

“Candidates are always worried about the bandwagon effect, but voters are not necessarily going to go for you just because you’re ahead in a poll,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Polling Institute in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “They should worry less about the nuances of poll.”

And voters are definitely not going to know jack shit about you if you’re not in the polls in the first place… so thanks.

Q: What’s the difference between a Libertarian television ad and Santa Claus?

A: They’re both figments of our imagination, but at least you know what Santa Claus is supposed to look like.

That right there is the conventional wisdom, and outside of our Presidential races, it’s generally true. HOWEVER. A lot of serious Libertarian races have emerged this year, and with those serious races come some serious ads. I thought I might give our loyal Maccabees a taste of what Libertarian campaigns on the march look like.

And yes, I will actually slap them up for your viewing pleasure, but you’ve gotta come with me across the jump. And I warn you that this is an exhaustive list. see more…

Looks like a Libertarian made the bar to debate while a Green didn’t.

From the Norwalk Citizen-News:

Although he collected the requisite number of signatures to appear on the ballot in the Nov. 7 election, Richard Duffee, the Green Party candidate for the 4th Congressional District, is not been invited to participate in the League of Women Voters’ debates.
The other candidates in the race Republican incumbent Christopher Shays, Democrat Diane Farrell and Libertarian Phil Maymin will take part in the debates, which are scheduled on Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. at Norwalk Community College and on Oct. 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Clune Performing Arts Center of Wilton High School.

In an e-mail to the Norwalk Citizen-News on Monday, Duffee said he’d been notified that he was not invited because he “had not shown sufficient evidence of broad voter support or of broad financial support.”

I’ll skip the usual Green talking points (imagine hippies and druids and John Lennon’s voice) to get to the candidates’ reactions to this news:

Neither Shays nor Farrell could be reached for comment before press time, but on Wednesday, Jan Spiegel, a spokeswoman for Farrell’s campaign, said Farrell believes “it is up to the organizers of the debate to set the rules.” Similarly, Michael Sohn, Shays’ campaign manager, said, “It was left up to the debate organizers to choose which candidates they wanted to [participate].”

Also on Wednesday, Maymin said he had no comment about Duffee’s exclusion. “I would debate any of my opponents any time if there was enough public support and an impartial moderator,” he said.

Okay, fair enough. But, I dunno. Not that I’d ever vote for a Green, but I think we ought to let them stand in a debate. We need clearer, fairer ballot access rules in general, and we need to stand with the Green Party on this one… well, insofar as they want inclusion into the debates too. Publically-funded elections can shag off.