I’ve seen a lot of comments recently on how a few state Libertarian Parties are doing fantastic, while others aren’t doing as well.

Derrick said:

Yep, it was the late 1980’s when I dropped out of the Maryland LP, and for exactly the reasons you mentioned. The last straw for me was a meeting which was dominated by one guy who kept insisting that we should target our marketing efforts toward working prostitutes.

I also tried joining the MDLP listserv a few years ago, but it seemed to be dominated by conspiracy theorists.

I would like to be involved with helping to make my state chapter as successful and organized as the Georgia LP, but it doesn’t seem possible. Where to begin?

As a Nebraska resident, this particularly intrigues me. I live in a state where what little LP activity there is stops west of the 98th meridian and the party doesn’t answer its email. Interestingly enough, before that I lived in Maryland.

So this isn’t a prescriptive post so much as it is an inquisitive one-how do we go about fixing a moribund state party? Any experts in the audience, please tell me. I had to write in “Libertarian” on my voter registration forms and I’ll probably be told that I’ll be registered nonpartisan anyway.

Obviously there’s no magic bullet, but there’s gotta be some methods that work better than others. So commenters? Any advice?

Poll numbers for Garrett Michael Hayes, Libertarian candidate for governor in Geogia, are picking up steam according to a recent InsiderAdvantage poll putting Hayes at 9%. 11Alive reports:

In fact, while both Sonny Perdue and Mark Taylor are losing points, Libertarian Garrett Hayes is gaining — big.

They go on to quote pollster Matt Towery as saying:

“This is the first race I’ve ever seen where the Libertarian keeps rising and the other two candidates keep dropping,” Towery said. “I’ve never seen that before in all my years at looking at political campaigns.”

Hayes was polling around 8% prior to a stellar performance at a recent debate, which had at least one local blogger declaring him the winner:

..Honestly, Sonny Perdue calling Mark Taylor “Pinnochio”; Mark Taylor calling Sonny Perdue a dwarf named “Greedy”; and Garrett Michael Hayes talking about liberating Georgia from the Democrats and the Republicans.

You know, if I had to pick a winner, I’d say that Libertarian Garrett Michael Hayes won because he was able to stay above the name calling and personal attacks that went back and forth between the Big Guy and the big dwarf.

Other video media coverage of Garrett Michael Hayes can be found here:

WSB-TV

11 Alive

Fox 5

Government can’t win the drug war, now they can’t even successfully smoke pot either.

From MSNBC:

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

…

The plants are so full of water right now … that we simply couldn’t burn them,” he said.

…

“A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action,” Hillier said dryly.

The money quote, though:

One soldier told him later: “Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I’d say ‘That damn marijuana.’”

If the rest of the War on Drugs went like this, the world would be a better place.

I guess the pirates have abandoned us along with the ninjas? One Iowan pirate is running an independent campaign for a House seat.

From CNN:

Pillaging, plundering and grog, sweet grog — James Hill is happy to discuss the finer points of pirate life. Just not before you hear him out on lobbying reform.

“Lobbying should be illegal,” said Hill, a self-professed “drunken pirate” who is running for Congress as an independent in Iowa’s 1st District. “It amounts to taxation without representation.”

…(snip)…

It may sound strange coming from a pirate, but Hill insists his campaign is about ideas, not imagery.

“Before we were a country they — pirates — were running mini-democracies. We need to get back to that,” he said, adding an unsolicited promise that he will bring more “swashbuckling” to Congress if elected.

To many, the pirate’s campaign is just a lot of yo-ho-hum.

Hill’s major opponents — Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Mike Whalen — have more or less ignored his candidacy in their intense fight for the open seat. Hill also has struggled to get local media coverage and has managed only one debate invitation so far.

Yes, you read that right. They will let pirates into debates, but they have to think about it when a million-dollar Libertarian campaign would like to debate.

The good news? Stan Jones probably lost the “Worst Debator” Award for 2006.

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.

For more videos, click here.

I quit HoT a few days ago, but like a battered wife, I am back and posting this. SVD is this blog’s owner and he can say what he wishes. I was offended and it was not about thin skin.

I did not like SVD using a broad brush to imply that I am a retard. My issue with his statement had little to do with argument and much to do with effort. I was concerned that our infighting would hurt us. I worried that I spend too much time here arguing the same issues over and over and over again. I was done because I thought that the arguments here would make people flip out and then vote the same as usual.

But, I got an email today.

Hi Michelle,
My name is Hermelinda Vargas. I am a reporter with News 8 Austin working on a story about Libertarians today. Please give me a call on my cell phone if you’d like to be included in our story.

