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Getting elected as a third-party candidate is no easy feat in the United States.

In fact, the deck is so stacked against alternative candidates courtesy of gerrymandered voting districts that favor one of the major parties, ballot access laws that make it impossible for third parties to gain momentum with each passing election cycle, or public debates that only invite Democrats and Republicans to participate that it is practically impossible.

But the Libertarian Party has created a model to bypass this hurdle, and it is working out swimmingly for them at the moment. Since the 2016 election, an increasing number of elected legislators have switched their official party affiliation from one of the major parties to Libertarian.

ALSO READ:The 2016 Elections Biggest Winner: Gary Johnson and The Libertarian Party?

It all started with Nebraska State Senator Laura Ebke. Ebke, an elected Republican, became increasingly disenfranchised with the trajectory of her party.

I got frustrated with some of my colleagues who dont recognize civil liberties and dont seem to agree with getting government out of peoples business, she told the Omaha World-Herald.

To demonstrate her frustration, Ebke made the bold move in June 2016: she swapped the R next to her name with an L.

I got frustrated with some of my colleagues who dont recognize civil liberties and dont seem to agree with getting government out of peoples business.

Ebke was the first of many disenfranchised legislators to jettison one of the major parties in favor of the third largest party in the United States.

In the last year, Libertarian Party representation in state legislatures quadrupled. (Bear in mind that there are over 7,000 seats in all state upper and lower houses combined; Libertarians occupy 4 of them. Sadly, this is still more than any other minor party in the United States.)

Owning up to its libertarian motto of live free or die, New Hampshire has become the trendsetter for this mass exodus from mainstream parties to the LP. In the past year, three sitting legislators Reps. Caleb Q. Dyer, Joseph Stallcop, and Brandon Phinney switched their affiliations. Phinney and Dyer were former Republicans, and Stallcop a Democrat.

I was not elected to do the bidding of a political party at the expense of my principles, stated Phinney, who was the most recent to convert.

Establishment partisan politics do nothing to protect the rights of people, but instead only serve to prop up and expand government with arcane plans to irresponsibly spend our money and enact burdensome regulations on businesses, small and large alike. N.H. State Rep. Joseph Stallcop (L)

With a growing caucus and improved access to legislation, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is poised to enact legislation that reflect the party platform of limited government and strengthened civil liberties, ranging from the abolition of the death penalty to the legalization of recreational marijuana.

So have Libertarians discovered a back door entrance into mainstream politics? The jury is still out if this is a sustainable strategy.

Undoubtedly, the strategy doesnt entail campaigning as one party and then switching parties after the election. Such a bait and switch will only harm the brand.

I dont suggest that people run for office with the purpose of changing parties if theyre elected, Ebke comments in an email interview. If you run with the intention of doing that, I doubt that youre going to get elected in any race of significance.

Ebke suggests the better strategy for the LP is to keep its eyes open for legislators (and other officials) who seem to be libertarian leaning. She suggests that US RepsJustin Amash and Thomas Massie are both prime examples of elected Republicans who might be prime targets for such a conversion on the national level.

If candidates remain true to the core principles that got them elected in the first place, they can easily make the case that partisan politics are secondaryespecially when those politics are tied to the toxic partisanship of Washington D.C.

Whether or not this strategy is effective will be realized during re-election season. These third party candidates now face a series of new challenges running outside of the mainstream parties. Making the switch to a smaller party means decreased access to the major party funds often needed for re-election.

Ebke is in the midst of fundraising for her re-election, and is thriving on small donations from grassroots donors, since financial support for candidates from her party is minimal. She encourages supporters donors, voters, and state party leaders to be prepared and committed to backing and helping this group of legislators.

And let me be clear helping a candidate is not just about being an internet warrior, Ebke adds. Its about knocking on doors, walking in parades, donating money, and phone banking. If the Party politically abandons those who move in their direction, people will quit moving that way.

The Libertarian Party is often perceived to be an ideologically-driven organization. However, with the nomination of candidates like Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, who often strayed away from party orthodoxy, the ideology that once founded the party appears less rigid, attracting more independent and unaffiliated voters than previous elections.

If the Party politically abandons those who move in their direction, people will quit moving that way.

A party that is successful will be a big tent, adds Ebke. If the Libertarian Party can be tolerant of those who are generally libertarian-minded, but might not agree on every detail, I think its got great potential for growth.

Keeping an open ear to disaffected partisans, who share a common ground on various issues, is the first step in a meaningful and persuasive conversation one in whichall third parties should engage.

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Libertarian Takeover: More Lawmakers Are Ditching The Major Parties - IVN News

A Libertarian Party candidate for governor has qualified to be on the ballot for November's general election in Virginia.

The Virginian-Pilot reports 34-year-old Cliff Hyra will join Democratic nominee Ralph Northam and Republican nominee Ed Gillespie on the Nov. 7 ballot. The Virginia Department of Elections confirmed Thursday that Hyra had qualified, following the submission of petitions bearing more than 10,000 signatures.

