On April 20, the North Dakota Secretary of State found that all three petitions for party status had enough valid signatures. North Dakota now has five ballot-qualified parties: Republican, Democratic, Americans Elect, Constitution, and Libertarian.
Parties that are not ballot-qualified can still place their presidential nominees on the November ballot, with the party label, if they submit 4,000 signatures by early September.
Way to go CST. Your hard work has paid dividends!!
Emmett Reistroffer’s hard work is most appreciated in getting the Libertarian Party on the ballot. They couldn’t have done it without him!
Now can those parties keep that status.
Cheers to Americans Elect, Constitution and Libertarians!
“Bubba Gump Says:
April 22nd, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Emmett Reistroffer’s hard work is most appreciated in getting the Libertarian Party on the ballot. They couldn’t have done it without him!”
I don’t know who posted this, but this is completely false. Emmett Reistroffer had nothing to do with the Libertarian Party of North Dakota making the ballot. He never worked there, nor did he ever recruit anyone to work there. This was inspite of the fact that for some bizarre reason the Treasurer of the National Libertarian Party paid Reistroffer up front for the North Dakota LP petition drive. Fortunately for the Libertarian Party, myself and some other Libertarians picked up the ball which Emmett fumbled and took it upon ourselves to get the Libertarian Party back on the ballot in North Dakota. There is no way that this would have happened had we not been there. Emmett spent a large percentage of the money which the LP Treasurer had forwarded him for the petition drive for his own personal use, and although Emmett has paid most of the money back, he still owes us more. LP National basically gave Emmett Reistroffer an interest free loan and Emmett did nothing in return.
“This was inspite of the fact that for some bizarre reason the Treasurer of the National Libertarian Party paid Reistroffer up front for the North Dakota LP petition drive.”
Paying for petition drives 100% in advance is NOT standard operating procedure in the petition business. Money is usually paid out after signatures are produced. If any money is paid out in advance it is typically just a deposit of some of the money allocated for the job, not the entire amount. I’ve been involved with this stuff for 12 years and prior to this I’d never heard of a petition drive being paid for 100% in advance. I’ve been an LP member since 1996 and I’ve petitioned for the LP since 2000 and I’ve never been paid up front for anything, beyond one time when the party purchased a plane ticket for me to fly in to rescue a petition drive where they were behind on their signature production. Paying 100% in advance for a petition drive is a recipe for disaster, and this is clearly illustrated by what happened in North Dakota, as the drive would have certainly failed had we not been there to save it.
#3, those parties can’t remain on the ballot after November 2012 unless they poll 5% for either President or Governor.
The recent decision of the 8th circuit, upholding the law that says parties can’t put their nominees on the November ballot (for legislature) unless 15% of the primary voters choose the primary ballot for the minor party, erroneously said that once a party gets on the ballot in North Dakota, it can keep that status indefinitely. Judge Kermit Bye, who wrote the opinion, was wrong, but he refused to correct his error.
I think facts must be getting distorted here. Here are the actual facts presented by Bill Redpath to the most recent LP national committee meeting in March:
—————————————
ND: 7,000 valid sigs needed for a party petition. Only 7,500 gross sigs need due to no
voter registration in ND. Party petition deadline is April 13, 2012. Retention: 5% for
one of four statewide races. LNC funding for $13,000 was approved and entirely paid
for in 2011.
The contract was given to Emmett Reistroffer, who successfully and professionally
completed the South Dakota petition drive. He currently has between 500 and
1,000, and about 300 have been collected on a volunteer basis.
Unbeknownst to both members of the LPND and me, another petitioner, Andy
Jacobs, represented to Paul Frankel and Jake Witmer, that Andy and I had agreed
to have Andy or them, as a group, do the LPND party petition. Andy & I had no
such agreement, either oral or written. The three of them were in North Dakota
to petition for other petition drives and prepared an LPND party petition using
language from a prior LPND party petition and began circulating that petition. The
LPND found out about this when Andy Jacobs called Eric Olson, who is the LPND
candidate for US House in 2012, and told him that they had 4,000 sigs on the LPND
petition. Eric Olson thinks they now have about 5,000 sigs.
I have tried to reach an agreement to purchase those sigs but that has not been
successful. Because of the LNC agreement with Emmett, I think any settlement has
to be agreeable with him. We have prepaid for those signatures and need to stand
behind that contract. Marty Riske, LPND Chairman, agrees that we need to stand
behind the agreement with Emmett. For the record, Paul Frankel has told me that
he would be OK with donating his sigs to the LPND but that has not occurred yet, to
my knowledge.
Emmett told me that he has an agreement with a petitioning crew that also has
another petition to carry in North Dakota, and he thinks he can complete the
petition by April 13.
Notice Bill said there was no agreement with Andy.
And since the petition was completely successful and Emmett did not have to refund the money to the LNC he got the job done, period.
Actually they got lucky we were there with the other two parties, because they got no other signatures. We also are still owed some money as well as volunteered some LP signatures above and beyond what anyone agreed to pay for, over a thousand in fact.
The other petition Emmett was anticipating to piggyback off of has not happened as of this time.
The facts reported by the chickenshit posting under the fake name “Blue Monday” are all distorted.
First off, the LP does not have a history of handing out no-bid monopoly contracts. This has NEVER been the standard operating procedure for Libertarian Party ballot access, nor should it be.
