Libertarian Party Gets New National Chair After Angela McArdle's Surprise Resignation
The Mises Caucus hold over the party cracks as its founder Michael Heise loses in a 9-6 vote to Steven Nekhaila.
Riding a wave of accolades for her role in convincing Donald Trump to fully pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, Angela McArdle made a surprise announcement late on January 24 that she was resigning from her position as chair of the Libertarian Party's National Committee (LNC).
McArdle released a farewell video a couple of days before a Sunday night LNC board meeting via Zoom that selected her replacement in which she stressed Ulbricht's release from prison as the "biggest political victory" the party has ever achieved. She also accused George Phillies, a past L.P. candidate for office from Massachusetts and operator of Third Party Watch, of being a federal operative and called on her supporters to avoid the "demonically possessed." She hinted without directly stating that she left the L.P. to work for the federal government in Robert Kennedy's Department of Health and Human Services. In an emailed response to questions, she wrote specifically regarding her next steps: "I am moving to another position very soon where I won't be able to stay Chair. I'll be announcing it later this week or early next week, but I can't say what it is yet."
Kennedy certainly owes her; under her leadership the L.P. formed a joint fundraising agreement with his campaign, thus helping a candidate opposed to the L.P. raise money (while also keeping a portion of it for the L.P., and indeed the money flowing from McArdle's decision to ally with Kennedy seems to be keeping the L.P. from running out of money entirely.) Organizations she controls outside the L.P. in turn have received over $750,000 in 2024. The vast bulk went to her nonprofit Rescue the West, some from the Kennedy Joint Fundraising Committee itself and more from other PACs and operations associated with Kennedy's campaign, such as American Values 2024, MAHA Alliance, and MAHA PAC.
This information was first reported in December by Jake Porter, a former L.P. candidate for governor of Iowa. In response to emailed questions about what that money from the Kennedy operations was used for, McArdle wrote, "The organization that I run with Bret Weinstein held a giant unity event in September called Rescue The Republic. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it."
The LNC at Sunday night's meeting created an investigatory committee to, in its language as voted on, "investigate issues of conflict of interest and business practices of the Libertarian National Committee."
A live email ballot was in progress regarding forming such a committee that specifically referred to "allegations of misconduct" against McArdle, with votes already cast indicating it would be created, when McArdle suddenly resigned. The language regarding the investigatory committee that was passed Sunday night did not name her. Looming over the proceedings was the allegation that McArdle was funneling party money to her own household, furthered by investigative work from Porter on his Substack.
On January 21, he reported that under McArdle's leadership the LNC has paid over $45,000 since last February to a company called Freedom Calls for fundraising services. Porter discovered that McArdle's domestic partner and father of her child, Austin Padgett, was the incorporator of record for that entity. The operation's website says it offers phone banking, canvassing, and website and email services, but the "Who are you?" squib merely says they are "a radical group of individuals who've come together to change the system. We are futurists. The tech industry is full of disrupters and secret dissidents." No names are provided. Porter says he could find no Federal Elections Commission records of any other entities paying Freedom Calls.
The LNC had previously decided to suspend a series of monthly payments directly to Padgett in January 2024. The payments to Freedom Calls began the following month. As Porter wrote, discovering Padgett's connection to the company raises the concern that the payments violate a new policy manual rule passed in October 2023 that says "Any proposed contracts or agreements for financial renumeration [sic] with a closely related party (legal relative, domestic partner, business associate) to a sitting LNC member or staff member shall be disclosed to the LNC prior to execution and shall be approved by a 2/3 vote of the Executive Committee or a majority vote of the LNC. This relation shall also be disclosed on the LNC's member's listing of potential conflicts of interest." None of that happened regarding the monthly payments to Freedom Calls from the LNC.
In response to written questions from Reason about Porter's accusations regarding LNC payments to Freedom Calls, McArdle wrote: "The LNC is reacting as best they can in the face of constant attacks by unstable litigants like Caryn Ann Harlos, and my cyber stalkers Todd Hagopian and Jake Porter. I have retained an attorney to deal with the aggressive cyberstalking by these men. I will be working with new appointees in the Trump administration to find out if the FBI and State Dept have been involved in the attacks on the LP and me. There are lots of unclassified documents on Reason Magazine and yourself, Brian Dougherty [sic], in the State Dept archives. We know the feds have a strong interest in disrupting the Libertarian movement, especially at a moment like now when we have freed Ross Ulbricht - the biggest political victory the LP has ever achieved."
