Re: [Lnc-votes] [Lnc-business] Candidate Support

[lnc-...@hq.lp.org]

Chuck,

Thank you for your passionate and thought-provoking message, and my apologies for the delay in responding.

This is a difficult issue. I've proposed two different solutions now, admittedly imperfect, but I think an improvement on the status quo – one to create a multi-committee recommendation system designed to minimize favoritism and conflict of interest in who gets our support, and another to decentralize the process by giving the money to the state parties and letting them make campaign funding decisions via a mechanism to ensure some funding for any participating affiliate but also requiring some of the funds to go to out-of-state campaigns seen as the most deserving nationally – but the LNC did not embrace either of them. 

Instead, we've simply passed the buck to a Candidate Support Committee to come up with a solution, which does absolutely nothing except put the onus of coming up with a good solution into a smaller number of hands. That committee now faces exactly the same problems the LNC has long punted on, namely how to avoid making campaign funding decisions on an ad hoc basis and fairly allocate our limited resources to maximum effect in helping Libertarian candidates and campaigns advance the cause of freedom without allowing factors like how well a candidate is known by those making the funding decisions, which state or region s/he is  from, etc., to unfairly bias those decisions.

Given this situation, I appreciate you bringing some provocative ideas to the table. Mind you, I'm not saying I'm convinced that your proposed solutions are good ones. You draw a sharp distinction between candidates seeking money from "family, friends, and libertarians all over the country", and candidates seeking money from the Libertarian National Committee, characterizing the former as "fundraising" that "showcase(s) the value proposition" of their campaigns and the latter as mere "rent seeking", but I'm not sure I see such a sharp distinction there. While I agree that candidates add some value by raising money from people outside the freedom movement (non-libertarian friends, family members, co-workers, etc.), I'm not sure raising money from other (L)ibertarians is doing any more to "create new wealth" than raising money from the LNC; either way, it's drawing on movement resources. Either way it boils down to putting their best feet forward and persuading others to give them money. 

As I see it, the problem with candidates getting money from the LNC isn't with "rent-seeking" behavior on their end, but the challenge posed by trying to fairly allocate funds from a central distribution point on our end. Whether we give out funds directly, or via some appointed committee, the basic problem of how to avoid doing it on an ad hoc basis subject to bias remains. 

If we were to follow your advice, abolish the new committee, and simply vote no on all requests for campaign funding as you suggest, we'd still be wasting time fielding those requests and casting those votes, and candidates would still be wasting time making them, because there's always the chance – even the likelihood, as you acknowledge – that the LNC would sometimes vote yes. Personally I have zero interest in "bringing home the bacon" or funding candidates just so that we look like we're doing something to help candidates even if it's a worse solution overall than doing nothing, but I fear that I may be the exception to the rule, and political experience reminds us that even if I have no such tendencies now, I'm statistically likely to develop them if I remain in the leadership long enough. Clearly the incentives exist for LNC members to behave as you suggest we are behaving.

But even that doesn't seem as bad to me as a central Libertarian Party body handing out money *without* any accountability to party members either directly or via the LNC, which is the case with the rogue Libertarian National Campaign Committee. I don't know that the LNCC's been doing much, but to the extent they manage to raise money in the name of the party, there's apparently nothing to stop them from becoming rent-seeking central without any checks or balances other than being dissolved by the LNC if they abuse their franchise too badly, or at least that's the impression I'm given from those who claim to know.

The audaciousness of your proposed option B – allocating candidate support funds by randomly rolling dice – is refreshing! However I don't think it's a good idea. Randomly throwing money out of helicopters* (you being an economist, I suspect you may have had Milton Friedman's notion in mind when you came up with that!) might have some merit when the alternatives are higher government spending or sweetheart deals for big banks, but fortunately those bad options are not on the table here. It seems to me that such a dice-rolling approach would encourage many more candidates to submit applications for funding, including those with very little to recommend their campaigns and scant chances of receiving LNC funds under the current ad hoc approach, because – why not, if they'd have exactly the same chances as the most deserving campaigns? 

So I prefer your first option, but am still inclined to hold out for a better idea. Who knows, maybe the Candidate Support Committee will come up with one. If they don't, perhaps you can remind us about this again in a few months! 

Of course there's also your suggestion of highlighting exciting campaigns and featuring their websites in our communications, but I think that's more or less already happening, although as with most of the useful work staff does, more wouldn't hurt (except for the opportunity cost of diverting time away from the other useful things they do).  

Anyway, thank you as always for being one of the LP members who really pays attention to the governance of your party even when you are not part of the party leadership yourself. If the Libertarian Party is to remain sustainably libertarian, it's vital that we have members with the dedication to do this. Although you are on the Bylaws Committee... I would be interested in seeing what Bylaws language you might come up with on this issue, especially if it did something to create some accountability for the LNCC or something to devolve candidate and campaign funding to the state level, although I realize national funding is only part of your objection to the current approach. I'm just not convinced that candidates doing all their own fundraising with no help from the party is the best solution we can come up with.

Love & Liberty,

       

                                   ((( starchild )))

At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee

                         RealR...@earthlink.net

                                  (415) 625-FREE

                                   @StarchildSF

*http://www.cityam.com/235253/what-is-helicopter-money-and-could-it-work

On Oct 4, 2017, at 1:04 PM, Chuck Moulton wrote:

LNC members,

The LNC has been entertaining many requests for campaign contributions this term.  Most of this pork flows to region 1 -- a trend which appears to be continuing unabated.