Second of all, I had several conversations about petitioning in North Dakota with Bill Redpath months prior to this, plus I called the State Chair of the LP of North Dakota, Mary Riske, back in early December. I told Marty Riske that myself and some other petitioners were going to be in North Dakota and that we were long time Libertarians and that we could get the Libertarian Party back on the North Dakota ballot. His reponse was “Super!” and he said that he was going to talk to Bill Redpath and tell him that we were here and ready to work. I was expecting to get a call from Marty Riske or Bill Redpath after the funding became available. Considering that we were already there gathering signatures on other petitions, it didn’t make any sense for us to not start working on the Libertarian Party petition, because if we started the Libertarian Party petition later it would have only made it more difficult to get the signatures, because a lot of the public doesn’t know one petition from the next and if they’ve recently signed a petition they will assume that people they see after that with a petition is the same petition that they’ve already signed. North Dakota is a low population state, so there aren’t that many locations there which are good for signature gathering as compared to a lot of higher population states, so this means that if we had already burned out the best locations with the other petitions, that anyone coming back at at a later date with just the Libertarian Party petition would have had a much more difficult time getting people to stop and sign.
Emmett did NOT recruit us to work, we knew about the job before he did. Emmett has never even gathered one signature for the Libertarian Party. Emmett did nothing. I never said that Emmett couldn’t work in North Dakota. I said all along that if he wanted to come up there and get signatures that he was welcome to do so. I also said all along that if he wanted to recruit additional people to work in North Dakota that he was free to do so. The fact of the matter is that he NEVER showed up, and that he FAILED to recruit anybody to work on the petition drive.
I don’t know who “Blue Moon” is but I wouldn’t be suprised if they are on the LNC or if they work at the LP National office. Whoever you are, you are a coward and a loser who doesn’t know about which you are speaking. Face me like a man instead of hiding behind a fake name and spouting off BS that somebody else who’s trying to cover their own ass told you to say. You don’t know what in the hell you are talking about and you obviously don’t have enough courage in your convictions to even post under your real name. If you work for the LP National office you should be fired, and if you are on the LNC you deserve to be removed. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s some arm chair coward spouting off about things they don’t even know what they are talking while hiding behind a fake name over a computer. We are the ones who went out and did the actual work, most of which was done in cold weather. You didn’t do a damn thing and Emmett didn’t do a damn thing, and if it hadn’t been for us the Libertarian Party would not have party status in North Dakota right now.
I’ve got a few guesses as to the identity of the fake name coward above is. It was likely somebody who would have been in attendance at the last LNC meeting, which means that the likely culprit is either an LNC member or an employee of the National office. I’m probably going to attend the National Convention in Las Vegas, so assuming that I attend, the coward above will have the opportunity to face me like a man, if not there then perhaps somewhere else down the road, but if my hunch about the identity of “Blue Moon” is correct (and I’ve got specific names in mind), then I have a feeling that the person will be in Vegas. So stop hiding behind a fake name, confront me in person or at least have the guts to debate on-line under your real name.
We are the ones who recued this petition drive for the LP of North Dakota from failure. Anyone who can’t see this and claims to be a Libertarian is actually more of a losertarian than anything else.
We were outside in freezing cold weather busting our butts and this is the thanks we get. No wonder this party hasn’t been more successful.
“We also are still owed some money as well as volunteered some LP signatures above and beyond what anyone agreed to pay for, over a thousand in fact.”
We worked without any pay on the LP petition for months, and we are in fact STILL owed money. We also turned in over 1,100 volunteer signatures on the LP petition. How many of these non-libertarian mercenaries would do that? NONE OF THEM!
“The other petition Emmett was anticipating to piggyback off of has not happened as of this time.”
It should be pointed out that Paul told Bill Redpath that this initiative petition that Emmett was talking about had NOT EVEN BEEN FILED yet back in late January and February, and that IF it even happened at all that it was not likely to even start until AFTER the April 13th deadline for the political party petitions. There was not even a campaign website for this initiative, and it still had not been filed as of the last time I checked (which wasn’t that long ago). So Bill Redpath knew darn well that there was no initiative petition which Emmett was going to have a crew working on in North Dakota.
The bottom line is that Emmett never showed up to work, and he never recruited one person to work, and the LP of ND petition drive would have failed if it had not been for us. Eric Olson, one of the candidates this year for the LP of ND, is glad that we were there, because he knows that if we hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have made the ballot as a Libertarian Party candidate for US House.
“Notice Bill said there was no agreement with Andy.”
#1, this is false, but more importantly, #2, this has NEVER been standard operating procedure for LP petition drives.
“And since the petition was completely successful and Emmett did not have to refund the money to the LNC he got the job done, period.”
Oh what a bunch of BS! Emmett did NOTHING! All he did was get an interest free loan from the National Libertarian Party so he could get his car fixed and do who knows what else with the money. That’s right, the money was supposed to go for ballot access in North Dakota for the LP, but Emmett started spending the money for his own personal use. Emmett did start making payments to us, but it was from money that he was getting from another campaign, and he in fact still has not paid back all of the money.
This is a prime example of why the Libertarian Party should not hand out monopoly contracts, particulary to mercenaries, and particulary to mercenaries who have little to no track record. I’ve been involved in the petition business for 12 years and I’ve worked in 32 states and I don’t ever recall hearing about a petition drive which was paid 100% in advance anywhere in the country except for this. This is a good way to set your organization up to be burned, and this is what would have happened had we not been there.
Well, all’s well that ends well.
Thanks to all the people that made the drive a success for all these parties and have given the voters the additional choices they need to make a real decision!
2012 is shaping up to be a good year for ballot access for third parties all over the country. Let’s hope the momentum keeps going with some good vote totals in November.
PS Keep up the good work guys!
BM
You can check with Eric Olson
http://ericolson2012.com/
LP for US House, ND
Ask him how many signatures came from us and how many came from anyone else. He delivered all the signatures with me to the state so he would be in a good position to know.