Hyra is a patent attorney from Hanover County and is running for elected office for the first time. He has a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech and a law degree from George Mason University.

Libertarian Robert Sarvis collected less than 7 percent of the popular vote in the last Virginia gubernatorial contest.

Comments express only the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this website or any associated person or entity. Any user who believes a message is objectionable can contact us at [emailprotected].

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Libertarian candidate enters Virginia gubernatorial fray - Loudoun Times-Mirror

Note: This episode originally ran in 2011.

Six years ago, we traveled to a place where people are trying to live without government interference. A place where you can use bits of silver to buy uninspected bacon. A place where a 9-year-old will sell you alcohol.

We find marijuana and moonshine, cash registers stuffed with gold, a rogue manicurist, and a libertarian version of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (but don't call him that!).

It's the Porcupine Freedom Festival, known to its friends as PorcFest. This is the summer festival for people who think we should return to the gold standard and abolish the IRS.

At the end of the story, we return with an update on PorcFest from 2017. We'll tell you what has changed with the times since we were last here.

Music: "Cheyenne Shuffle" and "Now Son." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts or PocketCast.

Original post:
Episode 286: Libertarian Summer Camp - NPR

In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid theres that great bit about the super-posse that chases the outlaws. Theyre led by a legendary law man, Joe Lefors, and an Indian Scout (Lord Baltimore), who can follow horse tracks over rock and water.

I mention this because if I were Nancy MacLean, Id much rather have Lefors and Lord Baltimore coming after me than to have Don Boudreaux, Steve Horwitz, Jonathan Adler, Russ Roberts, and the rest of the libertarian super-posse on my ass.

You may have missed the story. The short version is that historian Nancy MacLean has written a book, apparently with some government funding, in which she argues that Nobel Prizewinning economist James Buchanan was part of a Kochtopussian Kabal of Konfederates who were direct intellectual descendants of the Southern Agrarians and the champion of slavery, John C. Calhoun.

I first heard about the book almost two weeks ago, and my immediate response was to roll my eyes (figuratively speaking). I figured the book would vanish from the radar because it all sounded so silly. David Bernstein had a similar reaction:

When I first came across this book and interviews with its author, I was immediately skeptical. For one thing, Ive been traveling in libertarian intellectual circles for about three decades, and my strong impression is that Buchanan, while a giant in economics, is something of a marginal figure in the broader libertarian and free-market movements.

Now, I am at best a fellow traveler in those circles, but Ive been writing about and, on occasion, arguing with, libertarians for a couple decades. And while Buchanans name came up every now and then, I had never once heard even the suggestion that he was a kind of intellectual lodestar for political libertarianism never mind that he was part of some reactionary Confederate tradition. He was that brilliant public-choice-theory guy. (As Bernstein notes, Buchanan gets a few respectful cameos in Brian Dohertys exhaustive history of libertarianism and thats about it).

MacLean has gotten herself into hot water because its already clear she cut a lot of corners, quoting people out of context, asserting intellectual lineages that do not exist, and other misdeeds. Russ Roberts, who is a kind of libertarian Gandhi strictly adhering to a policy of rhetorical non-violence started things off with his defense of Tyler Cowen, who MacLean essentially defamed. Worse, Don Boudreaux, the brilliant and tenacious libertarian scholar and cheeky letter writer, is now coming after her and her enablers like a spider monkey.

As my friend Steve Horwitz writes:

Finding examples of misleading, incorrect, and outright butcheredquotes and citations in Nancy MacLeans new book about James Buchanan, Democracy in Chains, has become the academic version of Pokemon Go this week.

Im all for fact checking her footnotes and outrageously misleading quotations. Every time I see a new one, I link to it on Twitter with the prediction, There will be more. And there will be. There will be for the simple reason that MacLean takes Buchanans life and libertarianism, generally out of context in order to argue that libertarianism is against democracy and that sinister libertarians have been scheming to tear it all down. In other words, you have to take quotes and facts out of context if you start with a premise that takes Buchanan out of context.

To be sure, theres an anti-democratic element in some corners of libertarianism, but as far as I can tell, that is true of every single political philosophy save pure majoritarianism. And, unlike pure majoritarians, libertarians are far more concerned with freedom and equality because they understand unrestrained majorities tend to treat minorities very poorly, particularly the minority of the individual.

Indeed, this is all downstream of the century-old effort to turn Herbert Spencer into some kind of monster because he opposed governmental social engineering. The idea seems to be that because the statists are good, anyone who opposes them must be evil.

The contemporary liberal obsession with claiming that their ideological opponents must be somehow in league with, or modern-day reincarnations of, Klansmen and slavers is just another manifestation of this old, self-indulgent smear. Its a bit like MacLean set out to reach that destination. When she realized she couldnt get there by conventional navigation, she put a magnet marked Calhoun! or Slavery! next to her compass, and that did the trick.

