Funding Liberty! Table of Contents
Funding Liberty!
Chapter 7
Browne Captures the Libertarian National Committee
Browne announced in 1997 that he needed a much larger Libertarian Party, a party that by December 1999 would number 200,000 members instead of 22,000 members.
Could the Party possibly recruit 200,000 members by the end of 1999?
No matter what method the National Party used, Browne's recruitment objective appeared unattainable. On one hand, to reach Browne's objective, the National Party needed to recruit 5,000 members per month for three years, and replace every member who did not renew his membership. The non-renewal rate for new members is supposedly around 50% after the first year of membership, with additional percentages in further years. The Party actually needed to recruit more than eight thousand members per month, every month, for three years. Historically, the Libertarian Party had recruited more like a fifth or a tenth of this number of members, per month, in good months. Browne was demanding a staggering ten-fold increase in recruitment rates.
To make matters worse, the recruitment scheme under consideration was direct mail advertising. The recruitment yield on direct mail advertising was typically less than one per cent of letters mailed. Recruitment on the needed scale would require mailing perhaps thirty million letters. While a person who was a gun owner, a foe of the war on drugs, and an opponent of corporate welfare rape of the National Forests might usefully be sent several very different recruiting letters, returns eventually diminish. A direct mail campaign aiming for 200,000 party members needed to target ten or twenty million different people. It is by no means clear that in 1997 the United States had ten million people who were both open to the Libertarian message and not already firmly committed to one of the other political parties.
Nonetheless, 200,000 by 2000 was Browne's announced objective. The Browne Campaign worked vigorously to attain it. The Campaign faced a complication: The Party and the Browne Campaign were nominally distinct organizations. The Browne Campaign had paid National Director Perry Willis under the table. It had resorted to money laundering to hide at least one further payment. It had placed Willis’s girlfriend on its payroll. To recruit 180,000 new members, that wasn’t enough. Now the Campaign needed a Party that it controlled, a Party that enthusiastically supported Browne's goals.
To increase Libertarian Party membership nearly tenfold in less than three years, the National Party machine would have to stay totally focused on recruiting members. A National Party whose primary goal was not membership recruitment would almost certainly not recruit the vast hordes of new Libertarians that Browne demanded. Either the LNC recruited 180,000 new Libertarians and their replacements, or a critical component of Browne's plan would be lacking. If that component wasn’t there, Browne’s campaign would lose credibility.
It was by no means certain that the National Party would even try to do what Browne wanted. There were and are other models for National Party strategy. Instead of recruiting new members, the National Party could focus on supporting local candidates in local winnable races, and on building local organizations county by county across America.
How would the Browne Campaign persuade the Libertarian Party to focus on recruiting members? The answer lay in the Party's form of governance. Between National Conventions, the Party—the Libertarian Party of the United States (LPUS)—is run by its National Committee. The Libertarian National Committee (LNC) consists of four National Officers, five At-Large Representatives, nine or so Regional Representatives, and their nine or so Alternates, all elected every two years for two year terms. [The Regional Representatives and their Alternates, in most Regions, serve at the pleasure of their State Chairs.] The four National Officers are the Chair (who under the By-laws is also Party CEO), Vice Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer. The National Committee has an Executive Committee, consisting of the four National Officers and other LNC members as chosen by the National Committee. The National Committee has regularly employed a paid staff, in recent years including a National Director. If the Browne Campaign wanted the National Committee to support Browne's strategy, the Campaign or its friends had to control the National Committee.
For 1996-1998, the National Officers were Stephen Dasbach, Karen Allard, Gary Johnson, and Hugh Butler. At different dates, At-Large Representatives included Sharon Ayres, John Buttrick, Ron Crickenberger, Steven Givot, Barb Goushaw, Bill Hall, and Steve Winter. At different dates, Regional Representatives included Joe Dehn, Paul Smith, Chris Gardiniere, Ken Bisson, Candi Copas, Tim Moir, Mark Tuniewicz, Robert Franke, Gene Cisewski, and Geoffrey Neale.
By 1997, the Browne Campaign must have known that it needed a National Committee that focused on membership recruitment. Without that focus, without 200,000 members by 2000 or some reasonable semblance thereof, the 2000 Browne Campaign would lack credibility. How could it obtain that focus? If the Browne campaign elected a friend as National Chair, many difficulties with the National Committee would be removed. On the other hand, a hostile National Committee might ask inconvenient questions about the relationships between the Browne campaign and the National Committee Staff. The National Chair was the key. The Libertarian National Committee had historically often deferred to the National Chair, especially when the National Chair was deploying the internal technical platform on which he had run.
The 1998-2000 National Committee was to be chosen at the 1998 National Convention, held in Washington, D.C. over the 4th of July weekend. Members and supporters of the Browne campaign worked vigorously to install a sympathetic National Committee. The National Chair candidate was David Bergland, Harry Browne's 1996 Campaign Chair.
In Bergland, Browne had a highly reliable supporter who was deeply tied to the Browne campaign and who was a credible candidate. In 1996, Bergland had been Browne's Campaign co-Chair. Bergland had financial ties to the Browne Campaign. His wife, Sharon Ayres, was Browne's 1996 Campaign Manager. FEC records show that in the post-nomination period, July through late November 1996, Ayres was paid more than $57,000 by the Browne campaign. During the same period, the Browne campaign's FEC filings report only $6120 under the cognomen 'advertising'.
At the 1998 National Convention, Bergland vehemently claimed that the very substantial sums his wife had received were not all salary. The payments were claimed to include unspecified sums in lieu of reimbursements, for expenses for which full records were not available. Indeed, the Browne campaign reported its payments to Ayres as lump sums for 'payroll, travel, & supplies'. As we have seen above, if one believed Bergland's claim one reaches the interesting conclusion that the 1996 campaign spent far more on printing, mailing, and travel than the larger 2000 campaign did.
While a candidate for National Chair, Bergland promised the membership that he would implement the grandiose membership recruitment scheme "Project Archimedes". Project Archimedes was the brainchild of Party National Director (soon-to-be Browne campaign chair) Perry Willis. Willis, who had been covertly in the pay of Browne's 1996 campaign, wrote a near-book-length manuscript, "Operation Everywhere", describing Archimedes. In Bergland's realization of the concept, Project Archimedes was a self-funding direct mail project. Long recruiting letters would go to potential Libertarians whose names appeared on rented mailing lists. Mailings would recruit new members. New members would pay dues and donate generously. Money from the new members would fund further mailings to yet more potential Libertarians, in an ever-repeating cycle. Some money would always be locked up, because letters that had just been mailed would not have had time to pay for themselves. However, dues and other donations from the new members would more than pay for the cost of recruiting them. The Party would grow exponentially. The Party eventually learned that Willis derived a direct financial benefit from Project Archimedes whether it worked or not.
Operation Everywhere was most notable for its total focus on membership recruitment. Operation Everywhere specifically and categorically opposed running serious as opposed to illusory campaigns for local office. According to Willis's plan, serious local campaigns divert the attention of activists away from generating names and addresses of potential recruits. Serious local campaigns divert donors away from supporting the National Party and its membership recruitment campaigns. Even local electoral victories are not wanted; they are "...diverting important resources from more viable projects" and not a path to future national victories. Serious local campaigns are therefore undesirable. [In contrast, local paper campaigns were viewed as an effective tool for finding potential member-donors. Once located by the paper campaigns, members were to be diverted away from campaigning into recruiting more members.]
Bergland set concrete numerical objectives for Project Archimedes: 50,000 members by the end of 1999. 100,000 members by the 2000 National Convention. These objectives were somewhat below the 200,000 members that Browne had demanded. 100,000 members by July 2000 still required recruiting more than 3000 new members a month, and replacing those who left.
Bergland was not the only member of his faction calling for more members. A 12-page "vision statement" from LP National Chair Steve Dasbach said that membership recruitment meant "recruiting more members and voters...than the Democrats and Republicans have". That would amount to a half-million or million members.
Project Archimedes was the program that the Browne campaign needed. Archimedes might or might not work, but it at least promised an opportunity to recruit vast numbers of new dues-paying members, i.e., vast numbers of potential Browne donors. As it turned out, most members were not donors. Only a small fraction of LPUS members ever donated to Browne's campaign.
Bergland did not run unopposed. Long-time Libertarian activist Gene Cisewski was also a candidate for National Chair. Cisewski ran on his long record of performance rather than promises. He had run successful campaign schools, teaching Libertarians from coast to coast how to run for local office. He was also director of the Liberty Council, by far the most successful Libertarian local-campaign-support PAC of the twentieth century.
Cisewski's platform took local organization as its central theme. In Cisewski's view, the party's core effort should be to build local groups and run local candidates for local office. Successful local campaigns would generate the voter base, activist groups, and team of active politicians needed to capture higher offices. Cisewski viewed membership growth as a symptom of success, not a cause of it.
It was therefore absolutely critical to the Browne campaign that Bergland defeat Cisewski. If Cisewski won, the National Party would work to build the Party county by county, not to recruit 80,000 or 180,000 new members who would function primarily by sending money to Browne. For the Browne campaign, a Cisewski victory would mean that the National Party would not work on attaining the 200,000 member-donors that Browne wanted. Browne's campaign objectives would become unattainable.
The Browne 2000 Campaign scrambled to support Bergland's National Chair Campaign. Browne had a successful email newsletter LibertyWire, which reportedly went out to thousands of Libertarians from coast to coast. Many of these people had given generously to the Browne campaign, and were therefore likely to be able to afford to attend the National Convention. The April 1, 1998 issue of LibertyWire was a personal message from Harry Browne "Regarding the Election of a New National Chair".
Browne strongly endorsed David Bergland for National Chair. Bergland, said Browne, was the man who would appoint Steve Dasbach as Party CEO. Bergland was the man who would maintain the current strategy, that being to "professionalize" the party and develop the party's size and strength. Browne closed his message by invoking the name of Bergland campaign co-chair Barbara Goushaw, as someone seeing the same opportunities [Bergland] and dangers [Bergland's opponents] that Browne did. The main danger was to the Browne campaign, namely that it would be confronted by a National Committee that would not spend massively in support of Browne's strategy for the 2000 nomination.
Browne apparently continued with retail campaigning. John Famularo reports that at the Virginia LP State Convention, Browne was seen directing the distribution of Bergland literature. Famularo claims that the distribution was performed by National Committee staff members, there as staff members in that their attendance was paid for by the National party.
Browne also gave Bergland direct access to LibertyWire. The 18 June 1998 mailing of LibertyWire was "An Important Message from David Bergland to Delegates to the 1998 National Convention". In this message, Bergland laid out his substantial qualifications to be National Chair. He also made clear—by being allowed to use Browne 2000's LibertyWire message—that he was the chosen candidate of Harry Browne.
In case anyone had missed the point, at the 1998 National Convention Harry Browne himself gave the nominating speech for Bergland. Prominent Browne staffers worked hard to elect Bergland. They also had a secret weapon. Two years before, the Party National Committee had allowed the Browne campaign to pad the membership roster, using the P Transaction to inflate the rosters of state parties where Browne had numerous donors. Of course, some of these donors had allowed their memberships to expire, but others had renewed. The states from which these donors came were more likely to send pro-Browne delegates to the National Convention, and the number of delegates that those states were allowed to send had been artificially enhanced. In practice, the value of that weapon was more limited than might have been hoped in 1996. In almost every state, every respectable Libertarian who wanted to be a delegate and could reach Washington was able to sit on the convention floor.
After a vigorously fought political battle described by Liberty magazine as 'an especially bitter campaign', Bergland defeated Cisewski and was elected National Chair. Especially bitter? Your author was personally lobbied in a private conversation by a leading Browne supporter. Speaking of Cisewski, the supporter assured me 'He's incompetent.' Competence is in the eye of the beholder. No standard of comparison was specified. Cisewski and his team did not recruit a slate of candidates for the National Committee. Supporters of the Bergland membership recruitment strategy had only modest difficulty making a nearly clean sweep of National Committee posts.
The Browne-Bergland clique also tried to tamper with the National Party's By-Laws to prolong its control of the Party. First, they proposed to increase the term of the National Committee from two years to four. This change would have extended Bergland's term through 2002, so that the Browne-Bergland clique would not need to defend its hold on the National Committee in 2000 while it was trying to capture another Presidential nomination. Second, they proposed to change the By-Laws so that the appointed National Director rather than the elected National Chair would be the Party's CEO. At the 1998 National Convention, the Party's delegates saw through the maneuvers and rejected both of these proposed changes. To keep control of the Party through Election Day 2000, Bergland or a successor would have to capture the National Chairmanship in July 2000. The National Chair would remain as Party CEO.
