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Next week, the Republican National Convention will choose Donald Trump to be its nominee for the third presidential election cycle in a row. Between then and now, Trump will also choose his vice president. No one can know Trump's mind for certain, but he is believed to have settled on three finalists: Sen. J.D. Vance (ROhio), Sen. Marco Rubio (RFla.), and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

While the vice presidency is often derided as a relatively unimportant job, there are reasons to think that Trump's choice could have significant ramifications in the future. When Trump does, at long last, exit the political stage, his most recent veep will be a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in subsequent cycles. Vance, Rubio, and Burgum all share certain similaritiesin that they are Republicans who strongly support Trumpbut they are also distinct personalities with significant policy differences.

When Ronald Reagan ran the party, he famously used the metaphor of a three-legged stool to describe modern conservatism, with the legs being neoconservatism (on foreign policy), religious conservatism (on social issues), and libertarianism (on economics). This triple alliance continued through the George W. Bush administration, but Trump shattered it when he won the nomination and the presidency in 2016. Neoconservatism, in particular, fell out of fashion with the GOP; Trump also pushed the party to move away from economic libertarianism, at least on trade.

The battle for control of the GOP's ideological direction is still being fought, and Trump's veep and eventual successor could play a decisive role in winning it. (Trump is himself not particularly ideological.) For libertarians who would like to see the Republican Party adopt a more market-friendly platform wherever possible, the vice presidency has some stakes.

It's unfortunate, then, that Trump's seemingly most likely choiceVanceis also the least libertarian by far.

Vance first came to public attention after publishingHillbilly Elegy, a memoir about his adolescence in Appalachia. The book chronicled the decay of the American Rust Belt and the resulting social instability among the working class, and it helped explain Trump's appeal to blue-collar voters. It is notable, however, that at the time, Vance did not endorsethe phenomenon he was describing. In fact,Hillbilly Elegylargely avoids scapegoating market forcesand instead asserts that the struggling members of Vance's community were wrong to blame their problems on sinister outsiders.

Unfortunately, avoiding demagoguery is not a winning strategy when seeking higher office. Today, Vance is a committed populist who embraces tariffs and protectionism. He has called for the federal government to break upGoogle. He has even praised Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, a Joe Biden appointee waging a one-woman crusade against major tech companiesand indirectly, their customers.

"A lot of my Republican colleagues look at Lina Khanand they say, 'Well Lina Khan is sort of engaged in some sort of fundamental evil thing," said Vance earlier this year. "And I guess I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job."

Khan's entire project is empowering federal bureaucrats to gum up the operations of major companies like Amazon for the crime of efficiently and successfully meeting human needs. Vance co-signs this effort.

In truth, Vance is fond of all sorts of progressive economic ideas. Interviewed by Ross Douthat inThe New York Times, Vance showed affection for the minimum wage, explicitly rejecting libertarian arguments against it.

"You raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, and you will sometimes hear libertarians say this is a bad thing," said Vance. "'Well, isn't McDonald's just going to replace some of the workers with kiosks?' That's a good thing, because then the workers who are still there are going to make higher wages."

Vance went on to argue that cheap immigrant labor outcompeting American workers was in fact bad and ought to be prevented by the federal government. That is Vance's ideology in a nutshell: If American workers lose their jobs because government interference sped up the process of automation, oh well. But if these same workers lose out due to free market competition, the feds should work to prevent it.

Vance is arguably more committed to anti-libertarian ideas than is Trump himself. Trump's rhetoric is often quite at odds with his actual policies, and he is capable of dramatic policy shiftslike supporting a ban on TikTok and then dramatically backpedaling. When Trump's former secretary of defense raised the idea of mandatory national military service, Trump called it a "ridiculous idea." Vance has said he is in support of some version of the proposal, however. If Vance becomes the vice president, he will be well-positioned to hone Trump's populist instincts and bring the policy in line with the rhetoric.

