The agreement between the national committee of the Libertarian Party, and the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. campaign to cooperate on fundraising, is illustrated by this tweet.
Federal campaign law lets individuals donate considerably more to a national committee of a party, than to any candidate for federal office. The deal provides that individuals who have already given the maximum amount to Kennedy can now also donate to the Libertarian Party. Then, the Libertarian Party contributes 90% of that amount to the Kennedy campaign. So both campaigns benefit. This sort of arrangement would not be needed if there were fewer campaign finance limits, or if the federal limits were non-discriminatory.
I remember when there were few election laws in the 1960’s before Nixon and his corrupt Watergate bunch made the government establish them because of their election shenanigans.
Kennedy advertised the higher donation limit when he accepted the Reform Party nomination. How does this deal dovetail with that?
Probably some Kennedy donors made use of that, and now they can give yet again.
At TPW, Phillies insinuated that a party has to have some certain number of candidates to be eligible for this. Is that true? If it’s true, how many candidates do they have to have?
NOOO $$$ AMOUNTS IN 1 AMDT
Phillies is a moron. Don’t take anything he says as fact.
Q – Phillies was saying that Kennedy’s We The People party was not FEC qualified. The FEC web site says the following about qualifying as a national party committee:
“The Commission will decide whether the committee or the party has demonstrated sufficient national-level activity to qualify, based on the criteria listed below:
* The party’s ballot access efforts must extend beyond the presidential races to races for the U.S. Congress. The party must have a sufficient number of party-designated federal candidates on the ballot in a sufficient number of states in different geographic areas to meet this requirement;
* The committee must engage in activities such as voter registration drives on an ongoing basis (rather than with respect to a particular election);
* A national committee must publicize, on a national basis, issues of importance to the party and its adherents such as through print or on a party website. This activity might involve publishing the party’s philosophy and positions, issuing press releases and distributing a national newsletter; and
* Other factors which indicate that a party committee has attained national status include holding a national convention; setting up national headquarters; and establishing state party committees.”
So, Phillies was not wrong when he said the We The People party needed to run candidates in order to become an FEC qualified party.
Adam Haman: The LP is broke – it may even be underwater. I have no idea which, because the hotel overcharged us by a lot and that has yet to be resolved. We need to raise money. This fundraising agreement does that – without compromising any principles whatsoever.
Caryn Ann Harlos: We have bylaws to keep. Assisting the election of a candidate explicitly rejected by our convention, with all due respect, does violate principles.
Adam Haman: I wrote a whole article about how unlibertarian he is. This is still clearly something we need to do. This makes us money. We are broke. This isn’t an endorsement. It’s a deal.
Mark Rutherford: This is not in the best interest of our party or our nominated ticket. Funding our opponent is inappropriate.
Andrew Watkins: To be very clear this would not be us funding our opponent. This would be his donors funding us.
Caryn Ann Harlos: Oh great! They can just donate to us then since we aren’t raising money for him on commission. I’m relieved. Oh wait
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It’s actually quite impressive what mental gymnastics Harlos, Nekhaila, Nanna, Darr, Weir, Johnson, Rutherford and Redpath are willing resort to in their mission to bankrupt the national LP and disaffiliate all state LPs. E.g. the hilariously pathetic attempt avoid acknowledging Watkins pointing out the true nature of this joint fund raising agreement, which (just like the Colorado LP’s agreement to nominate Kennedy) is far more advantageous to the LP than it is to RFK.
RFK Jr. has the nominations of the Reform Party in Florida, The American Independent Party in California, the Natural Law Party in Michigan and the Alliance Party in South Carolina. He also.has the nomination of some party in Delaware, I think it is called the United Party.
Aren’t at least some of these parties recognized by the FEC? If so why can’t people make maximum donations to him through those parties?
The Reform, American Independent and Natural Law parties all used to have ballot access in a bunch of states. Now they are all down to have ballot access in only one state. Does this mean the FEC no longer considers them to be national?
The LNC funding RFK Jr. undermines the Chase Oliver campaign and violates LP national bylaws, even if the LNC gave all of their 10% commission to the Oliver campaign. It would still violate LP bylaws if the LNC gave 90% of the money it raised to Oliver and only 10% to RFK Jr. All these prospective donors are RFK Jr supporters, but I admit that splitting funds makes it harder to call the Libertarian party candidates “spoilers” without calling RFK Jr. a spoiler too. Anyone who opposes the fascist duopoly must be a spoiler.
DFR–
ANY CASE IN LP JUDICIAL COMMITTEE RE. RFKJR FUNDING MACHINATION ???
It’s not clear that the joint funding agreement does violate any bylaw though. That is why they are making such a spectacle of themselves. If there was a clear violation, then it would have immediately gotten shot down. But there isn’t so now they are bickering over the correct interpretation of the bylaws and over completely undefined “principles”, etc.
One would think the interests of the party and of its members should be the deciding factor in resolving any ambiguity. But the Mises LINOs Harlos, Nekhaila, Weir and Johnson, and even more predictably the non-Mises LINOs Nanna, Darr, Rutherford and Redpath, have instead decided that if they can’t get their way all the time on everything, then they would prefer to just go ahead destroy the party for everyone.