2021 California Libertarian Party Convention
Notes from the 2021 California Libertarian Party Convention in Visalia.
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| Thanks for putting up with 100+ libertarians over the weekend, Visalia. I hope all your waitresses and bartenders haven't been too inundated with the taxation is theft cards underneath the cash |
"Where is Visalia?" I wondered when I first heard of the convention location.
"Gateway to the Sierras," was the answer on its website. It's perhaps a bit weird that the best plug a town can give is that it's close to another place, but hey, the best plug I can give about myself is that I'm attached to my wife. So I get it. Despite my reservations of visiting any city between and including Fresno and Bakersfield, Visalia turned out to be quite a charming town and the convention center was a two-minute walk from the main downtown drag, chock full of breweries and restaurants. In all of the California LP conventions I've been to, all in major metropolitan areas, this was the first one walkable to a nice downtown area. I was able to visit two breweries downtown, but it turned out the brewery to go to was Kaweah Brewery, owned by a libertarian, in the outskirts. Unfortunately, they weren't open Sunday when I was able to go; perhaps next time I'm there.
I had hoped to attend the Mises Caucus bash on Friday evening, but the complications of not able to leave a bit early from work, transporting a child, Bay Area traffic, and dinner for the family, turned a normally three and a half-hour drive into a six-hour drive, so I missed rubbing elbows with Thaddeus Russell, though I was told people were crammed into the suite like sardines, so maybe it was a bullet dodged.
Marshall Burt, the keynote for Saturday morning, criticized the caucus fights that serve to be counterproductive, saying that "infighting only helps the Democrats and Republicans at our own expense." This seems to be brought up every year, but the fighting continues, to my own frustration. The fighting seems to have subsided slightly since a certain segment of the Alive Free Happy crowd from San Bernardino has all but ceased coming to the conventions. We are too small a party to be continually shooting ourselves in the foot.
In her notes, Mimi noted that membership in the state was growing in California as well as registered voters, surpassing 1% of voters in California, which would be a large improvement from October 2020's 0.87% of registered voters.
Another announcement, I think by Vice-Chair Brent Olsen, involved the nearby town of Hanford where last year Libertarian Party member Kalish Morrow won a seat on Hanford's city council. What I hadn't heard was that the newly elected mayor, Francisco Ramirez, recently switched his affiliation from Democrat to Libertarian, stating, "Having been both a registered Republican and Democrat in the past, I became disenchanted in how those two parties limit or remove many of our freedoms. I became a Libertarian because it is the only party that truly fights for our freedoms and it fits my own political and social beliefs best." I am unsure of Ramirez's libertarian street cred, but it does sound like he wants to move society in the direction of freedom and that is a win. The party is also looking strongly to run another seat on Hanford's council, which if the person wins, would give Hanford a majority of Libertarians on its council, which would be truly exciting.
During lunch, Jo Jorgensen spoke to the crowd about her 2020 presidential run. She highlighted that 70% of the donors to her campaign were new to the Libertarian Party and 75% of the volunteers were new to the party. The cost per vote was the lowest in Libertarian Party history at $1.83 per vote, even after adjusting for inflation.
After the dinner banquet, Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Hewitt, running for governor, held a party in his double room. Hewitt is one of those people with the special gift of being able to really talk, likes to talk, and is able to tell stories with people hanging on to every word of what he says, afraid to miss out on any minute detail he mentions. One particular thing he mentioned that was rather surprising to me was that Governor was the only step up for him from Supervisor. Someone else standing on the balcony with me exclaimed "Even more than US Senator??"
"Yes!" he replied, saying "I have way more power than Feinstein!" He explained saying that his position was one in a board of three people while Feinstein was one in a board of 100, which is only one part of two chambers of the legislature, which needs approval by the President. Riverside has 2 and a half million while the United States has about 330 million people. I'm not sure that you can count every single Congress member against the senate number, and given that US law supersedes county law, I don't know that the math fully checks out. But it's an interesting way to look at it, nonetheless.
Another interesting he mentioned after I gave a tirade about housing approval boards, was his plan to address all the water issue signs plastered all across Central California. If the water boards continue to resist building water infrastructure, he would speak with Indian Reservations and try to broker deals to build dams in those areas, since they are quasi-sovereign states. With the decreased amounts of regulation that exists there, he says building a dam would be a fraction of what it would be in California proper. It would be a showcase of what one could do without burdensome regulations. That makes sense, in a totally roundabout, indirect way to my point on excessive housing boards. Oh, if only I was so deft at guiding conversations.
At breakfast the next morning, as everyone tried to shake off their hangovers, Larry Sharpe sat down at our table to chat. He seemed to be confident that Cuomo will run and win the governor's seat again. So I asked him, point-blank if he really thought Cuomo would win, despite a lot of Democratic resistance that has been brewing against him. He said yes, 95% guaranteed. Cuomo just has too much power in the establishment for him to be ousted. Sharpe continued to mention that politics in New York is so corrupt that the ballot access threshold which was pegged at 50k votes in the gubernatorial election was raised to 130k after he blew past the threshold to over 100k votes in his campaign for governor. He said the judge in the lawsuit over it essentially said "we can do what we want." Before we left to hear the keynote, he added that the friction between DeBlasio and Cuomo comes where DeBlasio is a dyed in the wool socialist while Cuomo is a heretic, just saying whatever to gain power.
Back in business, elections were getting bogged down a bit as people tried to figure out the Porcupine App to vote for the first time. Much credit needs to be given to TJ Ferreira for developing the app, a thankless job that easily attracts derision if something goes wrong. Between counting the votes for elections, platform planks were voted on, and the California Libertarian Party, finally, passed a plank to state its objection to capital punishment, with several nays coming from the front of the room. I just cannot fathom how any libertarian is okay with giving the state power to kill a citizen that is not an active threat to society. Joe Dehn deserves much credit for leading the way on sacrificing many a weekend to get all the platform planks written up for a vote.
During elections, I had the honor of nominating Elizabeth Stump for at-large, who had been a real driving force behind much of the progress Alameda County has made in the past few years. Additionally, I had wanted to give a short seconding speech to Michael Lema, who had been in his short tenure thus far, a fantastic addition to Alameda with an extremely bright future, but there wasn't time following the nominating speech.
At the end of the elections, the Mises Caucus nearly swept the entire thing. Nearly every one of their nominees was elected, except for Central Area Coordinator, which only Central region delegates could vote on. I suppose the Mises Caucus membership is not as strong there. From the Pragmatist Caucus's list, the only contested position I remember them winning was Kalish Morrow to an at-large slot. [correction 6/23/2021: It appears that the Mises Caucus supported Kalish, at least as far as her seat for city council; my memory may be wrong on this.] I sympathize and share many of the Mises Caucus' frustrations, but I don't know if this is healthy (and I'd say the same if the Pragmatists swept). Although both people I was supporting with either a nominating speech or prepared to with a nominating speech were Mises Caucus members (because they were fantastic candidates), this is one of the reasons I dislike caucuses. I really wonder how many people just voted straight Mises ticket or straight Pragmatist ticket like how tribal voters vote just because of a D or an R next to a candidate's name. A caucus sweeping the floor doesn't do any favors toward unity like Marshall Burt was pleading for in his Saturday keynote speech. That is why I don't like caucuses and have not joined one, nor do I really have an inclination to join one.