Harlos is the LNC's elected secretary, who had filed a lawsuit in October seeking McArdle's removal, as reported by Reason. Hagopian is former elected treasurer of the LNC who had filed an amicus brief supporting Harlos' suit.
Under McArdle's leadership, the L.P.'s paid membership (those currently donating more than $25 a year, plus lifetime members) shrank from over 16,600 in April 2022 (the month before she took office) to around 13,500 as of December 2024, more than an 18 percent drop. Total nonconvention revenue for 2021—the last full year before McArdle took office—was $2.1 million. For 2024, that figure was around $1.2 million.
The L.P.'s national board has in the past week faced an email campaign sponsored by the Mises Caucus (which has largely controlled the party since 2022) pushing for its founder Michael Heise (who has been an L.P. contract worker working on "outreach and activism," receiving $2,400 for such services in December 2024) to be elevated to the helm. McArdle endorsed him as her successor. Adam Haman, Region 1 LNC representative, resigned just before the vote. Rumor has it that states in his region pushed him to step down because he didn't want to vote for Heise. (Haman did not respond to an emailed request for comment.)
McArdle firmly endorsed Heise as her successor, stressing he was the one prepared to continue her fruitful personal relationships with the Trump administration. Nonetheless, in the Zoom meeting of the LNC Sunday night, Heise lost in a 9–6 vote to Steven Nekhaila, who had been an at-large member of the LNC and threw his hat in the ring very late in the process. (Chairs are normally voted on by L.P. delegates at their national convention held every two years, but when between conventions a vacancy arises in both chair and vice chair—elected Vice Chair Mark Rutherford had himself resigned in early December—the LNC can pick a replacement.)
Justin Amash, who had been the only sitting Libertarian in federal elected office ever as a representative from Michigan (he was elected as a Republican but affiliated Libertarian in office in April 2020), had bandied about the idea of seeking the office of LNC chair on X. He wrote that "The LP shouldn't be for sale to the highest bidder; nor should it resign itself to the position of perpetual spoiler. For the sake of liberty—for the sake of 340 million Americans—it must win. The party needs leaders who are radical but also professional, who will present libertarian ideas to Americans in ways that resonate with them, and who bring people to libertarianism and to the party instead of pushing people away."
In the end, though, Amash wasn't even officially nominated as a candidate in the process and did not show up to the Zoom meeting. Paul Darr, who had been Region 3 representative on the LNC and was elected its vice chair Sunday night, says according to communication he had with Amash, the sudden timing of the vacancy didn't work for the former congressman, but that he still has interest in the L.P.
Darr is on the board of the Classical Liberal Caucus, seen as in opposition to the more right-coded and Trump-supporting Mises crowd. Heise openly endorsed and voted for Trump, because of his promise, which was indeed fulfilled, to get Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht out of prison.
In the contentious questioning process from LNC members during the meeting before the chair vote he lost, Heise said, in defense of wanting to lead a third party after he endorsed and supported the existing president of a major party, that blind demands for partisanship on the part of the L.P. were insulting to would-be donors and harm outreach to potential major party converts. Heise also firmly insisted the LNC should not care about, and not seek the identities of, the unnamed donors he announced would pay him directly if he took the formally unpaid position of LNC chair.
Nekhaila says he is committed to a policy of emphasizing small local races and issue coalitions for the L.P., a policy Heise has been pursuing under the moniker "Project Decentralized Revolution."
Nekhaila was not always a consistent party-line Mises Caucus voter, but he was part of their endorsed LNC slate at the convention in 2024. His win over Heise signifies a crack, if not a collapse, in the Mises Caucus hold on the party at the national level. Six LNC members endorsed by the Caucus in May did not vote for its founder and leader Heise Sunday night.
Porter thinks that Heise's loss indicates in the wake of McArdle's possible improprieties that Mises Caucus discipline and control "has been completely repudiated, and it's probably the end of the Mises Caucus as we know it." Others suspicious of Caucus influence in social network chatter will only be happy if Heise ceases to be a paid party contractor. Nekhaila did not respond as of posting time to emailed questions about that or his intended strategies and goals as newly elected chair of the LNC.