Rubio, by contrast, is not a very sincere populist. He entered the Senate in 2011 as part of the Tea Party wave; his instincts at the time were traditionally Republican, but he emphasized some limited government themes, like reining in spending and opposing congressional earmarks. He also supported immigration reform and wanted to design a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants living within the United States. Unlike other prominent Republicans identified with the Tea Party such as Sen. Rand Paul (RKy.), Rubio remained reflexively hawkish on foreign policy. When he ran for president in 2016, he was arguably the candidate most similar to former President George W. Bushquite a feat, given that Jeb Bush was also in the race.

One thing Rubio has in common with Vance is that both politicians completely changed their tune with respect to Trump once his conquest of the Republican Party was complete. Rubio once called Trump a "con artist" and "the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency." Now he routinely defends Trump at all costs, even comparing the criminal proceedings against Trump to "show trials" of the likes of Communist Cuba.

Rubio's incoherent defenses of Trump have also caused the senator to embrace bad policies he once opposed. AsReason's Eric Boehm has noted, Rubio previously understood that raising tariffs on China would punish consumers in the U.S., the people buying the goods in question. He quite succinctly explained this to Trump during the Republican presidential primary debates in 2016. Eight years later, Rubio is not only defending tariffs on Chinahe agrees with Trump's plan to expand them.

All that said, Rubio comes across as more ideologically flexible than Vance. He has betrayed libertarian economic ideas because the current trajectory of the Republican Party is away from this philosophy. If that were to change, one suspects that Rubio would too.

This means that Burgum is the least bad choice for vice president, almost by default. The North Dakota governor has not been on the national political scene for nearly as much time as Vance or Rubio, instead emerging last year as an unlikely Republican presidential candidate during the primaries. He did not particularly distinguish himself during the debates, though he did attract some positive attention for displaying his pocket Constitution.

According to a largely sympathetic evaluation of his tenure in office, Burgum has governed as a traditional conservative: cutting taxes, improving the business climate in the state, supporting the Second Amendment, and so on. He signed a very restrictive ban on abortion, which may be a nonstarter for Trump, who has correctly surmised that this issue is currently the biggest barrier to a second Trump term. Burgum did, however, take the position that abortion is an issue for the states and should not be decided by the federal government.

Before entering politics, he was a self-made businessman who started his own software company and sold it to Microsoft for $1 billion in 2001. While success in the business world is no guarantee of fealty to libertarian economicsVance was a venture capitalist, after allit is somewhat encouraging. Political candidates invariably end up disappointing libertarians, but Burgum's record as a governor suggests that he is less likely to abandon basic free market principles at the drop of a hat.

By contrast, Vance and Rubio have already proven that they are happy to do so.

Unfortunately, none of the candidates under consideration for Trump's veep slot are particularly libertarian. Vance and Rubio, though, are not just unlibertarianthey have moved decisively in an anti-libertarian direction on economic issues where a generic Republican might be plausibly expected to at least casually align with liberty. That's ample reason to hope Trump excludes them from the ticket.

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Trump's Veep: Better Burgum Than Vance or Rubio - Reason

Today is July 11, 2024, and here's what you need to know:

Rival factions of the Colorado Republican Party have scheduled separate meetings a week apart in different corners of the state later this month to consider whether to remove Dave Williams as the state party's chairman, though the meeting set by Williams' allies is only planned to last long enough to gavel in and then immediately recess.

Leaders of both groups accuse the others of staging "illegal" and "fraudulent" meetings in what they characterize as attempts to hijack the state Republican Party for their own gain, even as GOP candidates are left scrambling to prepare for a crucial election just months away.

The Libertarian Party of Colorado's plans to place independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the state's ballot hit a snag this week when a national party official filed paperwork instead designating the Libertarians' presidential nominee, Chase Oliver, to Colorado's general election ballot.

The move has led to a standoff between the state and national Libertarian parties over which has the authority to put a presidential and vice presidential ticket in front of Colorado voters, with both sides accusing the other of going rogue and suggesting the dispute could land in court.