We are owed $1500 for the paid part of the drive, which we did 100% of. We are supposed to get that in a “month or two.” We also did well over a thousand signatures volunteer (1100-1200 by my estimate) which was the vast majority of all the volunteer signatures collected.
And, we got all of the CP and AE signatures as well.
OL
All may be well that ends well, but those who keep rolling the dice when they don’t have to will eventually crap out even if they did get lucky this time, and thanks to us they did on this one.
For example, we offered at the start (actually before the start) to help the LP in Oklahoma and we were deliberately kept out. The signature drive failed as a result, although they could still win a court case. I do wish them luck with that.
Similar shenanigans in 2008 resulted in ballot access failures in five states and DC, most of which we could have prevented.
“The contract was given to Emmett Reistroffer,”
Note that the Libertarian Party does not have a history of granting no-bid monopoly contracts. This has NEVER been the standard operating procedure for LP ballot access.
“who successfully and professionally
completed the South Dakota petition drive.”
This is a misleading statement. First of all, Emmett himself NEVER gathered one signature for the Libertarian Party in South Dakota or anywhere else, he just recruited some local mercenary petitioners that he knew from the 2010 medicinal marijuana petition drive in South Dakota. We knew some of these same petitioners, and in fact, some of these people were already known to the LP National office, so they didn’t even need Emmett to recruit them, and frankly, the petition drive in South Dakota would have been better off if there had actually been real Libertarian petitioners there instead of an all mercenary crew.
Second of all, the LP petition drive was NOT finished in South Dakota during the time period when Redpath handed out this no-bid monopoly contract to Emmett and sent him all of the money up front. This happened back in December and the LP of South Dakota petition drive did not end until February 10th.
So Emmett had not successfully or professionally completed anything for the Libertarian Party at that time (and once again, note that Emmett himself has never gathered any signatures for the LP anywhere).
“He currently has between 500 and
1,000,”
This was complete BULL. Emmett and company called in false numbers. The reality is that they had a total of ZERO signatures for LP ballot access in North Dakota. ZIP, ZERO, NADA! Emmett never turned in any signatures in North Dakota, and nobody that Emmett recruited ever turned in any signatures in North Dakota. Ask Eric Olson of the North Dakota LP if you don’t believe me.
If we had relied on Emmett’s false call in numbers then we would have all stopped working on the petition and left the state, and when it came out that these signatures did not exsist it would have been too late do anything about it and the petition drive would have falied.
How is calling in false numbers professional? How is getting paid a lot of money in advance and then not producing professional? How is trying to hire people who can’t even spell the word Libertarian or have any clue what the party is about professional?
“BM”
BM is a good name for that individual, because they are obviously full of what comes out of a BM.
I’m wondering if the person in question has the letter “K” in their real name.
The truth eventually comes out, and Andy Jacobs’ statements above are on the side of truth. As are Paul’s.
If the truth comes out now, it’s going to really hurt the future prospects of the Bill Redpath, Scott Kohlhaas and friends clique, so I expect them to deny the truth and try to slander our reputations, most likely through intermediaries, as they have done in the past. (This leaves them free from the taint of negative campaigning, attaching the negatives to people who don’t mind being associated with negatives, such as Sean Haugh, Russel Verney, Shane Cory, etc… There are always plenty of such people willing to be the mindless tools of others. Eventually, Shane fell from grace in 2008 because he unquestioningly acted on his masters’ orders, causing WV to fail to access the ballot. Shane is actually not that bad of a guy, but he was set up, used as a tool, and took the blame for following Verney, Kohlhaas, and Dondero’s terrible suggestions. In doing so, he was simply acting to remove a contract competitor for Scott and to cover up LP infiltration by Verney. Verney, as one may recall, sabotaged Ross Perot’s 1992 race for the presidency. Yet, he winds up running infiltrator Bob Barr’s campaign in ’08, in the year of Ron Paul? When the LP should have been ascendant?! If you can’t connect those dots, I suppose you can’t connect grayscale JPEG pixels either.)
But I digress. —Like D and R corruption, and bacteria, Bill Redpath and Scott Kohlhaas’s corruption can only survive in darkness, when too few human beings know the competing version of events. Upon exposure to the light of day, such corruption has a tendency to dissipate. This is the benevolent action of the marketplace of ideas at work.
It appears to me that the LP needs to overhaul its ballot access process, and remove Bill Redpath, Scott Kohlhaas, Sean Haugh, and all other similarly-corrupted individuals from that process, while setting up a set of fairly rigorous (but gracefully-decaying) standards for how ballot access is completed in the future.
I’ll see you all at the convention. Best wishes. This could be the breakout year for the LP, in spite of its prior abject mismanagement.
Even if the LP doesn’t “clean house,” libertarians have access to wonderful online fora at http://www.campaignforliberty.com , http://www.givemeliberty.org , http://www.thefire.org and http://www.citizensincharge.org –this last organization is the organization of Paul Jacob. Jacob is a remarkable person, and the only friend of Scott Kohlhaas and Eric Dondero who has retained his integrity and competence under the pressure towards corruption. It’s instructive to note that he’s made his own niche, and didn’t desperately need money to the degree that Kohlhaas did, when Kohlhaas defrauded Andy, Paul, and Mark in 2006. (Page 14 of the LNC meeting linked here exposes that fraud, paid off 1 year late by the LNC itself: http://www.lp.org/archives/lnc20070721.pdf By paying Kohlhaas’s debt, and failing to punish him for it, or censure him in any way, and failing to commend Andy, Paulie, and Mark for handling it so well, they incentivized the raft of corruption referred to by Paulie above.) Paul Jacob remains above the fray, because he does not live “hand to mouth” and does not depend on other people for his income. He has professionalized outside the sphere of politics, to the sphere hierarchically above politics: he wishes to expand the domain of ballot access to pro-freedom causes, because that’s a necessary step in any winning strategy toward full liberty. This removes reason to attack him, because he isn’t fighting over the same bowl of food: he’s trying to expand the number of bowls of food.