I know you’ve in in contact wih my News Director, Kevin Benz, about our policy for our in-studio debates, so this might be a good chance to discuss some of those concerns.

If you do not know this news director, here is a chance to know a small piece of him:

Kevin Benz
News Director
News 8 Austin

I contacted the reporter who was surprised that I am 3 hours away, but I offered to find her someone for the news article. I called SG and then I called Nancy Neale. Nancy’s response was:

Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 4:57 PM
To: ‘michelle shinghal’
Subject: News 8 Austin reporter
Importance: High

Michelle, can you call me again about this reporter? (A number for you did not show up on my caller ID) I spoke with her and she’s trying to get a story in tonight. She seems to be responding to specific blogs, of which I am not familiar. I’ve left a couple messages on her phone and she’s not called me back yet.

Nancy

I was never in a fight with SVD. He and I have opposing opinions. I think it better to save our family dirt for private debate. But, at election time, I will carry my tail between my legs. It is my opinion that SVD’s blog made this approach possible.

SVD, you placed me and a number of people in the margin, but your forum brought our cause attention. I may lose every ounce of crediblility that I have, but I can deal with that. It is more important to let people know that we are not dead.

Libertarian/Republican candidate for the Vermont house in the Orleans-Caledonia 1 district, Ben Todd, had an excellent letter to the editor published on FortBendNow:

Dear Editor,

I am a Libertarian/Republican candidate for state house in Vermont. In Vermont Libertarians and Republicans have allied themselves to work on very important fiscal issues like repealing the statewide property tax etc. The Vermont Republican party has nominated and endorsed 5 Libertarian party candidates.

I find it sad that the Republican party in your area has chosen to let a Liberal Democrat get elected by not endorsing Libertarian Bob Smither for congress in cd-22. Bob Smither would well represent many Republicans in Texas, just as we are here in Vermont. I encourage all Republicans in CD-22 to ignore the destructive actions of the GOP and place their vote for Bob Smither. If not we may see a Democratic speaker of the house.

Check him out at: www.smither4congress.com

Thank You,

Benjamin Todd
Barton Vermont

Feel free to write your own letter, in support of Bob Smither, to FortBendNow via their form located on the right-hand side of the page.

I guess they’ve got their first radio ad up and they’ve pulled in about $1800 in 36 hours? Pretty sweet. For about $100, you can have Hess ads running all day on some Arizona stations, so rock the donations if you can.

The Hess campaign’s particularly interesting to me because of their unique strategy: instead of going after their political opponents, they’re going after the biased media. The Arizona Republic does sound pretty biased by all accounts, and the Hess campaign does a good job of postulating why:

The AZ Republic wrote, “Don’t blame yourself if you haven’t heard of Hess or much about his politics.” Somehow, it’s supposed to be our fault when they refuse to give fair and equal coverage to all candidates on the ballot. You see, since Libertarians all over the state are standing on our principles and refusing to take so-called “clean” election funding out of the pockets of taxpayers, we are not being considered “legitimate” candidates running “real” campaigns.

It makes sense. Taxpayer-funded elections are, essentially, corporate welfare for advertising outlets. Hess refuses to buy into their corrupt system, so he gets hellashunned.

Will this strategy work? In Arizona, where there’s a lot of people who think like Hess, and getting out the fact of his campaign is probably more important than attacking his opponents, it might just. It also has one of two outcomes, regardless of whether Hess does well in the elections or not-either it’ll overthrow media bias in Arizona for a while, or Big Media will win and the AZLP will have burned a major bridge. We’ll find out for sure on November 8 but I’d say it’d be an experiment worth testing out.

For those who’ve been despairing about the state of politics in America, I have some good news from the Cato Institute. We’re actually the largest swing voter group out there at roughly 13-20% of the population, it’s just slightly harder to reach out to us because we aren’t organized in labor unions or churches.

But we’ve basically determined the last few elections. The (small-l) libertarian vote has traditionally gone to the Republicans; they’ve been seen as the lesser evil. However, a massive demographic revolt occurred in 2004, and Bush only received 59% of the libertarian vote (as opposed to 72% in 2000, when he campaigned talking like a libertarian). And as the libertarian demographic is about evenly split on the war, most of the pro-war libertarians basically voted for him for that reason alone.

This revolt occurred despite Kerry being rated even lower than Gore on average in the libertarian grouping… meaning it was a vote to punish Bush, not because we were enamored with Kerry.

