[Lnc-business] report on Oklahoma visit

[Rich Tomasso]

Nice to see a strategic discussion on this list.

Good points have been made here, I want to offer some quick observations 
now. These should probably be spun into separate threads.

Activists and volunteers don't care so much about labels, and in too 
many cases, the LP label has baggage. If you're in a state where the LP 
is the only liberty game in town, great. If you have competition in that 
realm, then we don't always compete so well. I'm not sure why, I think 
there's a lot of institutional inertia and our marketing tends to be 
more intellectual than action oriented.

We do have more restrictions as a political party than many other 
groups. That's one reason December ballot access is more important for 
the long-term than October ballot access. For many affiliates it's like 
night and day. For my own affiliate the petitioning requirement keeps 
away more candidates than anything else. Party status in general would 
make life an order of magnitude easier and better.

Building the bench is very important. When someone around here says they 
want to run for state office next year, we tell them to run for local 
office this year. If they want to run for Congress next election, we 
tell them to run for state rep first, and prove you can run a campaign. 
At a minimum they should do major work for another campaign this 
election. They may not like it, but it serves to instill the idea that a 
winning campaign is a lot of work and you can't do it just with a 
website and winning smile. Show the support base you are serious about 
running for real. In my state we've spent the last 12 years training 
activists and plenty have served on state-level boards, several of them 
are now state reps and a few state senators. Most of them choose to just 
run under the most popular party in their district, but they run on a 
libertarian (sometimes even an anarchist) platform, and win. Our message 
is popular, it's the packaging that needs an overhaul.


~Rich
  Region 8 Rep