…This is an instructive lesson. There are many things that can be done to expand individual freedom. If one organization is corrupted, there are lots of others one can be involved with.
The system cannot stand up to the pro-freedom pressures of the marketplace indefinitely. As the system recedes, liberty expands.
As much as I dislike the things many of the people fighting over the bowl of food have done, I admit that they want –at their core– to expand individual liberty. I think there’s enough room for everyone at this table, there’s no reason to be on the floor with the dogs. Recent advances in crowdsourcing make expanding the full-time battle for liberty possible.
That’s the first-best option, as I see it.
Benevolence,
-Jake
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Your comments do not reflect the true timeline of decisions and events. You are lying through your teeth and are guilty of essentially stealing a contract and a project, and your ramblings here only prove that your working hard to cover your ass before I bring a lawsuit.
If you were professionals you would have called me on day one and told me you wanted to collect signatures in ND. Instead, you called me after you had 5k and bribed me to turn over the contract. YOU actually hindered the possibility of a another petition drive, which I was planning to use the LP crew to also work on at the same time. Because the LP drive was over, I had no work to offer my So.Dakotans to keep them there for a month to become ND residents (making them eligible for the other petition drive) and let’s remember, your not from ND either, as far as I know your all from some place far away with deep caves and a lot of bats.
Mark Pickens told me you started collecting in November, possibly as early as October. I wasn’t planning to go to ND until late February, but then I got the call not long after the new year that Andy Jacobs was there with 5k signatures.
***THIS DISMANTLED ALL OF MY PLANS IN PLACE, AND EVEN FORCED ME TO BREAK PROMISES TO WORTHY ASSOCIATES.***
****YOUR DESCRIPTION OF ME AND OUR RELATIONSHIP IS ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL AND BASED ON YOUR OWN AGENDA TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM WHAT YOU REALLY DID: YOU COLLECTED SECRETLY AND UNAUTHORIZED, IN PART STEALING A PETITION****
I’M THE ONE WHO PAID THE FUCKING TAXES OWED ON THE MONEY SIMPLY BECAUSE IT WENT THROUGH MY HANDS AND GAVE YOU GUYS EVERYTHING YOU ASKED FOR.
I DID’T HAND OVER ALL THE MONEY TO YOU ALL AT ONCE BECAUSE I STILL HAD COMMITMENTS IN PLACE TO MY CREW, AND WANTED AT LEAST TO OFFER THEM THE ABILITY TO HAVE WORK.
Thanks for everything guys, this could have gone very smoothly, but instead you had to unnecessarily smear my name. I will hold you accountable for your lies.
THIS ENTIRE THREAD OF COMMENTS IS STAGED. “BUBBA GUMP” ARE YOU KIDING ME? THE COMPLIMENT WAS DUBIOUS FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, I DIDN’T COLLECT A SINGLE SIGNATURE, AND THAT’S NOT MY FAULT, BUT WHAT YOUR HIDING IS THAT I DIDN’T COLLECT BECAUSE I WAS SCAMMED BY YOU ASSHOLES!
YOU DON’T REALLY KNOW what sacrifice means or what integrity means when you sacrifice your integrity for a short term gain. Your only gain, is long term tragedy:
http://bustedhalo.com/features/the-sacrifice-of-isaac-2
“Emmett Says:
April 26th, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Your comments do not reflect the true timeline of decisions and events. You are lying through your teeth and are guilty of essentially stealing a contract and a project, and your ramblings here only prove that your working hard to cover your ass before I bring a lawsuit.”
LOL! Bring on a law suit. You’d get laughed out of court.
We never stole anything. The fact of the matter is that it has NEVER been standard operating procedure for anyone in the Libertarian Party to hand out monopoly contracts for ballot access to anyone, nor has it ever been standard operating procedure for the Libertarian Party to pay anyone in advance for signatures. There’s a good reason for this, and Emmett’s actions (or lack thereof) PROVE this.
We NEVER prevented Emmett from working in North Dakota. We said all along that he was welcome to come up there and gather petition signatures. We also said all along that he was welcome to recruit other people to work through him to gather petition signatures.
The FACT of the matter is that Emmett NEVER SHOWED UP IN THE STATE, and he NEVER RECRUITED ONE PERSON WHO GATHERED A SINGLE SIGNATURE IN NORTH DAKOTA.
The number of signatures that Emmett called in from his “crew” that are referenced above in the exert from the LNC report were false. These signatures never existed.
Emmett did recruit one petitioner to gather signatures in North Dakota. It was some guy named Ken. Ken also called in false numbers, and then when it came time to turn these signatures that he claimed that he had in to Eric Olson from the LP of North Dakota, Ken claimed that his signatures were “stolen” and he and Emmett claimed that they had contacted the FBI about it (yet he never provided any evidence to back this up), and then they insinuated that we were “suspects” for this alleged theft. This guy Ken was up in Minot, a city that none of us ever even went to at all while in North Dakota.
Oh yeah, this Ken guy didn’t even know what the name of the party was, as he kept calling the Libertarian Party the Liberation Party over the phone. Shouldn’t it be a prerequisite for a petition circulator to actually know what the name of the party is for whom they are going to petition? I’d say so. This guy was so dedicated and professional that he didn’t even know the name of the party, and didn’t even turn in any signatures.
