We’re one year into a new administration and our members are interested to hear what we’ve been working on and what’s in store for the future. I’m excited to share some highlights with you – what we’ve done, what our vision is, where we’re going, and how we plan to get there.
There is so much that goes on behind the scenes that doesn’t translate into a pithy tweet or social graphic but it’s meaningful work and it has to be done.
We’ve been working diligently behind the scenes to refine our messaging, onboard new volunteers, and build a system that can account for long-term, strategic planning. The old LP wasn’t equipped to implement a long-term vision and that’s one of the things we’re working to do.
We recently finished a deep dive with a consultant on our customer relations management software to find out we’re not properly equipped to manage all of our fundraising and marketing needs at the national level or to manage the needs of our state affiliates. We’re working to correct the deficiencies and repair data that was damaged in last year’s data migration project.
Everyone is eager to jump to the best solution, but we have to put in the work to clean up our data first. Our staff is hard at work doing that, and we’re fortunate to have a skilled CTO Andy Buchkovitch with a steady hand who can guide us through this process without making snap judgments that will cause us long-term pain.
Membership has dipped during the past year, which is normal at this point in the election cycle but might also be related to some of the technological challenges we’ve faced. Our cheerful, hardworking membership director Matthew Butts has worked to contact thousands of our members and encourage them to renew. I want to thank him for his tireless efforts and his unflappable good attitude.
Our marketing team Carrie Eiler and Matthew Hudson are giving LP.org a much-needed facelift and building out a plan to launch totally new merch this summer. Our merchandise rebrand is long overdue but it’s happening.
Our fundraising director Luke Troxell has been working on two exciting projects that will launch in June and include partnerships with some of our biggest influencers and supporters.
Our ballot access committee has been meeting regularly to calculate the needs of our state affiliates and I’ve been helping them build relationships with other minor parties to make the costs of ballot access more attainable. After the results of the 2020 election, we’re facing a challenging ballot access year, but we’re ready and willing to rise to the challenge. Bill Redpath recently launched a very successful signature-gathering campaign in Arkansas. We thank Bill for his hard work.
I’m grateful for the hard-working, dynamic people we have on staff, including Drew Hreha, Matt Thexton, David Aitken, and all of our other team members who don’t hold public-facing positions.
Our executive director Lainie Huston has put project management in place and helped our staff form new habits to boost productivity and foster accountability. We’ve started to understand the WHY of what we’re doing, how much time projects take, and what results they bear. This is critical to understanding which fundraising and membership tactics work.
I want us to be successful. I want us to win elections. I want us to be a party that candidates are proud of.
We’re planning to hyper-focus on strategy over the summer, equipping our candidates and campaign managers to run successful campaigns, and boosting our issues coalitions and policy engagement.
Looking forward, we’re going to build off of some of the exciting wins that we’ve had this year:
Our Rage Against the war machine rally drew a crowd of 3,000 people to Washington DC to hear from some of our strongest anti-war advocates, like Ron Paul, Dan McKnight, Dan McAdams, and Scott Horton.
We made some incredible partnerships through the rally, like The Peoples Party, Free Assange, and Julian Assange’s brother Gabrial Shipton
No2NATO – European movement to end NATO expansion, Dan McKnight of Bring Our Troops Home, and Defend the Guard – legislation to curb the president’s ability to conduct undeclared wars.
We’ll continue to advocate for Defend the Guard legislation in all 50 states and we’ve launched an internship to help support this legislation through grassroots organizing. We’re calling our summer activism The Decentralized Rally, and issuing a call to action to get 3,000 people across the country to lobby their elected officials for Defend The Guard and for second amendment rights.
We supported Gabriel Shipton by driving our members to fill the screenings of Ithaka, a movie about Julian Assange’s unjust imprisonment and the toll it’s taken on his family. We’ll continue to spread the word that Julian Assange should be free, and our hearts go out to his father, his wife, and their children.
Many thanks again go to our rally partners, the People’s Party, and their chair Nick Brana. I’m looking forward to working with them on ballot access challenges.
We also celebrated several successful candidate wins last year, and we’re equipping ourselves to celebrate many more in 2024. We’re building out candidate resources so we can create more local wins like city councilman Bill Schult in Kentucky and Mayor Aron Lam in Colorado.
Some of the exciting things Aron has been able to do as Mayor are:
Remove the prohibition on backyard chicken egg sales, repeal his city’s COVID-19 disaster declaration, and pass a resolution declaring town support for the preservation of second amendment rights.
Local elections are powerful opportunities to remove burdensome regulations, cut taxes, and nullify tyrannical laws from higher levels of government.
I’d also like to thank Dave Benner and our fabulous social media team for bringing us to new heights in the past year, with over 103,000 new Twitter followers in the last year. We had 12.6 million impressions this month. Our Instagram has also gone through an incredible transformation over the last year. If you don’t follow our Instagram yet, please do so.
We have several exciting events coming up this summer. The national libertarian party will have a tent at Porcfest, with speakers, activities, and a bar. We’ll also be at FreedomFest again, with another mainstage talk, a VIP donor reception, and a booth in the exhibitor hall.
We’re also supporting an ambitious project to launch libertarian party college chapters through the youth caucus. If you’re in college and interested in starting a chapter, reach out so we can get you in touch with Teddy Gercken, the Youth Caucus chair.
Overall, I am still very much in support of the vision that I ran on:
Supporting local campaigns in order to grow political experience and capital. Supporting a presidential race in order to raise awareness and grow a grassroots movement.
We can win elections and educate people at the same time. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worthwhile work. This country was founded on incredible principles. At the time of its founding, it was the most radical political experiment to have ever taken place.
Please support our vision and work by going to lp.org and donating. Sign up to be a member for $25 a year or $5 a month. Let’s spread the message of liberty. Let’s grow the movement. Let’s free Assange and jail the Epstein co-conspirators.