Bergland won the election. Browne's Campaign, working through Browne's 1996 Campaign Co-Chair, had de facto control of the National Committee. The Party as a whole remained divided between Bergland and Cisewski supporters. Cisewski openly offered his services to assist the Party in its campaigns and projects in whatever manner Bergland requested. Cisewski was never contacted by Bergland, the National Office, or the Browne campaign to ask if he would help them. Bergland made no effort to heal the split in the Party. This motif was to repeat in 2000, when the Browne machine elected Jim Lark as National Chair, and Lark's chief opponent—your author—offered to assist Lark when requested. No such request was ever made.
Following the convention, the Libertarian National Committee appropriated funds to implement Project Archimedes. There was no debate within the LNC on the wisdom of the strategy. Strictly speaking, the Libertarian National Committee never endorsed Project Archimedes by name. They just voted to spend large amounts of money on steps that exactly matched the Project Archimedes direct mail strategy. They also raised no objection when the Party's national newsletter, LP News, called the direct mail campaign on which they were spending money 'Project Archimedes'. There may have been some smoke and mirrors around its adoption, but there can be no legitimate doubt that the National Party tried to put the Project Archimedes into effect. Nonetheless, when it became obvious that Project Archimedes had failed, some former backers disingenuously claimed that Project Archimedes could not fail because it had never been adopted.
These claims are conclusively rejected by the Minutes of the December 12-13, 1998 LNC Meeting, held at the George Washington Inn in Washington, D.C. The Minutes are entirely explicit in showing that Project Archimedes was a project of the LNC. To quote from the very long Minutes:
“National Treasurer Mark Tuniewicz said that he had referred Brick Mill Studios to management as a possible new Archimedes vendor … Tuniewicz said that although recent Archimedes mailings have been successful, he is concerned that as these mailings grow larger, the risk associated with a less-than- expected response grows significantly in dollar terms …Dasbach agreed that Archimedes was a possible source of budgetary volatility. He said that, absent FEC problems, he proposes to set up a separate bank account for Archimedes expenditures and receipts to make it simpler to track the results of this project. Dasbach discussed several targets for the Archimedes Program. He said that if response rates can be increased, it will be economically feasible to mail to large numbers of new names. Lark asked Dasbach to comment about the perception of some members that Archimedes is not doing very well …Dasbach said that Archimedes mailings generated fewer than projected new LP members because the number of names mailed to in the second half of 1998 was reduced from the projected 1,000,000 to about 600,000. The reduction in mailing size resulted from having less than anticipated working capital after the convention…Fylstra said that LP News has an article on Archimedes which provides a great deal of information supporting Dasbach's presentation…Smith asked whether a separately-defined Archimedes account would receive both initial contributions from new members as well as subsequent contributions from the same individuals. Dasbach said that only the initial contribution would be deposited into the Archimedes account. Subsequent contributions would be deposited into other accounts, as appropriate…Crickenberger said that we should explore "opt in" email lists as a possible electronic extension of the Archimedes approach to membership growth …Dasbach informed the Committee that Jack Dean had acquired the web addresses "libertarianparty.com", "libertarianparty.org", and "libertarianparty.net" and was willing to release the first two of these to LNC if LNC desired to acquire them. He said that Dean intends to retain rights to "libertarianparty.net" for commercial purposes.”
Bergland's campaign material made much of emplacing a 'dream team' of National Staff members, including Steve Dasbach, Ron Crickenberger, and Bill Winter. Win or lose, Browne's campaign significantly increased the likelihood that these men would go into place as the new National Staff. The delegates were of course unaware that Winter had been part of the inner circle managing Browne's 1996 campaign.
It is decidedly peculiar for a Presidential aspirant and his National Chair candidate to be campaigning for the hire of particular staffers. Even viewed in a positive sense, making the campaign staffers a campaign issue put the staffers in an embarrassing position. Would Libertarians believe that the LNC staff was neutral in internal elections when partisans of one faction had gained them their jobs? Was such a belief defensible, even if the staff was neutral? Viewed less positively, Browne reasonably expected competition for the 2000 nomination. A National Staff that was indebted to Bergland and his eminence grise Browne for their jobs had a variety of options for repaying their debt.