I am a big advocate of the LP running as many candidates as possible and focusing on running candidates as our primary mission.  However, in my opinion candidates are responsible for their own campaigns and they ought to do their own fundraising.  Any candidate worth his salt can fundraise money from family, friends, and libertarians all over the country by using the Internet or a well-written mailer to showcase the value proposition of his campaign.  Unfortunately, a few candidates want to come to the LNC with hat in hand instead.  Usually they claim that their campaign is the best thing since sliced bread and they are going to win their race -- predictions that invariably turn out to be false.

I believe national money ought to be spent on national things: presidential ballot access petitioning, ballot access lawsuits, conventions, and affiliate support that exhibits economies of scale (such as websites, databases, social media, staff to answer the phones and talk to media, etc.).  Campaigns do not fall in that category.  It is true that even campaigns without ballot access implications have benefits (advertising the LP brand, recruiting new supporters, energizing activists, etc.); however, those benefits mainly accrue to a local area and are generic to any candidate; therefore, they do not justify sending money to a specific candidate instead of another one.

When candidates seek money from the LNC, it is a textbook example of rent seeking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Rent seeking wastes enormous amounts of time and money.  The candidates and their campaign managers waste time and money pitching themselves to the LNC.  Regional reps waste time and money advocating for candidates in their region.  The LNC wastes time and money learning about candidates, evaluating them, and making decisions how to divide up the pie.  None of these activities grow the pie... they simply redistribute at great cost.

The LNC has decided to delegate some of its responsibilities to a candidate support committee -- a decision I believe was very unwise. This just reallocates some of the wasted time and money from the LNC to the candidate support committee.  Once the candidate support process is fully implemented, many more candidates will waste time and money competing for LNC money and most will return empty-handed.

The best way to avoid this problem would be to vote no on all funding requests and dissolve the candidate support committee.  I know that's not going to happen... even though the candidate support committee is a terrible idea, the LNC wants to look like it is DOING SOMETHING to help candidates, and bringing home the bacon for constituents may help win votes in future LNC elections (e.g., QoP).

As a second best solution, I suggest the following as a procedure for the newly created candidate support committee:
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1) Candidates submit their name, state, political race, and a dollar amount they request.  No further information is needed or considered (no long-winded biographies, detailed information about the race, promises of winning, heartfelt pleas, repeated followups, careful answers to inquisitions, etc.).  This saves candidates from the costs of rent seeking.

2) The candidate support committee allocates money to candidates by some sort of random number generator -- perhaps by rolling dice.  This saves the candidate support committee from the costs of rent seeking.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

I am an economist and I hope you will strongly consider my sage advice.

Thank you.

Chuck Moulton
Life Member of the Libertarian Party

P.S. Nothing prevents staff from mentioning exciting campaigns in weekly emails and linking to candidate websites.  That is a much better support procedure than direct funding.

[lnc-...@hq.lp.org]

In answer to the last question: because the committee we created at our last meeting doesn't have the power to deal with these requests.  All we've asked it to do is recommend criteria.  

Joshua A. Katz

On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 3:59 PM, Erin Adams <erin...@thefeldmanfoundation.org> wrote:

I get what Chuck is reaching for and I see some validity in his points. I don't think the fact that "pork" has hit region 1 more strongly is anything other than coincidence however . I have been in support of financially assisting candidates to date and still am but I am leery about continuing to do so in the same manner we have been. Why did we bother to create a damn committee if we were going to continue to act as if we hadn't? Why are we not trying to put our energy and effort into making sure that committee is up and running and dealing with these requests so that we can return our focus to the millions of other issues that need it

In Liberty,
Erin Adams
Director of Fundraising and Events

The Feldman Foundation
(405) 780-2791

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[lnc-...@hq.lp.org]

Are they doing that, at least?

Also, when will the committee be fully populated? We had an application process, didn't we?

On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 4:06 PM, Joshua Katz <planning...@gmail.com> wrote:

In answer to the last question: because the committee we created at our last meeting doesn't have the power to deal with these requests.  All we've asked it to do is recommend criteria.  

Joshua A. Katz

[lnc-...@hq.lp.org]

I will say as I always have that if we are going to count expenditures then Region 1 is at the bottom.  Region 1 voted to continue to fund Ohio despite broken promises (I asked my state Chairs to advise me how they wished me to vote), and Region 1 has voted for every single ballot access encumbrance.  When I took this position I had a confederation of 9 states that saw little value coming from the national Party and little reason to promote national memberships.  Having a RR was just another person to avoid, and I was told so flatly.  I have turned this region around and I will always fight for its candidates - and the ones we have funded have been ones that has weighty factors in their favour.  We are 9 states - the largest region.  And now a region that sees some value.

The strategy of my predecessor was to vote no on all ballot access encumbrances.  I respect him greatly but disagree.  But part of the reason for that was that Region 1 was a good chunk of the funding.  I believe ballot access profits everyone and thus Region 1 - but I was elected to zealously represent the interests of my 9 states and I have done so.

-Caryn Ann 

--

In Liberty,

Caryn Ann Harlos

Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Har...@LP.org

Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado

Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

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