If anyone should be sued, it should be the Libertarian National Committee suing Emmett Reistroffer for breach of contract. Emmett never should have agreed to take the job, and when he did agree to take the job and it became apparent that he couldn’t go himself, and that he couldn’t recruit anyone to go in his place, he should have refunded all of the money to the Libertarian Party.
Giving Emmett any credit for our work is absolutely ridiculous, and is a complete slap in the fact to those of us who actually did the work.
“If you were professionals you would have called me on day one and told me you wanted to collect signatures in ND.”
Paul and I arrived in North Dakota on December 8th of 2011. One of the first things we did upon arriving in the state is that we had called the Libertarian Party of North Dakota State Chairman, Marty Riske (phone records can back this up). We told Marty Riske that we are both long time Libertarian Party members and that we also work on petition drives and that we could get the LP of North Dakota back on the ballot. His response was “Super!” I also told Marty Riske that I worked on the petition drive to get the Libertarian Party of North Dakota on the ballot for the 2008 election (and note that in addition to getting paid for signatures, I donated some additional volunteer signatures to them at the end of the petition drive, just as I did this time). Marty Riske told me that they didn’t have any money at the time, but he said that they were probably going to get money, and that he was going to talk to Bill Redpath and tell Bill Redpath that I had called him, and that he would call me back after they got the money. Marty Riske NEVER said anything about Emmett Reistroffer, and I don’t think that Marty Riske even knew who Emmett Reistroffer was (at least at that point in time).
Since Paul and I were already up there (note that Jake came in a couple of weeks later, and that we brought in some other petitioners months after this), and since we were already working on two other petitions, we decided that we should start working on the Libertarian Party petition as well. Why? Because we wanted to try to keep the number of signatures on all 3 of the petitions as close as possible so that they’d all end at about the same time, and so we didn’t have to go back to any locations to hit the same people up to stop and sign again.
It should also be pointed out that Paul, Jake, and myself are all long time Libertarian Party members who have also worked as petitioners for many years, and that we’ve worked all over the country, and that we’ve worked on numerous Libertarian Party petition drives all over the country. The same can be said of the other petitioners whom we brought in later, Mark, Milton, and Trent.
I’ve been a Libertarian Party member since 1996 and I’ve worked on Libertarian Party ballot access drives since 2000.
Paul has been a Libertarian Party member since 1994 and has worked on Libertarian Party party ballot access drives since 1998.
Jake has been a Libertarian Party member since 2001 and has worked on Libertarian Party ballot access drives since a few months after he joined the party back in 2001. Jake was also a Libertarian Party candidate for US House of Representatives in Illinois in 2004.
Mark has been a Libertarian Party member since 1976 and he worked on his first Libertarian Party ballot access drive way back in 1979. Mark has also run for office as a Libertarian Party candidate in California 5 times. Mark has worked on a lot of LP ballot access drive, in spite of the fact that he’s had long gaps where he didn’t do it due to have other jobs outside of ballot access.
Milton has been a Libertarian Party member since the 1970’s, and he worked on his first Libertarian Party ballot access drive way back in 1978. Milton has also been an employee of the Libertarian Party’s National office, plus he’s served on the Libertarian National Committee. Milton has worked on a lot of LP ballot access drives over the years, although like Mark, he has had long periods of time where he didn’t work on any LP ballot access due to having other lines of work.
Trent has been a Libertarian Party member since 2004. Trent hasn’t done anywhere near as much LP ballot access as the rest of us, but he has worked on a few initiative petition drives in a couple of states and he did petition for Ron Paul’s current campaign. Trent is also a former Treasurer for the Libertarian Party of Alaska.
I’ve worked in 32 states (18 for the Libertarian Party, and some of them I’ve done multiple times for the LP, so I’ve worked LP ballot access a total of 29 times over 12 years). Paul has worked in 37 states (20 for the Libertarian Party, and he’s done several of them multiple times). Jake has worked in 21 states (14 states for the LP, a few of them multiple times). Mark has worked in 25 states (9 states for the LP, some of them on multiple occasions). Milton has worked in numerous states (I don’t know how many exactly, but it’s a good number, and I know he’s worked a lot of them, and a lot of them for the LP on many occasions).
The team that I assembled in North Dakota was a REAL, PROFESSIONAL team of actual LIBERTARIAN petitioners, not a bunch of unprofessional low level jabronies that think that the Libertarian Party is called the Libertation Party, and who call in false numbers and then don’t really produce any signatures.
The BOTTOM line is that we had lots of experience, and WE GOT THE JOB DONE in a professional manner. Eric Olson of the LP of North Dakota was very pleased with out work. If anyone had any questions about the petitions, or specific questions about the Libertarian Party, we were able to answer them in a clear, accurate, and articulate manner. We also did some Libertarian outreach while we were up there, as we gathered some contact information of some North Dakotans we encountered who were interested in the party, and we handed out some party literature as well.
You see, it makes a big difference when you have actual professional LIBERTARIAN petitioners doing the job rather than just hiring any low level mercenary who is out to make a buck, so that somebody else can make a buck off of them.
Also, it should be pointed out that neither Paul, Jake, or myself knew that Emmett Reistroffer had anything to do with the petition drive until a couple of months into it. We spoke to the State Chairman Marty Riske, and he NEVER mentioned Emmett Reistroffer to us. We only found out that Emmett had any involvement at all AFTER we had already collected a few thousand signatures.
