Lily Wu

A libertarian won the mayoral race in Wichita, the largest city in Kansas. This is the largest city in the country that will have a sitting libertarian mayor in the modern era.

At least, that's what she's registered as.

Far be it from me to gatekeep, but I would be somewhat surprised if she can really elucidate the libertarian philosophy. Her campaign website lists a platform, but it's pretty generic, something you would expect from many mayoral candidates. Her statements on businesses and the local economy are decent though not great, listing no tax increases, removed regulations, but comes with talk about the state working with businesses. Her public safety platform is not great but not terrible, listing spending on police and being tougher on criminals, but at least she doesn't advocate more prohibitionist policies and does call for more community initiatives.

Maybe that's just the winning strategy, to dumb down the marketing to being blasé with a bunch of meaningless catchphrase rhetoric. But it doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence in me.

Also not inspiring confidence was her complete lack of engagement with the Libertarian Party itself. You would think that even just a line of communication with someone in the party you are registered with would be a rudimentary step to take.

I don't expect Wichita to exactly become a huge haven of freedom for libertarians to flock to. But it also seems like Wichita could do much worse, like its incumbent.

After I wrote the above, Reason released an interview with Wu. To be perfectly honest, I just don't feel like rewriting the above as I'm already so backlogged, so here is an addendum:

She articulates her stance within libertarianism as being classical liberal and for individual freedoms and responsibility with limited government. Okay, well, conservatives make the same broad gestures but I reject that most of them actually comprehend what that means.

For her primary goal, she again speaks broadly about strengthening industries, but avoids detailing exactly what that means. There is more substance on her campaign website than in the interview.

Reason pushed back on her statements that make her seem like a thin blue line adherent, questioning her whether she would hold bad cops accountable. The response was very lackluster, just another generic yes, almost as an afterthought.