But what would have happened if a more libertarian-leaning candidate was run by the Democrats, such as Howard Dean? The Democrats would only have had to bring Bush down to a 50% libertarian vote (9 points) to cost him Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada… and therefore the election.

And it would have happened, too-despite libertarian tendencies to vote Republican, we’re the most easily-parted group from the GOP fold. More libertarians voted for Perot than any other constituency. And we were almost persuaded to let the jackasses have a go at the Presidency this year.

So ignore us at your peril, Republicratic animals.

Hi. This isn’t news.

We usually do news, yes, but we do opinion pieces. We do editorial pages. Occasionally, we also do cartoons.

We’re the portion of the newspaper that everyone turns to first, usually. We have namecalling, we have libertarian-leaning writeups, we have bad words too sometimes (well, often if it’s my articles).

I’ve come to understand that this isn’t acceptable to some of you, this “college humor” or whatever. Others are mad that our editors take positions on things, usually when they don’t agree with the reader’s position. Still others hate that we use words like “retard,” even though these same people are defending the potty mouths of candidates.

This is why there’s many of us. We all have different points of view, different writing styles. The editors are all libertarians… and that’s where the similarities end. We’re atheists, Christians, agnostics and Lord knows what else. We are purists, we are reformers, we are everything in between. We’re Lockeans, we’re geolibertarians, we’re anarchists, we’re minarchists, we’re silver-tongued, we’re snake-tongued and we’re writing.

How sad, how uninteresting a world it would be if we all had to walk on eggshells. How sad if reformers couldn’t take being called “statist pigs”, purists “radicals,” 9/11 orthodoxists “sheeple” and 9/11 truthers “retards.” How sad if our skins couldn’t withstand the well-intentioned jabs of our own kind, because then how could they withstand the malicious strikes of the Republicrats?

There’s a lot of us here, with a lot of different viewpoints. Gentle, beloved reader, you are guaranteed to disagree with the editor’s version of libertarianism, or the editor’s methods, or the editor’s writing style about 50% of the time on this site, no matter what it is that you believe. Now, we are all grownups here, no? We can take this difference of opinion and let it inform us and make us stronger in our views and our knowledge, or we can let it grow ugly and personal.

I know what I want. I don’t know about you, but I’d miss being called a hippie retard right-winger fascist foul-mouthed statist moron. So let’s grow thicker skin.

In a post about the 9/11 conspiracy theories, SVD recently said that - wait up, let me just blockquote what he said:

I’ve been of the mindset for a long time that the government is far too incompetent to pull off 9/11, and it seems Matt and Trey are on my side on this one. Feels extra good to be on the common sense side of libertarianism watching this.

I still expect our resident conspiracy readers to fill the comments with links to websites and “truth.”

Haha… retards.

Perhaps I am missing some inside South Park joke- I have mentioned that I am not a regular viewer- but calling people who may disagree with the government version of 9/11 retards is pretty damn rude. I do not afix a stupid label upon those believing the government story. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I think some members of US government were complicit. I do not understand how a person working for a campaign that witnesses first hand the lies, manipulation, and exclusion of new ideas could even bring the word “retard” to his mind, let alone click “publish” once it is articulated.

HoT is (from the About page)

admittedly libertarian-leaning and openly advocate Libertarian Party candidates and policies, we are also introspective and take our own party to task from time to time.

It is my opinion that the Libertarian Party is the only political party that calls on the government to do what it should. The government in the USA- at least according to my recollection of Civics- is accountable to the American people. It is not the job of the public- the 30 something and growing percent anyway- to prove that a coverup happened. It is the job of our government to tell us the truth. The burden of proof lays upon the servants of the people. The burden should be on those bathing in power and controversy.

It is the responsibility of the people to demand that the burden be met. Our government is failing us, and some of the people entrusted with posting those failures have offended at the least me, at most, 30+% of our country.

Some say that we are preaching to the choir here. HoT has a freedom minded readership. When the choir fights amongst each other over which song god likes most, the hymn suffers. I am no longer part of the choir. Retards don’t usually sing in tune anyway.

It has been an interesting year here. I hope that we will all sing in tune one day but this is my last post. I hope you all live as freely as it is important to you.

This is the kiss of death for the “Bush was behind 9/11″ bozos, and I’m happy to share these three clips of the episode posted on YouTube:

Part 2 & 3 after the jump.

I’ve been of the mindset for a long time that the government is far too incompetent to pull off 9/11, and it seems Matt and Trey are on my side on this one. Feels extra good to be on the common sense side of libertarianism watching this.

I still expect our resident conspiracy readers to fill the comments with links to websites and “truth.”