After voting a month ago to reject the ticket nominated by the national party, the state Libertarians' board announced last week that it would nominate Kennedy after reaching what it described as a "groundbreaking partnership" with his campaign. Elements of the agreement included securing the candidate's signature on a pledge to abide by a list of the party's principles and an intention to collaborate on fundraising, the party said.

A new panel of Colorado lawmakers, officials and industry experts met for the first time on Tuesday to take a closer look at gaps in cell phone coverage across the state.

The newly formed Cell Phone Connectivity Interim Study Committee has begun its work to identify gaps in coverage, particularly in rural areas and underserved communities.

Whether its for work, school, meeting virtually with your doctor, searching for directions, or contacting emergency services quality cell phone connectivity is vital, Committee Chair Rep. Meghan Lukens, D-Steamboat Springs, said. However, many of our neighbors living in rural and mountainous communities are stuck with unreliable cell services. Gaps in cell phone connectivity means Coloradans can find themselves on their own in a dangerous, emergency situation.

Colorado's second-highest court clarified last week that federal law does not prohibit a person's Social Security benefits from being diverted to pay for their ex-spouse's alimony.

Although other states' courts had addressed the issue, the Court of Appeals never previously evaluated the meaning of two provisions of federal law as applied to divorced couples. First, a person's Social Security benefits "shall not be transferable or assignable." However, those payments "shall be subject" to alimony, which Colorado refers to as "spousal maintenance."

The upshot, wrote Judge David H. Yun for a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals, is that judges may "consider social security retirement benefits, as well as other non-assignable federal benefits, in awarding maintenance or child support, even in circumstances where the order effectively results in an indirect assignment of those benefits."

Colorado's second-highest court reversed a woman's felony convictions for child abuse resulting in death last month after concluding the instructions that a San Miguel County judge provided the jury did not include the necessary language.

Hannah Marshall, 8, and Makayla Roberts, 10, were discovered dead and decomposing in a vehicle located on Frederick Alec Blair's Norwood farm in 2017. A forensic examiner was unable to conclusively state the cause of death because of the condition of the girls' bodies, but evidence suggested long-term malnourishment near the end of their lives.

Among those charged was Madani Ceus. Jurors heard she was in charge of the group of itinerant adults and children living on the farm. At some point, the victims were banished to live in a car with no food. Ceus directed that no one contact them.

Originally posted here:
Libertarians in standoff over presidential ticket in Colorado; divided Republicans plan dueling meetings over Dave Williams; Social Security can be...

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will appear on Colorados presidential election ballots, as a Libertarian.

The Libertarian Party of Colorado announced its members have agreed to form a partnership with the RFK campaign.

As part of this partnership, the Libertarian Party of Colorado will place the Kennedy/Shanahan ticket on the Colorado state ballot for president and vice president, the party said in a statement. This move reflects our commitment to offering voters a choice that transcends the traditional partisan divide and promotes individual liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government.

This move comes after the Colorado Libertarian Party voted to reject the national partys candidate for president, Chase Oliver. Party chairwoman Hannah Goodman said on the libertarian podcast, Free State Colorado, that Oliver and his running mate, Mike ter Maat, did not share the state partys core values.

He really doesnt even necessarily represent Libertarians across the nation. I was told by his campaign that hes broadly libertarian, whatever that means, she said. Goodman told the podcast the party disagrees with Olivers positions on the COVID-19 response and transgender youth.

Kennedy Jr. has been gathering signatures in Colorado to have his name appear on the ballot as an Independent. His campaign had until July 11 to turn in 12,000 valid signatures, but this partnership with the Libertarian party makes that effort unnecessary.

Nationally, Kennedy Jr.s campaign for ballot access has been expensive, leading to steep debt and layoffs among his staff. He has already secured ballot access in Illinois, New York and Utah.