The most peculiar aspect of the Bergland campaign is that it is not apparent from the record why he wanted the job. In his campaign letters, Bergland announced that "My first act as Libertarian National Chair will be to appoint Steve Dasbach as full-time, paid CEO of the Libertarian Party." Dasbach was to have Ron Crickenberger as National Director. The promised appointment of Dasbach as CEO foundered on a single difficulty, namely that National Party By-Laws specified that the National Chair is the elected CEO, and the delegates refused to change the By-Laws. Bergland then appointed Dasbach as National Director and appointed Crickenberger as Political Director. So far as was visible from outside Bergland then handed over the reins to Dasbach.
It has been said that some people run for office in order To Do while others run for office in order To Be. Some people want the responsibilities of a job because having the job helps them reach their real objectives. Other people want the title of a job because the title makes them feel important. Bergland made clear he was not running To Do; he planned to appoint Dasbach CEO. Bergland did not appear to be running To Be, either. He performed the National Chair's narrow responsibilities but didn't appear to want the title for an ego trip. For example, the Party's press releases more often came from Dasbach than from Bergland. Why, then, did Bergland run for National Chair? There is no obvious personal motive. Perhaps he chose to help a friend. Perhaps other matters still remain unseen.
Only rarely was Bergland visible as CEO. In 1999, controversy arose over the use of one of Harry Browne’s books as a premium distributed by the National Party. Distribution of the books was a National Party activity that transparently served to promote Browne's nominating drive. Bergland ordered Dasbach not to answer questions from members. Bergland’s letter to Dasbach and the LNC, as circulated widely to Libertarians across the United States, read:
Message from the National Chair:
During the past couple of weeks an issue arose regarding the continued use of Harry Browne's book as a premium for larger contributors responding to Archimedes mailings and also using Harry Browne's photos, ame or comments for other Party mailings, promotions, etc. This issue came up on LPUS and resulted in extended discussion among EC members and the National Director. On May 28, 1999, I sent the following message on this subject:
Dear EC and National Director:
I have read with interest the voluminous exchange of information and views regarding the above subject. Mr. Dasbach has answered all the questions well and, indeed, spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with this set of issues. He has also been prudent in the past several months in moving toward phasing out the use of Harry Browne's book as a premium for Archimedes and also phasing out the use of Harry Browne's name and photo in general.
Having said that, I now put on my Chief Executive Officer hat, and take gavel in hand.
RULING: The use of Harry Browne's book as a premium for contributions, whether for Archimedes mailings or otherwise, is completely proper until such time that Harry Browne announces that he is seeking the Party's nomination as its presidential candidate. The National Director is authorized to exercise his judgment on whether or not to use the book for that purpose and in what manner.
COMMENTS: The decision made in the above ruling is solely within the jurisdiction of the Chair acting as Chief Executive Officer under the existing Bylaws and policies of the LNC. It is improper for members of the EC, or anyone else, to engage the National Director in extensive discussions and arguments of how best to implement policies, or projects undertaken consistent with those policies, established by the LNC. (The temptation to micromanage should be resisted whenever it rises.)
In my view, the value of continuing to use Harry Browne's book as a premium in accordance with the National Director's plans far outweighs any negative consequences that might result from its continued use. As Chief Executive Officer, I will take full responsibility for the outcome of my ruling and the National Director's conduct in compliance with it.
David Bergland
National Chair and Chief Executive Officer
When questions were raised about the $20,000 the LNC spent in 2000 on the Howell campaign, Bergland tried—reports then-National-Treasurer Mark Tuniewicz--to force LNC Executive Committee discussion of the matter into executive session. We'll return to LNC support for Browne 2000 and Howell 2000.
The Browne campaign got what it wanted out of the National Convention, namely a supportive National Chair and a National Staff whose leaders owed their jobs to Harry Browne. Project Archimedes would be launched immediately. The Browne Campaign would be given a reasonable shot—except that the objective was not vaguely attainable—of gaining 100,000 members by the next National Convention.
To this author, the Bergland campaign appeared to have one other major consequence: It kept Gene Cisewski out of the National Committee. The local organization strategy would have no exponent in the Party Leadership. Instead of an active National Chair with a political program, party activists voted for a passive National Chair who let his staff do direct mail recruitment.
Rather than trying to defend his record, in early 2000 Bergland announced that he would not seek re-election to the National Committee.