Making Bank Over a Dime's Worth of Difference

From Washington to Texas to Connecticut, the Libertarian Party fights on

Brian Doherty | November 6, 2006

While you wouldn’t know it from conventional media coverage and polling, many voters have more than just the Democrats and Republicans to choose from on Election Day tomorrow. The libertarian-minded have, in most jurisdictions, the option of pulling the lever for candidates from the Libertarian Party. While it is pretty much certain, as always, that no Libertarian will be winning any governor’s chairs or federal congressional seats, a handful of LP races are notable for various reasons—from money raised to attention won in debates to even, on the state legislative level, some possible victories.

Herewith, a survey of some of the more interesting developments in LP campaigns in this offyear election, gleaned from surveying active LP-conscious blogs and interviews late last week with various LP watchers, insiders, and candidates.

*Texas. The state of Texas has two House races that have had the Libertarian world abuzz—2004 LP presidential hopeful Michael Badnarik in the 10^th district and Bob Smither, running for Tom DeLay’s old 22^nd district seat—with no Republican on the ballot.

Badnarik’s distinction is a stunning war chest—he’s spent what is probably a record for an LP congressional candidate, $423 thousand—about 10 times what his Democratic opponent has spent. However, despite talk in his fundraising trips early this year of an actual victory, he’s polling single digits, and has not managed, despite all his money, to run any TV ads. Many LP rank-and-filers are grumbling about where all the money has gone (with only radio ads and one billboard—featuring a smiley face and the message “smile if you love liberty”—in media play). As one Texas LP higher-up told me, it seems as if the campaign started off spending, in terms of office and staff, like the $2 million dollar campaign it dreamed of becoming rather than the—still amazingly impressive—roughly half a million campaign it turned out to be.

p class="MsoNormal">This left it with little to show for all the money but office and staff. With little in the way of press, and no public debates that included the Republican incumbent, Badnarik did win a weirdly worded endorsement from the University of Texas’s Daily Texan , which declared that “It seems clear that Badnarik would be easily swayed by his constituency to make certain things happen…we support Badnarik and his over-the-top Libertarian ideas.” Still, given the money he’s raised, anything less than a 20 percent showing will be a stunning disappointment. On the LP’s own “candidate tracker” page—which measures candidate momentum based on a number of variables , including media, money raised, polling, and time spent campaigning—Badnarik is currently coming in sixth . span class= "c1"> o:p>