Today I attended my first Wake County (NC) Libertarian Party Convention in years. I’ve been away from the scene except for a meeting here and there due to classes. I was definitely glad I showed up this time. Here’s the recap of events, not necessarily official, just what jumped out to me.
The event started off with a debate between 4th District Congressional candidate B.J. Lawson and Wake LP Chair Susan Hogarth. I didn’t expect too much difference between the two, since libertarians agree 90% of the time. I’ve worked with B.J. Lawson recently in conjunction with lobbying North Carolina legislators in regard to withdrawing from future compliance with the REAL ID Act and Susan as part of the Libertarian Party, so I respect and value both of them. B.J. introduced himself as a former engineer, medical student, software developer, business, and Ron Paul Republican. Susan introduced herself as a Libertarian Party hack. Followed by a number of questions with answers being “me-too”, a couple of possible contentious questions came up about Fair Tax and immigration. B.J. said we should get away from taxing income; I forgot if Susan gave a me-too, since I tried taking a picture then. B.J. thought immigration was a sovereignty issue; Susan was not a fan of borders other than her farm’s borders (specifically, she mentioned Texas and a northern state that escaped her — I think she was looking for “New Hampshire”).
And in any debate or public forum, there will always be a couple of weirdly-stated answers. These came in regard to questions about federalism and state’s rights. Susan said something like the smallest governmental unit is the individual. Now I know that she was advocating self-governance and wasn’t saying I was a part of the government in any sort of way, but it kind of woke me up. B.J. talked about how the government should look like a pyramid. A pyramid you say? Like maybe one with an eye in the middle of it? Again I knew what he was talking about (more local control, less federal control), but it sounded a little weird.
While all the questions were good, the best by far came from Vice Chair Stephanie Watson. In a candidate debate where everyone agrees on the issues, you start looking at the little things — strategy of the candidates and whose going to best communicate the message. Sometimes this gets out of hand and turns into a retarded debate about a man’s hair, but usually it has relevance. Stephanie asked how each candidate was going to convince otherwise happy Democrats to not vote for incumbent David Price. The answer was pretty simple — attack him on issues Democrats “should” care about but that is weak on in the liberal/progressive sense — the environment, civil liberties, war, and preference for special interests over the citizens of his district. Seems simple enough. Anyway, I don’t live in the 4th District, so I can’t vote for either of them.
In addition to this scintillating debate, we had a number of other very interesting speakers. Next up was gubernatorial candidate Mike Munger. He’s the chair of the Duke University Political Science Department and is really knowledgeable on economics. This guy is a no-brainer for being the best candidate on the North Carolina ballot this year — someone all Libertarians should rally around. Whether the voters of North Carolina agree or not is another question though. After some platform and issues voting, we heard from Libertarian Party of North Carolina Political Director Thomas Hill talking about his campaign for State Senate as well as running for office. Then we heard from state Chair Barbara Howe on issues of interest, particularly ballot access petitioning efforts and the lawsuit against the state’s insane restrictions. Finally, state Communications Director Brian Irving spoke.
Other than election of officers and reports from state party VIPs, the county affiliate decided issue priorities for the upcoming year. In the order from most emphasis to least, we chose to address local issues with regard to reigning in public spending, protecting property owners from eminent domain abuses, addressing common sense solutions to assignment of students to public schools, concentrating on real crime (as opposed to vices that are sometimes called crimes), and removing smoking bans. It’s a pretty ambitious agenda, but with the new wave of motivation sweeping through the LP now-a-days, I think we’ll do a fine job.
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