During his campaign, Kennedy Jr. has built a reputation of being an anti-establishment firebrand, hoping to take votes away from both Joe Biden and Donald Trumps voter bases. Hes come out against vaccinations, against corporations and pollution and against the funding of foreign wars. The Libertarian Party of Colorado said those values align well with theirs.

His campaign's focus on ending corporate welfare, reducing government spending, and protecting the environment aligns with our values and resonates with Colorado voters, the party said.

In a statement, Kennedy Jr. thanked the party and outlined his vision for the nation.

Together, we will win the White House and steadfastly protect the Bill of Rights, the First and Second Amendments, and all the foundational liberties they secure, he said. Our administration will restore free markets, end corporate welfare, stop the money-printing and unwind the war machine it fuels. On day one, I will pardon Edward Snowden, Ross Ulbricht, and all political and corporate whistleblowers who protect our democracy.

The Libertarian Party of Colorado has about 37,000 registered voters, according to recent state data.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will appear on the Colorado ballot under the Libertarian party - Colorado Public Radio

OKLAHOMA CITY Although the Libertarian vice presidential candidate is not banking on a win, he is looking to be a disruptor to Novembers election.

Mike ter Maat was picked to serve on the Libertarian presidential ticket in May, alongside Chase Oliver. They will face presumptive candidates former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

He spoke with voters Tuesday night in Oklahoma City at a meet-and-greet.

I dont think its impossible for us to win the White House, ter Maat said. But we recognize its a long shot.

Key points of the pairs platform include reshaping foreign policy by stopping aid, ending the Federal Reserve System and relinquishing government intervention into American lives as much as possible.

Ter Maat was a professional economist for 25 years before serving 11 years as a police officer.

He said his experience makes him qualified to tackle criminal justice reform and stop the war on drugs, which he said isnt aligned with American values.

Ter Maat previously ran an unsuccessful congressional campaign, garnering less than 1% of the vote in Floridas 20th district. Oliver has also run two unsuccessful congressional campaigns. In 2022, he caused a runoff in Georgia between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, ter Maat said.

The Libertarian party has nominated a presidential candidate pair every election since 1972, according to ballotpedia.org. After turmoil at the Libertarian partys convention, Oliver and ter Maat were elected to be the face of the party in Novembers election.

Ter Maat said he doesnt view his candidacy as a spoiler.

But the real objective is to no longer allow the Republican and Democratic parties to just completely knee jerk, disregard our campaign, our philosophies, our candidates, our party, because thats the way it works now, ter Maat said.

But thats not the way Seth McKee, a political science professor at Oklahoma State University, sees it.

Most of the time, if they do play much of a role, it is spoiler, meaning they have no prayer of winning, but they can be pivotal in swinging the vote to one of the major candidates, McKee said.

McKee said third party candidates have the ability to get disenfranchised voters, who wouldnt otherwise vote, out to the polls.

This effect is less likely to have weight in Oklahoma, he said, which had all 77 counties vote for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Registered Libertarians in Oklahoma make up less than 1% of voters, according to a January voter registration report.

McKee said registering with a third party is a double-edged sword.

Its a signal that theyre upset with the two parties, but theyre less likely to participate because theyre upset with the two parties, so they undermine their own clout and influence by not being as participatory, McKee said.

For Chris Powell, state chair for the Libertarian party, the partys messaging needs to improve.

Democrats are becoming an endangered species in rural areas, he said, which the party can capitalize on to reach those voters.

It just takes catching lightning in a bottle, a little bit, and people getting energized and getting on board, Powell said. This election, as bad as the top of the ticket is for the two establishment parties, could be the catalyst for that.

Being a spoiler is not something David Greer is worried about.

The first elected Libertarian official in Oklahoma, Greer serves on the Dougherty City Council. Doughtery has 199 citizens, according to the 2020 census.

Greer said he recognizes the smaller role the party currently plays, but that it holds an advantage with its candidate selection.

With elections like this, where the establishment parties arent putting up good candidates because they dont have to, I think were gonna get more looks our way and appear more appealing, Greer said.