Haha… retards.

A friend sent me a link to register for Zogby polling. It is supposed to be an easy way to have your input on political races counted. I registered this morning and am waiting on their response email so I cannot tell you much, but the site says:

How it works:
1. Complete the online registration page and submit it to us.

2. Zogby Interactive will e-mail you and inform you when an online poll is ready for you to take.

3. Complete the survey. (Easy? We thought so.)

4. Zogby International will e-mail you and inform you when results are available to view.

5. See how your opinion stacks up.

6. Be ready to voice your opinion with the leading public opinion pollster in the world. If you would like the results of the poll you took (as well as other poll results and Zogby International information), be sure to check the check-box asking if you would like Zogby International press releases and other Zogby information sent to you in the future.

I am sorry to post without more detail, but it seemed like something we should share.

www.mtlp.org/jones/

As Michelle’s experience earlier today suggests, the pollsters aren’t being honest with us. It seems they’re intentionally leaving out qualified names from their poll questions.

Bob Smither emailed a few minutes ago to ask for help in rectifying the situation: Become the pollster!

The phone rings and the poll begins: “If the election was held today, which of the following candidates would you vote for?”

Now is your chance to turn the tables on the pollsters and to really help my campaign for Congress!

We need to sample at least 600 more voters to complete the first honest poll that has been done in US House District 22 in Texas. One poll did not mention me (even though mine is one of only two names on the ballot!) and a second poll identified me as Bob Smither of the Liberal Party.

If you can call even a few folks to help with this, I would really appreciate it. All you need is Internet access and a phone. If you have not registered yet, just go to:

http://ballotbase.org/register

and sign up for a BallotBase account. Be sure to include my campaign code when you register:

Smither22

After you register for my campaign, you will be called by a BallotBase volunteer with instructions for doing the calling.

I am very grateful to those who have already volunteered and made calls.

In order to get reliable data, we still need to make more calls. The BallotBase administrator feels that 25 callers could make the required calls in about 4 hours. If you have any time to help with this, please register today and spend some time calling.

We have some campaign events on hold until we get this polling done.

I really appreciate your continuing efforts for my campaign!

UPDATE: Please contact Kevin Tunstall of the Smither campaign to start making polling calls though Ballot Base. His e-mail is ktunstall@fortbendlp.org. He will be able to provide you with a special registration code which will enable you to immediately begin making calls.

The LP will be opening up Ballot Base for calls around 9:30 CT and shutting it down around 8:30 CT.

This is too funny not to post. I just got polled on the TX Gubernatorial race.

Poller: Miss Michelle, If you had to vote today, would you vote for Republican Rick Perry, Democrat Chris Bell, Independent Kinky Friedman, or Independent Carole Strayhorn?

Me: (laughing) OMG, am I finally being polled? I am voting Libertarian, James Werner.

Poller: That is not an option. You can only pick from the four. Republican Rick…

Me: There are five candidates on the ballot and I am voting Libertarian, James Werner.

Poller: So you are undecided?

Me: I am not undecided. I am voting for James Werner. Please write that down. Libertarian, James Werner.

Poller: OK, next question.

He asked me about off premises liquor in Richardson, TX and ended the call after I answered.

I swear that I am dying over here. Funny, funny stuff. I hope that guy talks to his supervisor about the lady who “thinks” there are five candidates. And then I hope he looks up the Libertarian Party.

Last month, the story was that he was racist. Then his Democratic opponent asked him to drop out of the race (Friedman’s reply: “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”). Now the personal attacks on Kinky Friedman are about what the lapel pins he wears. KXAN reports:

“It took me almost nine months to earn the right to wear these dolphins,” Texas Commander for U.S. Submarine Veterans Ray Wilgeroth said.

Wilgeroth says he’s gotten calls from all over the state asking him why Kinky is wearing their medal while he campaigns.

“We do not feel it’s appropriate for him to wear it and imply that the submarine veterans are supporting him for governor because we’re not. We don’t support anyone,” Wilgeroth said.

Thankfully, KXAN reporter Jenny Hoff is a lot more responsible than certain national news organizations and got answers from Kinky about why he’s wearing the medals. His replies show why this attack, like the others, is going to backfire.

“The airborne was given to me by a man in Fort Worth before the primaries who told me I would have to work through my A hole to get on the ballot,” Friedman said.

He says the dolphins were given to him by a submarine widow.

Hoff asks: “And, she wanted you to wear it?”
Friedman says: “Absolutely, she’s been working very hard for our campaign in East Texas.”

