On being Libertarian in Delaware: a response to the dogmatists around the country

If you are a dogmatic Libertarian, who started retching when the Gary Johnson campaign announced it had qualified for Federal matching funds, be forewarned:  you won't like this post.

I live in a Blue State.

No, I live in a BLUE STATE.


The worst that a Democratic Presidential candidate has done in Delaware since 1992 (with Perot at his strongest in the mix) is win by 6%.  It's usually a lot more.  As for party registration and the fact that the GOP here has been effectively reduced to minor party status, I'll turn it over to long-time Libertarian Party of Delaware activist and frequent commenter Tom:

As of May 2012 it's 47% D, 29% R, and 24% "All Others", which is the Dept, of Elections' way of saying 3rd Parties & unaffiliated.

But if you break it down by General Assembly districts, the picture gets much more interesting in several ways that the DE GOP's so-called Leadership are unwilling to even acknowledge in public:

1. After the redistricting, there are 12 of 21 Senate seats and 19 of 41 House seats that Republicans can not win even if they get nearly all of the 3rd party votes and many of the Democrats stay home.

2. By contrast, there are no safe Republican seats, and only 3 Senate and 6 House seats that Republicans even have a chance of winning w/o substantial help from 3rd party & unaffiliated voters and or defection by Democrats.

3. There are 7 Senate districts and 12 House districts where "All Others" outnumber Republicans, and only a few districts where All Others does not constitute a very substantial swing vote.

Nonetheless, one of the few things that the Dems and GOPers agree on in Delaware is that they want to exclude third parties.  We used to have fusion nominations; last year the General Assembly eliminated them.  We used to have very low registration requirements to maintain ballot access, last year the General Assembly raised them, nearly costing the Greens, the Constitution Party, and the Working Families Party their ballot access.  Latest reports suggest that they all dodged the bullet, but we'll see.

Just so you know: the
Indpendent Party of
Delaware is NOT named
after a popular MP3
player.  It's the other
way around.

So there are five minor parties in Delaware:  the LPD, the Independent Party of Delaware, the Greens, the Constitution Party, and the Working Families Party.  We run the gamut, obviously from Libertarian to socialist, with every homegrown idiosyncratic option in between.  The IPOD and LPD disagree vigorously over state single-payer healthcare, but turn around and make common cause over the constitutional authority of county sheriffs.  We send people to each other's conventions, we talk, we work together to keep the system open for as many voices as possible.  Right now, our Sussex County LPD Chair and the IPOD Chair have a cooperative project aimed at using a coalition of minor parties to  lobby for easing the registration requirements.


We are a small state, and we are all outlaws.  Most of us are friends.

We are friends who do not allow our political differences to separate us on the one over-arching issue where we have common ground:  breaking open the two-party (in our case, de facto one party) death grip on political access and power.  We would all cheerfully go into the legislature and fight tooth and nail against each other over issues of policy and law--but I can say this about my friends in those other parties:  none of them would ever try to create an exclusionist political system as bad as the one we currently operate under.

Most of the membership of the Libertarian Party of Delaware tends to consist of pragmatic, not dogmatic Libertarians.  We talk a lot about tactics, and less about theory.  We accept the idea of libertarian as generally meaning socially tolerant and fiscally conservative.  We don't have prolonged diatribes about all taxation is theft.  And we don't get upset, or meddle in, the choices that other Libertarian Parties make in other states.

Which is an important distinction, as dogmatist libertarians seem quite prepared to tell us what we should or be shouldn't doing inside Delaware.  Again and again.

Will McVay:  The Delaware GOP hates
him so much that they nicknameed him
"McVenom" after he sued them over
ballot access.

Yep, our LPD Vice-Chair Will McVay is running in a Republican primary in the 32nd Representative District.  Yes, you read that right--a Republican primary.  He changed his registration to file there because Will is a firm believer in infiltration, invasion, and the ultimate devastation of the GOP in Delaware in the cause of establishing the LPD as the second "major" party.  I don't always agree with his tactics, but I love his enthusiasm, his nerve, and his commitment.  Frankly, his own Dad said it best about Will, and the whole piece is worth reading.  Besides, as Will would point out (being half my age), our generaton hasn't exactly taken over the political landscape doing it our way.

