Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 21:05:56 -0500
From: kvc@compuserve.com ("Kent Van Cleave")
Subject: Re: [lpaz-discuss] Advisory: Arizona Lawsuit Win
To: lp2000@egroups.com, hoosierlibertarian@egroups.com ("Hoosier Libertarian"), lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com
Good news and bad news....
-----Original Message-----
To: lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com <lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 7:59 PM
Subject: [lpaz-discuss] Advisory: Arizona Lawsuit Win
>
>Subj: Advisory: Arizona Lawsuit Win
>Date: 5/30/01 3:58:31 PM US Mountain Standard Time
>From: owner-announce@lp.org (Libertarian Party Announcements)
>Reply-to: owner-announce@lp.org
>To: announce@hq.lp.org
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>=====================
>ADVISORY FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
>News from the National LP headquarters for
>members & supporters of the Libertarian Party
>=====================
>Watergate Office Building
>2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100
>Washington DC 20037
>Website: www.LP.org
>Email: pressreleases@hq.LP.org
>For information about the party: (800) ELECT-US
>=====================
>May 30, 2001
>=====================
>
>
>Libertarian Party wins belated
>Arizona filing deadline lawsuit
>
>WASHINGTON, DC -- The Libertarian Party has belatedly won a lawsuit
>acknowledging that Harry Browne was improperly kept off the Arizona
>ballot as an independent presidential candidate in 2000.
There's the good news -- another unconstitutional hurdle knocked down. Even
though the motivation was to set up competition with the long-time Arizona
Libertarian Party after LPUS disaffiliated it precipitously (thereby losing
ballot status in Arizona), this was very much worth doing -- and credit
should go to LPUS and the perpetual Browne campaign for seeing it through.
[snip]
And here's the bad news: LPUS is still lying about the Arizona mess.
>The Libertarian Party and Harry Browne had filed a lawsuit against
>Arizona's filing deadline in August 2000, after Browne was denied a
>spot on the ballot by a splinter group of the Arizona Libertarian
>Party.
Browne was NOT denied a spot on the ballot, any more than Bill Clinton was.
That is to say that everyone who was entitled to a spot on the ballot, as
the nominee of a political party with ballot status in Arizona WAS ON THE
BALLOT.
The Arizona Libertarian Party (the long-time organization with ballot status
but unwillingly disaffiliated by LPUS) -- NOT a "splinter group" thereof --
offered Harry Browne a chance to make his case as a candidate for nomination
by the ALP, but he spurned the offer. Being under no more obligation to list
Browne as its nominee than Bush or Gore -- none of them being affiliated
with the ALP, the ALP did what all parties do: it selected a nominee from a
pool of candidates (from which Browne had absented himself), based on its
own standards of desirability.
>Browne, the party's official presidential candidate, had been nominated
>at the Libertarian National Convention in July, and, wit VP candidate
>Art Olivier, was already on the ballot in 49 other states and the
>District of Columbia.
This is ambiguous. What is meant by "the party's..."? Browne was certainly
LPUS's official presidential candidate, but they had no affiliate
organization with ballot status in Arizona. The ALP, with its long-time
ballot status, had an official presidential candidate, nominated in Arizona
by Arizona Libertarians.
>But the maverick Arizona group placed Colorado science fiction author
>L. Neil Smith on the ballot as the LP candidate for president, and
>Nevada newspaper columnist Vin Suprynowicz on as vice president.
"[M]averick"? There was indeed a maverick Arizona group -- one that had been
attempting for more than five years to take over the Arizona Libertarian
Party by any means other than those prescribed by the party's constitution
and bylaws. Their primary method was to sue the ALP (and, personally, its
officers -- you know, "the politics of personal destruction") based on
unconstitutional laws very siilar to the petition deadline whose defeat we
are now celebrating (and which the ALP had been actively challenging) --
laws establishing the time and place of official business meetings and the
qualifications for internal party office (viz: nobody who is unwilling to
run for Precinct Committeeman in a tax-funded primary election was elibible
to run for a party office in Arizona).
That maverick group, now the LPUS affiliate in Arizona, had the
responsibility of getting its party's candidate, Harry Browne, on the
ballot. The ALP itself selected Smith and Suprynowicz as candidates who best
supported its principles. The fact that it could have conceivably behaved
irrationally and chosen a candidate completely unaffiliated with it, such as
Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich or Harry Browne, should be universally
recognized as irrelevant in judging how it chose its nominee.
This story from the Watergate is just one more bit of proof that they
consider fraud a perfectly good tool in pursuing their agenda. Unless things
change drastically, that agenda appears to consist of (1) blue-sky
projections of unrealistic victories; (2) raising funds from the ranks of
committed Libertarians and Browne's supporters; (3) thereby being able to
send out spiffy direct mail requests for more funds (punctuated with
blue-sky projections of unrealistic victories) to committed Libertarians and
Browne's supporters, to allow a number of people to make a living at this,
and to spend a few percent of the total on campaigning; and (4) repeat step
(3) indefinitely. Running in parallel to this will be a recruiting effort to
bring in numerous voters based on particular issues of concern to them,
being careful not to scare them off with the notion of uncompromising
principle and its consequences. Thus, as the party grows larger, it will
necessarily grow less libertarian.
Will the embarrassment from the Willis fiasco bring about a much needed
house cleaning? Will the LPUS become "the party of principle" in more than
rhetoric?
If so, I could at last join the national party in good conscience.
Kent Van Cleave
Former Secretary, Arizona Libertarian Party
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