Like I said about the “racist” attacks, this is what desperation looks like. People don’t spend the time on personal attacks or appeals to leave the race if your candidacy is a “joke.” Despite his unpolished debate performance, Kinky still has momentum and I still predict that he will be the next Governor of the Lone Star State.

From a reader:

A Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian are having a drink.
Word comes into the bar that a nearby house is on fire with people trapped inside, so they run out to help.

When they get there it’s an inferno with people still trapped inside and screaming. They see some children who escaped the flames are coughing and passed out from smoke inhalation.

The Democrat says “Oh my god we have to help the children.”
The Libertarian says “Fuck the children.”
The Republican says “Is there time?”

I mentioned recently that Kinky did a poor job in the TX gubernatorial debate. I said that he was full of the one liners that made him media’s darling, but he failed to deliver anything of substance. I said that he is no friend to libertarians and that Chris Bell did pretty well considering. (OK, considering that I am no Democrat and was being honest about the content of the debate.)

Apparently, some of Kinky’s supporters feel the same and Mr. Bell is using the info to encourage Kinky to drop out of the race.

Mr. Bell later confirmed he sought a meeting so he could try to talk Mr. Friedman into dropping out of the four-way race, which is in its home stretch. The election is Nov. 7.
“I had hoped to talk to Kinky privately, but now that it’s been reported by the Dallas Morning News, I’m going to ask him publicly: Please join me in defeating Rick Perry,” Mr. Bell said in a statement his campaign issued late Tuesday.
“Kinky and I agree on some very important issues and our supporters all have a lot in common: they want change.”

Kinky responded with:

“No. You’re kidding … for Chris Bell? What do you take me for?”

According to the DMN article, Kinky admitted that he did not bring his “A game” to the debate, but said to drop out would be unthinkable.

“I’d be letting a lot of people down.”
But he took delight in Mr. Bell’s message that the independent is taking a toll. “What can it possibly mean other than that we’re killing him?” Mr. Friedman said. “We’re getting all of the liberals. We’re getting all of the conservatives.”

You may wonder why I care to yap about this now. I am obviously a James Werner supporter. He is, after all, the Libertarian Party candidate in this race. You know, he is the one that was not invited to the debate. He is the one now talking about turning things upside down with a lawsuit against Belo.

Belo has poo-pooed the idea of a suit, but perhaps when it is filed, its reporters may actually get a story’s facts correct. This is not a four-way race. It is a five way race.

Presenting a lie as truth over and over does not make it more truthful. If it did, I would be 10 pounds thinner and 10 years younger. Belo may not like the libertarian, but like the fine lines around my eyes, he exists. And because that truth is presented to me over and over, I would like to do something a “little out there”-

I call for all four of the candidates featured on the debate program to withdraw from the race. I say that because I believe Mr. Bell is right about one thing. Texans want change. Politicking as usual ain’t gonna cut it this time.

Disclaimer: I am not a member of the Werner4Texas campaign. This is not a press release. I am, quite simply, an over-excited supporter.

As we’ve mentioned before, some websites seem to have trouble keeping up with who is running for office in Texas. These errors and omissions seem particularly common when it involves forgetting to list a Libertarian, even when the Republican challenger is not even on the ballot. For example:

• The New York Times Election Guide does not list Bob Smither in the Texas CD-22 race, even though he is one of only two ballot qualified candidates. It does, however, list the write-in campaign of the “Hyphen Lady.”
• MSNBC also can’t seem to figure out who is running, though they don’t even know that the Republican party picked “Hyphen Lady.” This blame can be shared with National Journal, the content partner that “powers” the MSNBC site.

If you’d like to bring these errors to the attention of the media organizations who made them, you can write to politics@nytimes.com, GeneralComments@feedback.msnbc.com, and service@nationaljournal.com.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: I actually did some in-depth investigating into this today and called several national media organizations to find out if there was even a lame explanation for this oversight. If you look at their election coverage, you’ll notice with the exception of a stray independent campaign (notably in TX and CT), there’s only the two major parties represented in any race… period.

Washington Post (feedback form): Republican & Democrat only, did not call back.
New York Times (politics@nytimes.com) Republican & Democrat only,
RealClearPolitics (feedback@realclearpolitics.com) powers FoxNews (foxnewsonline@foxnews.com): Republican & Democrat only, claims technical formatting reasons, yet they list 4 in TX Gov
CNN (feedback form): Republican & Democrat only, refused comment
Wall Street Journal House, Gubernatorial & Senate (wsjcontact@dowjones.com): Republican & Democrat only, did not call

Are third party voters on our way to becoming unpersons?