NONE of us would have ever agreed to worked for Emmett Reistroffer on this. Why? Not because we thought he was a bad guy (although judging from his recent actions, he may be), but because this IS THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY, and WE ARE ALL LONG TERM LIBERTARIAN PARTY MEMBERS. WE ARE THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY (as in we are all a part of the voluntary membership organization known as the Libertarian Party). We have all worked on LP ballot access for years, and we’ve always ether worked for a state LP affiliate, a county LP affiliate, a Libertarian Party candidate, or the National Libertarian Party (LNC). We’ve never worked an LP drive though some mercenary middle man, and all of us would consider it to be an insult to do otherwise.
I’ve worked for plenty of mercenary middle men over the years, but NEVER when it comes to the LP, it was mostly on initiative or referenda drives.
So why in the HELL would any of us call Emmett and ask for permission to work on our own party’s petition drive, especially when Paul, Jake, and myself didn’t even know Emmett was going to be a part of the picture until several weeks into it after we already had a few thousand signatures (by the time Mark, and later Milton and Trent came to work in North Dakota, we all had found out that Bill Redpath had sent the money for the petition drive to Emmett, but they all totally agreed with the stance taken by myself, Paul, and Jake)?
We didn’t call Emmmett BECAUSE WE DIDN’T KNOW THAT HE HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT, AND WHEN WE FOUND OUT WE ALREADY HAD A FEW THOUSAND SIGNATURES, AND NONE OF US WANTED TO WORK FOR HIM ON THIS BECAUSE WE ARE ALL LIBERTARIANS AND CONSIDER THAT TO BE AN INSULT.
Furthermore, us being in North Dakota did NOT prevent Emmett from working there, nor did it prevent him from hiring anyone under him to work there. The FACT is that Emmett failed on both of those counts. He could have come up there and worked, but he didn’t because he was too busy working on marijuana campaigns in Colorado and then Montana. He could have recruited people to work for him, but none of the people he recruited ever did anything, and some of them never even showed up in the state. It’s not out fault if Emmett was too busy with other projects to go himself, and it’s not our fault if the people he recruited flaked out on him.
“Instead, you called me after you had 5k and bribed me to turn over the contract.”
This is bullshit. I NEVER called Emmett at all. Neither did Jake. I did call Eric Olson of the LP of North Dakota AFTER I found out that the LNC did come through with allocating money for the LP of ND petition drive (Paul heard about it from somebody else in the LP). Eric didn’t find out about Emmett until AFTER this, and even then, neither Eric or myself or Paul knew that Redpath had paid Emmett in advance (and frankly, other members of the Libertarian National Committee are not happy that Redpath did this). When we finally found out Bill Redpath suggested to Paul that we work for Emmett. All of us were like, “Screw this, we are long time Libertarian petitioners and this is an insult.” Paul and Jake said that they’d quit working on the petition rather than be degraded like this, and I was of the same sentiment.
When I spoke to Marty Riske back in December, he said that he was going to call me when they got money from the national party for the petition drive. This explains why I didn’t hear from him, because he never got the money, Redpath sent it straight to Emmett in advance, which was a very reckless and unprecedented move to pre-pay for a petition drive 100% in advance.
It also needs to be pointed out that I did have discussions about working in North Dakota with Bill Redpath months prior to this. I spoke to him about it in the spring of 2011, then again in July of 2011 (during this conversation Bill said that if there was funding available for the LP of ND petition drive, that I could go there and work right then, but that they didn’t have any money allocated for the project at that time), and then he said that he’d call me if they got any money for it. I also sent him an email about it back around August and/or September of 2011.
It seems to me that this situation was partially the result of a miscommunication between the LP of ND and LP National (ie-Bill Redpath), but even so, when it became apparent that Emmett was unable to make it to North Dakota himself, and that he was unable to recruit anyone to work for him in North Dakota (all of the people he recruited ended up flaking out), that Emmmett should have simply REFUNDED THE MONEY to LP National, or he could have just sent it all to the Libertarian Party of North Dakota.
I think that Emmett kept trying to recruit people to work in North Dakota so he could make an override off of them. This is understandable, but as it got closer to the the deadline he should have just thrown in the towel on this idea and refunded all of the money.
I think that Emmett resents us, because he thinks that we all should have worked for him so he could make money off of us, but given our long history as LP members and working on LP ballot access, none of us wanted to do this because we took it as a slap in the face.
Why in the HELL should long time LP members who have worked on LP ballot access all over the country successfully for many years, and who have always received the top pay rate from either the national party, a state party, a county party, or a candidate, have to work for some middleman who didn’t even do anything to facilitate us working on the job, and who has had little to no actual involvement with the Libertarian Party (Emmett has never even been a Libertarian Party activist)? The very idea of it is completely absurd.
“YOU actually hindered the possibility of a another petition drive, which I was planning to use the LP crew to also work on at the same time. Because the LP drive was over, I had no work to offer my So.Dakotans to keep them there for a month to become ND residents (making them eligible for the other petition drive) and let’s remember, your not from ND either,”
This is complete BULLSHIT! What Emmett is referring to here is a proposed medicinal marijuana initiative in North Dakota that the Marijuana Policy Project has talked about doing for several years. It should be pointed out that this initiative HAS NOT EVEN BEEN FILED WITH THE NORTH DAKOTA SECRETARY OF STATE’S OFFICE TO DATE. Also, North Dakota requires 25 North Dakota residents to act as the sponsor of an initiative before it can even be filed, and the names and addresses of these 25 sponsors has to be included on the front page of the initiative before the text of the issue, and the text of the issue has to be approved by the North Dakota Secretary of State’s office BEFORE it can be circulated. The approval process can take several weeks. I already knew about the fact that MPP was thinking about doing this well before this, and I was checking up on it periodically and I KNEW that no progress had been made towards making it happen. I even told Paul about this and I know that Paul mentioned it to Bill Redpath back in late January or early February after we found out that Bill had talked to Emmett about North Dakota. Paul informed Bill that the initiative had not even been filed yet, and that IF it even happened at all, it likely would not happen until AFTER the April 13th deadline for the party petitions in North Dakota (note that the deadline to place a statewide initiative on the ND ballot for the 2012 general election is not until August 8th).
