Libertarian Party Inside Baseball Politics Thread

[Canis]

Is that libertarian on the Riverside County board of supervisors still there or still a Libertarian? iirc he's the libertarian representing the most people in elected office last I heard he was being super anti lockdown and got accused of sexual harassment https://www.pe.com/2020/12/10/riverside-county-supervisor-jeff-hewitt-accused-of-sexual-harassment

[Canis]

Podcast with the next State Party Chair of Indiana, Evan McMahon.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/23FyVngb6MvSFEtIxYPGxf?si=-tOgmVyPT3yAHx2c56uFWg

Wow, it's awesome how organized the IN LP is getting it seems like it's one of the most organized third parties in the country! If you ever run for office Boiler let us know! Seems like the party going really hard on organizing and winning local elections and getting a few libertarians elected in the state assembly and house which is a pretty difficult task but Wyoming electing one shows it's possible especially if you go after uncontested seats. Ideologically I agree with libertarians on a little less than half of all the issues but I'm in favor of reforming our democracy and allowing other parties to be relevant so if you can make a difference in IN go for it.

[Canis]

Podcast with the next State Party Chair of Indiana, Evan McMahon.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/23FyVngb6MvSFEtIxYPGxf?si=-tOgmVyPT3yAHx2c56uFWg

Wow, it's awesome how organized the IN LP is getting it seems like it's one of the most organized third parties in the country! If you ever run for office Boiler let us know! Seems like the party going really hard on organizing and winning local elections and getting a few libertarians elected in the state assembly and house which is a pretty difficult task but Wyoming electing one shows it's possible especially if you go after uncontested seats. Ideologically I agree with libertarians on a little less than half of all the issues but I'm in favor of reforming our democracy and allowing other parties to be relevant so if you can make a difference in IN go for it.

Thanks. I'll probably run for county council next year. I don't expect to win, but I can use that for name value to run again for the county council at-large seats in 2024 where the straight ticket voting does not apply. If I'm the only non-R on the ballot, it gives me a plausible path to finishing 3rd of 4 (you vote for 3).

Right now I'm a county party chair and I need to grow my county party. Thinking of the how is so far a struggle. We practice party membership, which is something Republicans and Democrats don't do. Your party membership in effect is which party's primary you choose to vote in. Well, we don't have access to the primary per state election law. So I'm going to do some community events in the summer when stuff opens up hopefully and just hold conversations with people. I've already talked to a bunch of people that are supportive, but for longer-term stability of the party in the county I need more party members.

I really feel there's an opening here because the Democrats in this county have no visible presence. In 2020, they did not run a single candidate for county office. In 2018, they had 1. My strategy to "grow the party here" is to start off we have to replace the Democrats as the established #2. So one reason I am running in 2022 for county council is I want to be able to state we have more candidates running than the local Democrats do.

In our most recent governor's election, the Libertarian finished ahead of the Democrat in this county as he did in about a third of the state's counties. There's circumstances of course for why that was that probably won't play a factor in future races, but the ballot access race for Indiana politics is the Secretary of State election in 2022. According to what Indiana state law says, one seat on the election board is reserved for each of the top two-placed parties in the most recent Secretary of State race. So if we finished ahead of the Democratic candidate in our county for Secretary of State in 2022, we would hold the seat on the election board for the next 4 years, not them. I've talked to some friends that are Republicans and told them this, and they're "oh yeah, I'll vote for your guy for Secretary of State", so when campaigning in 2022 I'll make sure to state that. (We need 2% statewide in the Secretary of State race to retain our universal ballot access for the next 4 years, we've been able to do this consistently since 1994. If we somehow got 10%, we would get access to a primary. Word is Donald Rainwater, who ran for Governor in 2020 and got 11.4%, may run for Secretary of State to use his name value.)

If you don't mind sharing which county do you live in? with a county-level race if your county pretty small and your network well you may have a good chance of winning the race people care about party affiliation a lot less for local-level races than state and federal races. You also have way fewer people you need to reach out to. Good luck boiler maybe in a year or 2 you'll be county councilman boiler!