Harry Browne is not a shoo-in for the nomination. Have you been following the controversy with Jacob Hornberger? I've always liked Harry Browne, but Hornberger makes some serious and credible accusations:
The Libertarian Party Needs a Divorce: Part 1 (of 3)
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The national Libertarian Party has suffered what might be its worst debacle in the partys 28-year history. Project Archimedes, the four-year direct-mail campaign to bring party membership to 200,000 members by the year 2000 has fallen 170,000 members short of its goal. An estimated $1,000,000 of donor money spent on the campaign has gone down the drain.
Project Archimedes, however, is not simply a well-intentioned project gone awry. Its failure is rooted in unethical interlocking relationships, conflicts of interest, and improper payments to LP staff members, LP National Committee members, and "independent consultants" to the LP national office. The debacle is also rooted in the five-year marriage between Harry Browne and the national office of the Libertarian Party.
In the November 1996 presidential election, Harry Browne, the Libertarian Partys presidential nominee, received 463,000 votes, or approximately 1/2 percent of the total votes cast nationwide. A few months later, at the February 1997 California LP convention, Browne said that the reason he had done so poorly was that the Libertarian Party lacked a sufficient number of members to wage the type of campaign that he had wanted to wage -- a national mass-media campaign that would rely on radio and national television advertising.
At the California convention, Browne vowed that he would not again seek the LP presidential nomination unless the party could deliver him 200,000 members by the year 2000. With a membership base of 200,000, Browne suggested, there would be sufficient resources to purchase massive amounts of radio and television time on the national networks. "I won't run again," he exclaimed, "if it has to be the same kind of campaign we ran in 1996."
At about the same time, Perry Willis, the Libertarian Partys national director, decided to make increasing LP membership to 200,000 a primary goal of the national Libertarian Party. As Willis put it in an article that appeared in the July 1997 issue of LP News (the official newspaper of the Libertarian Party), "If we can raise enough money we could do all of the roll-outs to the large 8-million-people list, so that we could try to recruit enough members to go into 1999 with the financial ability to do a massive amount of advertising in preparation for the 2000 campaign."
Williss decision to embark upon an enormous, expensive, and risky direct-mail campaign was not a coincidence. It was instead the continuation of a concerted and coordinated effort between the LP national office and Harry Brownes personal political interests.
Unfortunately, this was not the first time that Willis had intertwined his official position in the Libertarian Party with the personal campaign interests of Harry Browne. Five years ago, when Browne was vying for the LP presidential nomination against fellow Libertarians Rick Tompkins and Irwin Schiff, Willis was the salaried national director of the Libertarian Party, the person in charge of its day-to-day operations. While serving in that official capacity, Willis accepted money from Harry Browne to perform special services for Brownes campaign for the 1996 LP presidential nomination.
It would be difficult to imagine a clearer conflict of interest and a more improper payment. As a salaried official of the Libertarian Party, Willis owed a fiduciary duty of loyalty to the party and to the members of the party. By accepting money on the side to advance Browne's personal campaign interests and by helping Browne to defeat his two opponents for the LP presidential nomination, Willis violated and compromised the fiduciary duty that he owed to the Libertarian Party as LP national director.
Moreover, during this time, supporters of Tompkins and Schiff were undoubtedly making donations to the Libertarian Party. Little did those donors realize that their donations, which were subsidizing the salary of their national director, were being partly used to help defeat their candidates.
Prior to the 1998 LP national convention, I filed a request to amend the Libertarian Partys bylaws to prohibit these types of improper payments, both to LP staff members and members of the LP National Committee. The request was ardently opposed by both Harry Browne and Steve Dasbach, who was at that time the national chairman of the Libertarian Party (a higher position than LP national director).
Browne declined to provide the reasons for his opposition to the bylaws proposal. Dasbachs position was that a bylaws prohibition on such payments was unnecessary because a "policy" that addressed conflicts of interest had been put into effect by the LP National Committee.
During what became known as the Great Bylaws Debate (which took place by email), Dasbach publicly stated that he had never taken money from Browne. Willis admitted that he had indeed accepted money from Browne in return for services rendered while Browne was vying for the nomination and while Willis was LP national director.
