Dear Friend of Liberty,
First of all, I want to thank our 791 candidates again for taking the time to run for office. I’d also like to thank our candidates’ families and campaign volunteers who provided much needed support.
How did we do?
We’re still compiling the results from around the country, and hope to have a comprehensive report in the next week or so. We won several local races — I don’t know how many yet. We did not win any races for governor, U.S. Senate, or U.S. House, but many candidates received impressive vote totals. It will take a while before we can compare them to previous elections to let you know how our vote percentages are trending.
In the meantime, here are excerpts from reports we’ve received from several states:
Arkansas: “Looking only at our four Congressional races, we can see that a minimum of 65,712 unique voters cast ballots for Libertarian candidates in this state. Compare this to 37,082 votes cast for our four Congressional candidates in 2012, and you can see a 56% increase in the number of Libertarian voters in this state, even with lower voter turnout this year. Arkansans elected THREE Libertarians this year [to local offices].”
Indiana: “The good news from Indiana is we maintained ballot access for our state over the next four years. Karl Tatgenhorst’s run for Secretary of State surpassed the threshold needed and we will have access to run candidates at all levels. We won re-election in two local races. Cheryl Heacox and Steve Coffman both won their bids for township board positions.”
Louisiana:” William McBride of St Landry Parish is the first ever Libertarian to become elected in a straight up head to head match up in the state of Louisiana. He is the new Council Member in District 3, Town of Washington!”
Minnesota: “Two wins to report! BOTH of our Libertarian candidates running for Crystal City Council, Olga Parsons and Elizabeth Dahl, beat their incumbent opponents and by significant margins.”
I’d like to thank all of our state and local Libertarian Party leaders for their work.
And, finally, I’d like to thank the voters who voted for Libertarian candidates.
Visit our blog on LP.org for periodic updates.
We’ll be in touch again soon, with more results, more commentary, and more suggestions about preparing for 2015 & 2016!
Yours in liberty,
Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee
