Yea!

by Jim Campton, LPWS State Chair

It is time to take the next step to a more professional party organization.

While libertarians want to work for a freer society they are all faced with that greatest of prior commitments, making a living and feeding their families. The running joke is that the libertarian will devote himself actively to party affairs-until he gets a job. That aphorism is painfully close to the truth this year as our Campaigns chairman resigned to take employment in California and our Secretary got a better job which takes him on the road a great deal of the time, prompting his resignation as well.

In the last five years only once has the Secretary delivered timely minutes of the state convention and sometimes not at all. This year we are still waiting. I do not report this to disparage anybody, but the plain fact is that our organization as presently constituted puts all the load on a few members who burn out quickly and almost none on the membership at large. Even for a person making the minimum wage, annual dues represents only about three hours of labor.

Ever since I first assumed the chair I have pushed for an office, even briefly achieving that goal for a couple of years with donated space on First Avenue in Seattle. There were a lot of things wrong with that place, but it offered a focus, a place to rally. We held meetings there at our own convenience rather than at the sufferance of the public library where the SEC meets now, or the generosity of some gracious hosts who might open their homes. It was a place to store our stuff; inventory accounting now is sporadic at best and dispersal of party property is presently a big problem or would be if we had any. It's hard to justify obtaining equipment if there is no place to store or use it.

After we lost the Seattle office location, Tom Isenberg stepped forward and performed wonderfully well as office manager. He set aside an entire room of his home and even got it televised once in a report about the party. Unfortunately he had to resign because of that old bugaboo career conflict and we were left with no viable alternative. Others have tried to carry the load, but with little success, due to lack of coherent administrative skills and standards, exacerbated by our truncated SEC.

They way things are, we have no archives, no institutional memory and we keep repeating the same mistakes. We need a consistent administrative capability that is not crippled by turnover of volunteers (even on the SEC turnover averages less than a year). How do we solve this basic conflict of career and party that occurs time after time after time? Simple. We extend market incentives to some individual so that he or she will make party business their business.

To pay somebody 35 to 40 grand is to obtain that person's undivided attention to our party's administrative affairs 40 hours a week. It will enable us to achieve the basic goal of support to our candidates and with that support increase recruitment of both candidates and members.

All political parties are founded on volunteers. We couldn't function without them, but who wants to volunteer if they think their effort might well be wasted? The level of party activity I envision will require more than casual coordination of volunteers.

No doubt all the functions required might be divided among several people and this philosophy is embedded in our current organization of chairs for different activities. The objection is that it hasn't worked. The reason it hasn't worked is because the incentives are all wrong. To achieve an adequate result requires the right person at the right time stepping forward for altruistic reasons---and this in an organization that can trace strong roots to Ayn Rand! Even Joe's Muffler shop is organized along more objectivist lines and has better administration to boot!

The biggest objection to my proposal is, ''We can't afford it!'' Spot on. Our membership base is puny. If we want to stop being the running joke of politics we need at least 4000 state party members by the year 2000. It hasn't happened yet nor is it likely the present way we (don't) do business mainly because the effort is sporadic and uncoordinated.

Another big objection: ''Nobody does it that way in the other 49 states!'' True. It's useful to rely on prior experience only if it is helpful, but has there been any huge electoral success in those other states? Partial success? Or random success depending on how lucky they were with the current crop of volunteers? Citing the past as an objection to innovation is the soul of conservatism---but we're Libertarians. Or to put it another way, to do the same thing over and over expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

It's all the Chairman's fault! I take full responsibility, but bear in mind the worst retribution I'm likely to face is to be not reelected at the next convention should somebody nominate me. In any case I'm only one guy but I do try to lead by example. For instance I have given nearly a thousand dollars to Libertarian candidates and causes last year and this doesn't count my time or outlays for regional meetings and conventions including the national convention in D.C. I don't mention this out of a sense of braggadocio but that sort of commitment is part of the job. To expect a constant stream of altruistic persons who also possess mediating skills, managerial skills and administrative skills and are willing to pay for the privilege of exercising them is to live in a dream world. My experience in the party has indicated the opposite, just as it is true in the business world that such skills are scarce if not rare. Add into the equation a commitment to Libertarianism and independent wealth and you have perhaps a dozen individuals in the whole U.S. and each year we try to find four or five such mythical creatures for our SEC. Most years we are lucky to get two or three who are active and most of them run reluctantly and unopposed.

My goal is to solicit an average of $100.00 per party member in a non-federal election year, $250.00 in a congressional mid term year and $500.00 in a presidential year for candidates and party. We haven't been achieving even a fraction of this in practice, but I'll bet we could if the solicitor's salary depended in part on it. If that person was a Libertarian working full time to accomplish related goals of membership and candidate recruitment I wouldn't begrudge him a penny of his compensation either, because the load would be more evenly spread among the membership.

Undoubtedly we could contract out specialized areas such as accounting and database management, but that still leaves out the personal touch. An automated phone, even if properly maintained just is not responsive enough. We need someone who can build a rapport with members of the press. And we need someone to watch over our property and make effective use of it. That is the reason why so many volunteer organizations also have a core headquarters staff.

Finally there is the objection that we must learn to walk before we can run. ''Some day we shall overcome!'' Well folks, that argument might have played twenty five years ago when we first started but it is worn and shabby now. We are out of time. It is time to run because others have seen the bankruptcy of the old line parties and if we can't get to higher ground we will be lost in a flood of new voices. The Reform party is a major party in our state now with all the advantages that implies and a half a dozen others are waiting in the wings. There is a great deal of libertarian sentiment these days but if we don't have a professional organization to take advantage of it and support goes to others then why bother with a party?