I just checked on it and the initiative STILL hasn’t been filed, and they still in fact don’t even have the 25 necessary sponsors needed to file the initiative. Eric Olson of the LP of ND had said that he was approached about being one of the 25 sponsors, but as of the last time I spoke to him (which was on April 11th), he hadn’t decided if he wanted to do it or not.
Another point here is that IF this initiative had actually come out, we may have remained in North Dakota and worked on it. 4 of us were in North Dakota more than long enough to be considered ND residents (and I did check on this while we were there, and we could have done it), and the other two could have remained there a little longer and would have been able to claim resident status and circulated initiative petitions as a resident.
We would have remained there and worked on this IF it had actually come together, and IF we had been offered a decent pay rate, and we may have even worked it for Emmett IF he had treated us right. However, the FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT THIS INITIATIVE WAS NOT READY TO GO AND MAY IN FACT NOT EVEN HAPPEN AT ALL THIS YEAR (if they are going to do it this year, they need to get moving on it soon).
I’ve been in this business for 12 years so I’ve seen plenty of talk about petitions that are supposed to come out that never end up happening for one reason or another.
So Emmett acting like we foiled his plan for this initiative has no bearing on reality.
“Mark Pickens told me you started collecting in November, possibly as early as October.”
It was in December, as I said above.
“I wasn’t planning to go to ND until late February, but then I got the call not long after the new year that Andy Jacobs was there with 5k signatures.
***THIS DISMANTLED ALL OF MY PLANS IN PLACE, AND EVEN FORCED ME TO BREAK PROMISES TO WORTHY ASSOCIATES.***”
Oh this is a bunch of BULL! The marijuana initiative was NOT filed and they didn’t even have the 25 sponsors as I mentioned above. Also, us being up there did NOT prevent you or anyone else from going up there. You could have gone up there, we NEVER stopped you or anyone else from going up there.
I heard that you had your hands full as MPP’s liaison in Colorado for the marijuana initiative in that state. I know that you all had a low validity rate on that as it was like 52% or 53%, and that you had to do a last minute save in 2012 to get enough signatures to qualify that initiative for the ballot. Interestingly enough, I’ve been following Colorado ballot initiatives for over 10 years and I’ve NEVER heard of a Colorado ballot initiative having a validity rate that low. Colorado is a state that has a higher than average validity rate as compared to most other initiative states, so getting validity that low in Colorado is pretty bad. When Mark, Paul, and I had a direct deal with Mason Tvert’s marijuana initiative in 2006 we had a much higher validity rate, as did Scott Lamm’s crew (and note that I know Scott and have worked with him multiple times and get along well with him) at that time, and we qualified that initiative with a higher validity rate than the one for which you were MPP’s Colorado liaison. I know that initiative is going to be on the 2012 Colorado ballot, but I’m just pointing out that the last minute save you all did wouldn’t have been necessary if you had done the job better in the first place.
“****YOUR DESCRIPTION OF ME AND OUR RELATIONSHIP IS ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL AND BASED ON YOUR OWN AGENDA TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM WHAT YOU REALLY DID: YOU COLLECTED SECRETLY AND UNAUTHORIZED, IN PART STEALING A PETITION****”
BULLSHIT! Like I said above, I spoke to Marty Riske on December 8th and told him that we were in North Dakota, and Bill Redpath knows darn well that I had spoken to him on more than one occasion about North Dakota months prior to this.
Also, why should I have to be “authorized” to work on a petition by somebody who is NOT even a Libertarian, or by anyone else for that matter?
There is such a thing in the petition business as “working on spec” (ie-working on speculation), that is speculation that a petition is going to pay. I’ve done this before on initiatives in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts and I made a lot of money that I wouldn’t have made otherwise, and the people who paid me were happy to get the signatures. I also did this on a petition for a Libertarian Party candidate in Massachusetts who we weren’t sure was going to have enough money to make it on the ballot. In fact, the fact that Jake, Paul, and I worked on spec for this LP candidate in Massachusetts helped this candidate raise more money, as they were able to use the signatures that we had collected on spec to show that they were making a serious effort to get on the ballot and they were able to then increase their fund raising and did in fact make the ballot. This candidate would NOT HAVE MADE THE BALLOT if Jake, Paul, and I had not worked their petition “on spec,” just like the the LP OF NORTH DAKOTA PETITION FOR 2012 WOULD HAVE FAILED HAD WE NOT WORKED IT ON SPEC.
“I’M THE ONE WHO PAID THE FUCKING TAXES OWED ON THE MONEY SIMPLY BECAUSE IT WENT THROUGH MY HANDS AND GAVE YOU GUYS EVERYTHING YOU ASKED FOR.”
This is more BULLSHIT! Mark agreed to let you 1099 him, which you did, and this re-leaves you of any tax liability. Also, you could have simply refunded the money to the Libertarian National Committee, or sent it all to the Libertarian Party of North Dakota, both of which would also re-leave you of any taxes. Another point here is that we offered to give you all of our expense receipts, and i know that we’ve got enough of them to where you could write the entire thing off as an expense write off, and I know that you know about this because I know that Trent told you this.
So you saying that you are stuck with a tax bill over this is just flat out not true.