Throughout the Great Bylaws Debate, Bill Winter, the LP communications director and editor of LP News, was repeatedly asked to state whether he too, as a salaried official of the Libertarian Party, had accepted money from Harry Browne in return for services rendered for Browne. Interestingly, throughout this debate, Winter refused to state publicly whether he had in fact done so.
What were the services that Willis rendered to Browne in return for the money that Browne paid him? Their full nature is not exactly clear, but they apparently included the preparation of a campaign plan that both Browne and Willis later presented at an out-of-town investment conference. According to the minutes of the August 26-27, 1995, meeting of the LP National Committee (posted on the official website of the Libertarian Party, www.lp.org), Willis was asked "to write a campaign plan to be given to people at the investment conference to try to boost their interest in ballot access."
The person who made this request was Sharon Ayres, who (according to the minutes) had "taken over the Browne campaign." Ayres ultimately received more than $100,000 from the Browne campaign for serving as Brownes campaign manager in the 1996 campaign. The problem, however, was that Ayres also held another position. She was also a member of the LP National Committee. Therefore, like Willis (and Winter), as an official of the LP, she owed a fiduciary duty of loyalty to the Libertarian Party and to the general membership of the Libertarian Party.
At LP National Committee meetings, did Ayres abstain from voting on questions involving a conflict of interest between her fiduciary duty to the Libertarian Party and her loyalty to Harry Brownes personal campaign interests? In at least one instance, she did not.
At the November 16-17, 1996, meeting of the LP National Committee (two weeks after the 1996 presidential election), a member of the LP National Committee presented it with a resolution and a set of requests that had been passed by the Maryland Libertarian Party. In extremely blunt language, the Maryland LP complained about Perry Williss close integration of the LP national office with Harry Brownes personal campaign interests. The Maryland Libertarian Party requested the National Committee to keep the LP national office independent from Brownes renewed presidential campaign (for 2000) and to get rid of all LP personnel who were interested in using the LP national office to advance Brownes personal campaign interests.
The minutes of that meeting record that Sharon Ayres, the LP National Committee member who had received more than $100,000 from Harry Browne, voted "No" on the Maryland Libertarian Partys request. The resolution ultimately failed.
When I filed my bylaws request, which was designed to stop prospective LP presidential candidates (including Harry Browne) from paying money to LP staff members as well as to members of the LP National Committee, I encountered an unfortunate obstacle. It turned out that the newly selected chairman of the LP Bylaws Committee was David Bergland, the husband of Sharon Ayres, the woman who had received more than $100,000 from Browne while she was serving on the LP National Committee.
(The LP National Committee had selected Bergland to serve as the Bylaws Committee chairman at its December 13-15, 1997, meeting. For some reason, the minutes of that meeting are not posted on the LP website and so it is unknown whether Ayres voted in favor of her husbands selection.)
The situation was troubling for another reason. Bergland was also an announced candidate for LP national chairman (the position that Dasbach then held), and his campaign co-chairman was none other than Harry Browne, the person who was ardently opposing my bylaws proposal and who had paid Berglands wife more than $100,000.
I filed a formal request for Bergland to disqualify himself from presiding over my bylaws proposal on grounds of a clear conflict of interest. After all, since California (where Bergland and Ayres live) is a community-property state, half of the $100,000 that Ayres had received from the Browne campaign had effectively been paid to Bergland. Since my bylaws proposal was designed to stop any and all payments from Harry Browne (and any other presidential candidates) to members of the LP staff and the LP National Committee, it was likely to intrude upon the money-making potential of people who held official positions with the Libertarian Party, including Bergland and his wife, Sharon Ayres.
Yet, despite obvious conflicts of interest, Bergland refused to disqualify himself. Faced with that refusal, as well as with Brownes refusal to voluntarily disclose the identities of all the people in the LP national office and on the LP National Committee to whom he had paid money to advance his personal political interests and the total sums of such monies, the futility of pursuing my bylaws proposal became obvious, and I withdrew it.
Of course, these were still the halcyon days of Project Archimedes, when LP members were being treated to rosy forecasts and projections on the road to 200,000 LP members by the year 2000 -- when the full ramifications of the unethical interlocking relationships, conflicts of interest, and improper payments within the Libertarian Party had yet to unfold.
Mr. Hornberger has delivered speeches at many Libertarian Party conventions and has served multiple terms on the LP Platform Committee. This article represents his views and not the views of The Future of Freedom Foundation, where is serves as president.
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