Tyler Nixon:  Libertarian and
anti-drug war activist that the
State has gone to amazing
lengths to shut up.

My co-blogger at The Delaware Libertarian, Tyler Nixon, utilized a Libertarian/Republican fusion strategy in Delaware's 4th Representative District in 2008, and picked up 26.6% of the vote in one of the most heavily gerrymandered Dem districts in the state.  Nobody in Delaware suggests that Tyler is not a Libertarian.  Tyler has been the foremost marijuana legalization activist in Delaware for many years, so successful that the powers that be finally felt compelled to shut him down with an arrest and disabarrment that will eventually become nationally famous as a case of abuse of power.  (Nor on a broader stage do I think my friend Scotty Boman is any less committed to Libertarian ideals when he decides to follow the Ron Paul strategy and run as a Republican.)

We do things our own way in Delaware.

Andrew Groff: endorsed
by the LPD for the
US Senate

At our convention (not without considerable discussion and some dissension), we also endorsed Green Party US Senate nominee Andrew Groff.  In better times Andy would have run as a fusion LPD/Green candidate, but this year the Greens had their convention first.  A lot of dogmatic Libertarians got pissed us over at Independent Political Report, because Andy supports single-payer health care.  They didn't look at anything else he stands for, just that.  So for a position shared by one prominent 2008 Libertarian Presidential hopeful (Mike Gravel) and recently espoused by former Libertarian Gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina and LP convention 2008 keynote speaker (Michael Munger), a bunch of folks from other states decided that it was even appropriate to talk about disaffiliating Delaware from the national LP.  (To be fair, these critics were in the minority. Barely.)

But we're proud to have Andrew Groff running for US Senate against corporate shill Tom Carper, particularly in a circus race where nobody even remembers who the Republican is, and the chief entertainment is being caused by wealthy bar owner Alex Pires runnning against him as an independent.

Many LPD members
routinely change
their party ID to
vote for Ron Paul

We also have a huge contingent (maybe 20-35%) of the LPD in Delaware that routinely switches registration to GOP to vote for Ron Paul or one of our candidates in a GOP primary, and then quickly switches back to avoid losing ballot access.  Unlike a lot of states, we're on real good terms with our cousins in the Campaign for Liberty, and we like it that way.

So guess what, Libertarian world?  Get over it.

We work hard for our candidates, we're working hard for Gary Johnson in a hostile environment, and normally we get absolutely no consideration and no attention from the national Libertarian Party because our ballot access is rock-solid assured, so they don't have to spend a dime here.  And trust me, they don't, and they generally don't seem to give a rat's butt about us, either.

The Gary Johnson campaign has been quite different.  They've been interested, involved, and willing to help since day one.  They understand what we're about here, and it is the same thing that Gary Johnson seems to be about:  building a real alternative party that can actually compete.

Here's the thing, Libertarian world:  those of us who want to see more liberty, fewer taxes, less war, and less Federal intrusion in our lives realize that we're going to have to grow this party beyond the 18% or so of the public that considers itself Libertarian in some fashion now.  We're going to have to educate, use every tactic at our command, and work through increments.

I love the people who won't endorse Gary Johnson because, after bringing all the troops home from Afghanistan and cutting the defense budget by 43%, he won't condemn the proper use of military force to track down a genocidal murderer.  This somehow makes him a neo-con.

I love the people who won't support Gary Johnson because he's realistic enough to know that the US Congress won't just abolish the Federal Reserve, and therefore puts out a plan to audit the Fed and limit its activities.  This somehow makes him appear to have been co-opted by Ben Bernanke.

I love you guys, I really do.

But neither I nor any of the other Libertarians in Delaware are going to let you dictate to us how we run out party, select our candidates, or approach life in the bluest of Blue States.

No apologies.