Conservatives are bit more accustomed to this sort of thing. Ramesh and I beat back a similar attempt to claim that modern conservatism is a Calhoun cult a few years ago.

But I think the assumption behind both efforts is very much the same: Anyone who disagrees with us must not simply be wrong, they must be evil. And taking shortcuts to expose evil is no vice.

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Nancy MacLean's Ideologically Motivated Shortcuts - National Review

ReasonGary Johnson's back! (To the political advocacy game, anyway.) So, are libertarians greeting the two-time former Libertarian Party nominee for president with open arms? Not unanimously, no.

Over at Rare, the always-interesting Jack Hunter, who is close to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), has a scathing piece headlined "Please, Gary Johnson, stay the hell away from politics." Excerpt:

[W]hen Reason reported on Thursday that Johnson was returning to politics, I did not rejoiceI recoiled.

Johnson had his chance, the biggest chance the Libertarian Party will likely ever have in our lifetimes, and his campaign did more to diminish liberty than promote it. Johnson's simple 2016 task was two-fold: First, present libertarianism coherently, and hopefully, attractively. Second, don't look like an idiot.

He failed on both.

Hunter mostly leans on the "Aleppo moment" and related flubs, and while those errors were almost all self-inflicted, highlighting the candidate's self-acknowledged limitations as a public speaker (a real hindrance when public speaking is about your only campaign weapon), I am convinced that even the most smooth-tongued of L.P. candidates (Larry Sharpe, anyone?) would have been excoriated as a gaffe-making weirdo or dunce in September 2016. Why? Because the presidential race was tightening (boy was it ever), debate season was imminent, Johnson's poll numbers at that point had failed to experience the usual third-party summertime fade, newspapers were starting the make their general election endorsements (including for the Libertarian), and the journalistic Left was throwing everything it could think of at a guy they feared was wooing too many impressionable young'uns.

Tom Steyer would have spilled tens of millions in swing states that autumn against any Libertarian candidate polling at 9 percent, and that money would have been converted into attack pieces on any John, Austin, or Darryl. (Speaking of which, do we really think that the L.P. alternatives would have polled or media-accessed anywhere near TeamGov?) Donald Trump had several more egregious foreign policy brainfarts than "Aleppo," and Hillary Clinton's actual (and unapologetic) policy record helped produce the very chaos that Johnson was being criticized for not understanding, but the media didn't care about any of that: September 2016 was Libertarian-killing season, and unfortunately Johnson offered the world a loaded gun.

That's not to say that Hunter's wrong about Johnson squandering the election overall; I still don't know how best to assess that question. (Check out the Brian Doherty/Matt Welch post-election co-production "Did the Libertarian Party Blow it in 2016?" for our most educated guesses.) As that piece states in the opening, and as the intervening months have only underlined, "Objectively speaking, 2016 was the Libertarian Party's best year ever. It was also a savage disappointment." Libertarians will be arguing about this stuff for years.

Austin PetersenSpeaking of intra-Libertarian arguments, Charles Peralo over at Being Libertarian has a long defense of the Johnson campaign against criticism that has been leveled against it from the John McAfee/Judd Weiss ticket. In the Orlando Sentinel, State L.P. Chair Marcos Miralles gives an interesting interview, mostly about local party-building stuff, that ends on a spectacularly optimistic note: "But what I can guarantee you is that whoever the Libertarian delegates pick in 2020, that candidate will have a better result than Gary Johnson had in 2016 and will have a real chance at unseating the current president." Meanwhile, 2016 L.P. presidential runner-up Austin Petersen has formed an exploratory committee to run for U.S. Senate from Missouri, and is promising a "special announcement" on July 4.

And in one of my favorite recent pieces of local journalism, The Free Press of Fernie, British Columbia, caught up with Gary Johnson in the middle of his epic Tour Divide bike race, spent several paragraphs detailing how he "may well be the fittest U.S. presidential candidate of all time," before plunging the knife in paragraph nine:

The man can clearly take care of himself. He is a self-made millionaire and ultra-fit, so of course he would run for a party that endorses the survival of the fittest. If you're wealthy and fit, Libertarianism works but if you are not, it doesn't.

Then follows a Guernica-style hellscape of local horrors that would be unleashed should Libertarians ever come close to smelling power ("Their plan to cut regulations in transportation, accommodation and other sectors to cause the sharing economyto destroy traditional businesses. Hotels and taxi companies would go bust, thousands would be left unemployed," etc.). It's a reminder, one that Jack Hunter's old boss Rand Paul knows all too well, that for wide swaths of the public, libertarians will suffer from the Weird Man's Burden, probed relentlessly for every policy taboo, and held to a standard of conduct that standard Democrats and Republicans rarely have to answer for.

Below re-live my shaky-cam video of Johnson flipping out at a reporter asking about Aleppo, moments before the first presidential debate last September:

Continued here:
Libertarians Still Arguing About Gary Johnson's 2016 Campaign ... - Reason (blog)