“I DID’T HAND OVER ALL THE MONEY TO YOU ALL AT ONCE BECAUSE I STILL HAD COMMITMENTS IN PLACE TO MY CREW, AND WANTED AT LEAST TO OFFER THEM THE ABILITY TO HAVE WORK.”
The agreement was that you were going to pay us for 6,000 signatures and that your crew was going to get the remaining 1,647 signatures. We turned in the 6,000 and instead of paying us for the 6,000 you broke it up into multiple installments. You didn’t do this because you needed the money for your crew, because the pay for the 6,000 was solely for us. You had stated that you couldn’t pay all of the money at once, in part because you used some of it for car repairs.
You did end up paying for the 6,000 signatures, so I’ll give you some credit for that, but the payment was not supposed to be broken up over two or three weeks with different payments, it was supposed to come all at once.
Your “crew” NEVER ended up producing the rest of the signatures, so it is a good thing that we continued working or else the petition drive would have failed.
Emmett did end up paying us for more of the signatures (broken up payments), but he still owes us $1,500 and it has been over 3 weeks, and now he’s saying that he’s not going to pay us at all, so the latest is that he intends to rip us off.
“Thanks for everything guys, this could have gone very smoothly, but instead you had to unnecessarily smear my name. I will hold you accountable for your lies.”
Yes, this could have gone very smoothly if you had a) not been involved in the first place; b) actually showed up and worked yourself, or at least recruited people who actually worked (neither of which you ever did), or c) admitted that you were unable to do the job and re-funded all of the money.
“THIS ENTIRE THREAD OF COMMENTS IS STAGED. ‘BUBBA GUMP, ARE YOU KIDING ME? THE COMPLIMENT WAS DUBIOUS FOR OBVIOUS REASONS,”
I don’t know who “Bubba Gump” or whatever other fake name actually is. It’s either somebody sticking their nose in and trying to stir up shit, or perhaps it is you (Emmett) trying to stir up shit. It wasn’t me, and I don’t think that it was Paul, Jake, Mark, Trent, or Milton either.
“I DIDN’T COLLECT A SINGLE SIGNATURE, AND THAT’S NOT MY FAULT, BUT WHAT YOUR HIDING IS THAT I DIDN’T COLLECT BECAUSE I WAS SCAMMED BY YOU ASSHOLES!”
We NEVER scammed you. We NEVER prevented you from working. We NEVER prevented you from recruiting anybody from working. It’s not our fault if the people you tried to recruit flaked out on you. I’ve had plenty of petitioners flake out on me before and I know that it sucks, but don’t blame us because the people you tried to recruit ended up flaking out.
“YOU DON’T REALLY KNOW what sacrifice means or what integrity means when you sacrifice your integrity for a short term gain. Your only gain, is long term tragedy:
http://bustedhalo.com/features/the-sacrifice-of-isaac-2”
I think that it is clearly apparent that I know a lot more about sacrifice or integrity than you do at this point.
It sounds like Emmett may be smoking too much of what he is currently petitioning for in Montana judging from his comments here. Hey, I’m all for legalization, but it’s not really a good idea to smoke too much and post at the same time.
I wonder if THIS is Emmetts’ real reason for not getting the job done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYsTmIzjkw&ob=av2e
“I DIDN’T COLLECT A SINGLE SIGNATURE, AND THAT’S NOT MY FAULT, BUT WHAT YOUR HIDING IS THAT I DIDN’T COLLECT BECAUSE I WAS SCAMMED BY YOU ASSHOLES!”
Emmett had MONTHS to get up to North Dakota to petition. He had MONTHS to recruit people to come up to North Dakota. Even after he found out that we were there and had signatures he still had PLENTY of time to get up there, or to recruit people to work there. Emmett FAILED to do either of these things, and now he’s trying to blame us.
Hey, the fact of the matter is that Emmett was too busy in Colorado and then Montana to make it there, and everyone he tried to recruit flaked out. Shit happens. Don’t blame us.
It actually took us a lot longer to finish the petition drive than it should have. When I did North Dakota for the 2008 ballot myself, Mark, and one other guy busted out the entire petition drive in about one month. We were able to do this because we were there at a much nicer time of year, from late August-late September. This time we had bad weather, plus a lot of my time got eaten up because I got hired to work on the Ron Paul campaign. I ended up leaving the state for 3 weeks due to my work on the Ron Paul campaign. My car also broke down twice during the course of the petition drive. Jake got sick part of the time. Paul got sick part of the time. Jake had to leave the state for several days due to rental car problems. Mark came in later while I was still gone and he and Paul didn’t have a car and were unable to get a rental car. Milton and Trent came in later to ensure that we got finished early. I think that Paul, Jake, and I could have finished the petition drive much quicker had the circumstances been better, but none the less, the job got finished on time and I think that we did a great job (if I say so myself), even if it got finished at a slower pace than normal for us (the same goes for Mark, Milton, and Trent).
It’s a good thing that we were there and did what we did because otherwise the petition drive would have failed and the LP would not have ballot status in North Dakota right now.
“Jake has worked in 21 states (14 states for the LP, a few of them multiple times).”
Opps, made a little mistake here. Jake has actually worked 15 states for the Libertarian Party (some of them on multiple occasions). Don’t want to short him a state for the LP.:)
“Paul has worked in 37 states (20 for the Libertarian Party, and he’s done several of them multiple times)”
Opps again. I just realized that Paul has actually worked 21 states for the Libertarian Party, several of them multiple times.
I didn’t mean to short him by one.
“Mark has worked in 25 states (9 states for the LP, some of them on multiple occasions).”
One more mistake. Mark has actually worked 10 states for the LP, some of them on multiple occasions.
I like to make sure that everyone gets full credit for the work they do.