After Thursdays presidential debate on CNN, ter Maat said he thinks his and Olivers odds are better heading into November.

Although surprised by the nations reaction to the debate, he said Bidens behavior is what he has observed for months.

As voters weigh their options, ter Maat said self-reflection is important.

You should vote for values in a candidate, in a ticket, that align with your own, and you should not be sending the signal to other parties and candidates that theyre on the right track if you dont feel that they are.

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Libertarian party vice presidential candidate wants to be 'disruptor' in November election Oklahoma Voice - Oklahoma Voice

The Libertarian Party's biennial national convention in Washington, D.C., last month was a snapshot of a minor political party in the midst of a major identity crisis.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and independent challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. each spoke on stage, the former landing a coveted prime-time keynote slot. Fourth-place GOP presidential finisher Vivek Ramaswamy, who keeps trying to make a "libertarian-nationalist alliance" a thing, also gave a speech.

Michael Rectenwald, the favored presidential candidate of the Mises Caucus faction currently running the party, failed to secure the nomination after making a bumbling, post-Trump speech on stage while stoned, having made a spur-of-the-moment decision beforehand to pop an edible. Longtime party activist Starchild was dragged out by security for heckling the Republican headliner. In short, it was exactly what you might have expected had you been following L.P. drama over the past few years.

The fractured party reelected the Mises Caucus' Angela McArdle as chair but also selected as its presidential standard-bearer Chase Oliver, a gay 38-year-old antiwar activist and former Democrat who had pushed the most recent U.S. Georgia Senate race into a runoff election eventually won by a Democrat.

In the past three presidential elections, the Libertarian candidate appeared on all 50 state ballots plus the District of Columbia, finished in third place, and was backed by every state L.P. affiliate. None of that seems likely to happen this year.

The Montana L.P. after the convention immediately declared that it would not be placing Oliver's name on the ballot. "Similarly situated states should follow our lead," the state party wrote. "We call upon the [Libertarian National Committee] to consider suspending and replacing him." So far, one stateColoradohas followed suit, charging Oliver and running mate Mike ter Maat with being "useful idiots for the regime" who are "unfit to represent our values." Idaho is contemplating whether to do the same and putting pressure on the national party to remove Oliver from the ballot. The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is predictably vocalizing its distaste and intent to siphon resources away from the candidate, but Oliver is still filing his intent to run with the secretary of state there.

Oliver "doesn't represent me and my camp or the things we stand for," comedian/podcaster Dave Smith, who the Mises Caucus had once pinned its hopes on for the 2024 nomination, wrote after the convention. "Look, if us taking over the whole party, if the outcome wasthis," Smith elaborated on his podcast, "then there's only one word to use to describe that, and that's failure."

Oliver's critics say he's culturally woke and was insufficiently opposed to the COVID regime of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and masking. "I've been against vaccine or mask mandates from government," he counteredto me and Zach Weissmueller on our show, Just Asking Questions. "If the COVID messaging was so goodthis divisive messaging saying, If you wore a mask, if you ever took a vaccine, you're just an idiot and you're stupid or whateverthat's what [the Mises Caucus is] putting out there. And guess what? We're bleeding members and donors because people want to make decisions for themselves and not be shamed that they made a decision differently than their neighbor."

Meanwhile McArdle, against a pre-convention backdrop of declining party membership, fundraising, and ballot access, has portrayed last month's gathering as a triumph, while positing Oliver as a tool for siphoning away votes from President Joe Biden.

"Donald Trump says he's going to put a Libertarian in a Cabinet position. He came out and spoke to us. He said he's a Libertarian. He has basically endorsed us," McArdle said in a June 3 video address. "And so in return, I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden. Get in loser, we are stopping Biden. That's what I think. That's what I think this campaign is about."

How did the party get here, to a place where its chair is openly cheering on victory for the decidedly nonlibertarian Trump?

