Libertarian leaders converge on Las Vegas Valley

Henderson- The Libertarian Party, one of the United States’ longest-enduring and most pervasive third parties, held its annual leadership conference in Henderson this weekend at the Sunset Station Hotel & Casino.  The event drew party leaders and activists from around the country and featured training workshops on topics like filing with the Federal Elections Commission, planning a state convention and communicating with the media.

“It’s an opportunity to learn more about the trade, about raising money, about campaigning,” said Shane Cory, executive director of the national Libertarian Party, “the nuts and bolts of running a political party.”

With so many of the Libertarian faithful on hand, it was also an opportunity for Libertarian presidential candidate hopefuls to woo potential delegates to the party’s national convention in May.  Seven of the party’s fourteen announced candidates attended the conference and were scheduled to debate Saturday evening including Las Vegan Wayne Allyn Root, winner of the Missouri Libertarian straw poll, and George Phillies, winner of the unofficial Arizona Libertarian primary.

“The men and women here are state chairs,” said Cory.  “They’re more than likely going to be our delegation chairs, so they’ll have a lot of influence there.” 

“While we do have primaries, we’re different from Republicans and Democrats in that we don’t rely on those primaries to decide who our presidential nominee’s going to be.”

The process of nominating a presidential candidate among Libertarians is straightforward but decentralized to an extent that the state chairs make invaluable assets for any presidential candidates’ campaign.  At the national convention, the nominee is chosen by a majority written vote among the 1,051 expected delegates.  Beside the lack of primaries to pledge delegates, the convention also does not employ block voting, meaning that there is no way to ensure a winner-take-all success among any states’ delegation.

“Half of the question is issues,” said nominee hopeful George Phillies on winning over state chairs.  “The other half of the question is ‘how effective of a campaign will he run?’  So I’d rather sell ‘I’m going to give us a better campaign.’”

While Libertarians have won ballot access in enough states to make it mathematically possible to achieve an Electoral College victory, a Libertarian becoming president in the near future is highly improbable.  Michael Badnarik, the 2004 Libertarian nominee, received fewer than 400,000 popular votes or less than half a percent cast. 

With such an unlikelihood of winning the presidency, leaders at the convention are more interested in how a nominee could aid lower-level candidacies that do stand a chance and be a positive focal point for their party’s media coverage.

“My understanding is that I’ve gotten more national media than any Libertarian ever before the convention,” said Wayne Allyn Root Friday, who sponsored the conference and is also seeking the nomination.  “I’ve been on FoxNews, FoxBusiness, MSNBC, The Michael Medved Show with three and a half million listeners around the country.  That’s a breakthrough that no other Libertarian has had at the national level.”

That type of media coverage is much on the minds of Libertarians these days as they have seen one-time Libertarian presidential nominee, now-Republican Congressman Ron Paul catch fire in national fundraising and media exposure for his race for the Republican nod.

“Ron Paul has helped across the board,” said Nevada Libertarian chair and three-time 1st Nevada Congressional District hopeful Jim Duensing.  “His campaign galvanized parts of the freedom movement and got some people who weren’t active, active.  He took some Libertarian activists away from us, but now that he’s kind of dropped out, most, if not all, are coming back.”

Despite the high attendance of prospective nominees, the presidential contest formed the far smaller part of the agenda at the conference.  As a third party, Libertarians continuously face challenges of ballot access and organization and do so without the massive institutional memory and fundraising advantages Democratic and Republican leaders and candidates inherit.  The conference's premier focus was on overcoming those hurdles through shared knowledge and training.

“There’s a lot of people here that have been with the party for a number of years and that have a lot of experience in building successful affiliates,” said Tommy Wall, chairman of the Tennessee Libertarian Party.  “Being able to be around those folks and share their experiences is really beneficial to smaller states like ours.”

“Being young does enable us to have a fresh start and a fresh approach, and I hope it gives us some opportunities to hopefully do things better than the two major political parties.”