The modern-day fracture of the L.P. started in 2017, when a small bloc formed the Mises Caucus, lionizing such figures as Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. Generally young and extremely online, culturally right of center, attracted to sharp-elbowed podcasters like Smith and Tom Woods, the Mises crew exudes visceral hostility toward the state, the Fed, the war machine, and what they see as the philosophically compromised D.C. libertarian think-tankers (pejoratively termed "Beltwaytarians") who they believe enable rather than meaningfully oppose the "regime."

The Mises Caucus arose in revulsion toward the Gary Johnson/Bill Weld 2016 ticket, which they saw as having watered down the libertarian message to the point of being unrecognizable. They were furtherdisappointed by 2020 nominee Jo Jorgensenand downright repulsed by the L.P.'s messaging on Black Lives Matter and COVID lockdowns.

In 2022, the Mises Caucus succeeded in a self-styled "takeover" of the party at its convention in Reno, after which the victors wasted little time inflaming the sensibilities of what they saw as the losinglibertines. No moreoveremphasizing the importance of sex work, abortion, or free-flowing immigration, positions the new guard either disagreed with or felt needlessly alienated potential allies.

But the Reno Resetters, in their bid to reinvigorate the party, were doing plenty of alienating of their ownof longtime Libertarian Party donors and volunteers who did not share the Mises Caucus' preference for meme clapbacks and helicopter jokes.

I chatted with a few of these disgruntled activists about why they pulled their time and money away from the L.P., whether the mixed results from the latest convention gave them reason to hope, and whether there's any way for the fractured party to mend itself.

"I became a libertarian because the authoritarian conservative politics I grew up in didn't resonate with me," says Christian Bradley, who started voting Libertarian and volunteering for the party in 2008. But the Mises Caucus has injected "authoritarian conservative politics into the party," Bradley says, transforming it into more like a "twisted social club" for "MAGA edgelords" than something that represents his beliefs.

Libertarian Partyaffiliated instances of social media edgelording are almost too numerous to count, whether it's riffing on Adolf Hitler's 14 words, or calling the Uyghur genocide "war propaganda," or telling a black congresswoman to go pick crops, or tweeting out "let Ukraine burn," or calling that country "gay," or telling columnist Max Boot to go kill himself, or advocating prison time for Liz Cheney, or fantasizing about sending ex-presidents to Gitmo.

Other edgelording happened behind closed doors, pushing staffers and volunteers away from the party at a time when the organization needed all the help it could get.

"In April 2022, the last full month before the Mises Caucus takeover, the L.P.'s end-of-month financial report listed revenues of $125,542," reported Reason's Brian Doherty last month. "In April 2024, that figure was $84,710, a drop of nearly one-third. The number of sustaining members (those who have donated at least $25 in the past year) has fallen from around 16,200 in April 2022 to 12,211 in April 2024."

Forty-year-old Ryan Cooper met his now-wife, Casie, while doing outreach for the Jo Jorgensen campaign. "From 2016 to 2021, I gave over $50,000 and countless volunteer hours," Cooper says. But now, the couple no longer wants to be associated with "an organization that supported racists, bigots, white nationalists, and [Vladimir] Putin apologists."

The Washington state Libertarian Party has become hollowed out, Cooper contends, with massive declines in attendance at state conventions. All county chapters shuttered except four, and there were only five nonpresidential Libertarians on the 2024 statewide ballot, compared to over 33 in 2016.* Even gaining ballot access for Chase Oliver is no longer a sure thing in the Evergreen State, he says.

Cooper has donated $1,000 to Oliver and said that thereactions by some Mises Caucus types to the candidatecalling him a "cultural Marxist" and "woke homosexual," for instancehelped convince him to become a volunteer for the campaign. He maintains that he won't donate money to the national party until McArdle is no longer chair.

Mark Tuniewicz, a former finance executive based in South Dakota and member of the L.P. since 1994, tells me he notified the party at the start of this year that he had rescinded his decision to bequeath $650,000 to them in his will; with the takeover, he just doesn't believe the organization is serving his values any longer. Tuniewicz served, up until last month, on the Libertarian National Committee (LNC). "No accountability metrics lead to poor execution and results," he says. There's been "unprecedented organizational dysfunction, resulting in huge turnover on the LNC." And, as he wrote in his letter rescinding his donation, the L.P. has been "corrupted organizationally in a way from which it may never recover."

"I stopped donating after the [Mises Caucus] takeover in Colorado in 2021," says Alan Hayman, who's given $3,000 over the years. The state affiliate "proved to be woefully incompetent, wanting to reinvent the wheel on everything, anddeveloped a habit of gaslighting and mistreating members," Hayman says. "They were rude to party veterans, but also felt entitled to their time and knowledge."

Bureaucratic sloppiness led to the party being fined by the Colorado secretary of state $12,500 for late donation filings, part of a nationwide pattern of increased spending on noncore activities. Over the first four months of 2024, the national party spent $10,350 on the bread-and-butter line item of securing ballot access while shelling out $24,807 in legal expenses.

That lack of emphasis on ballot access is having real effects; on June 13, the New York State Board of Elections declared that the L.P.'s petition for ballot access had insufficient signatures, marking the first time in party history that its presidential candidate has failed to appear on the New York ballot.

Some of those legal expenses are coming from the national party suing a faction of the Michigan L.P. that's not under Mises Caucus leadership, but which insists it is legally the state party affiliate. In Michigan, a Mises-affiliated person, Andrew Chadderdon, in 2022 ascended to state chair, due to resignations on the state board. Despite a critical mass of the state delegation voting to remove Chadderdon, the national party continued to recognize him as chair. The national party filed a lawsuit; the state party has been holding separate conventions ever since.

"I am a strong believer in voting with feet, dollars, attention," former party activist Casey Crowe says. "The last two years have given me no reason to continue my financial investment when it's spent on suing affiliates, instead of functional needs like ballot access."

Many of the disgruntled Libertarians point their ire at McArdle.* Former L.P. employee Michelle MacCutcheon, who had been in charge of onboarding all new volunteers (a "labor of love," as she described it), said the new regime carried out a purge of staffers, with little respect given to coalition building or professionalism. (McArdle, for instance, hired her own romantic partner as a contractor to help with fundraising). "We were on a great trajectory" before, MacCutcheon says. "All of that was just wiped clean."

But, counters Florida L.P. member John Thompson, who is more agnostic on the results of the takeover,"If [McArdle] is as bad as they say, then they should have a solid game plan to defeat her and elect a new chair." Instead, she won on the second ballot during the D.C. convention, with 53.44 percent of the vote.

The fractures within the Libertarian Party are likely to deepen over the final 20 weeks of the presidential campaign. But the overall picture remains mixedfor instance, L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams tells Reason that fundraising is up 16 percent post-convention. A little post-convention bump is, of course, to be expected if historical trends are any indicator. "The 2024 convention will likely rival 2022 for the highest-fundraising convention in the history of the party," wrote Todd Hagopian, the LNC's pre-convention treasurer, in internal emails updating other members. But "the 2024 convention will be the most expensive convention in the history of the party," due to its location in D.C., and the party "will probably not net as much net income" this year compared with 2022.

It's unlikely that the millions of Americans who have been voting Libertarian for president the past three cycles are even worried about, let alone paying attention to, the party's internal tensions.

But for some activists, there's no reason to continue fighting for a party that feels so far gone.

"I'm not even comfortable using the word 'libertarian' to describe myself, after all the damage the [Mises Caucus], LP, and MAGA have done to the word and scene," Bradley says. "At best, members of Mises Caucus are willing to tolerate and associate with known white supremacists, antisemites, Holocaust deniers.At worst, they are those people."

*CORRECTION: The original version of this article misquoted MacCutcheon; that quote has been deleted. A member of the Washington Libertarian Party contacted Reason post-publication to clarify details about county chapters and ballot presence.

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How the Libertarian Party Lost Its Way - Reason