[Lnc-business] Contract issues

[Nicholas Sarwark]

Dear All,

I want to clear something up.

The LNC authorized me to negotiate a contract and joint fundraising
agreement between the party and the Gary Johnson campaign.  I have,
for the past three and a half months, been working with our counsel,
Oliver Hall, to negotiate a contract that would be in the best
interest of the Libertarian Party.

During those months, terms have changed during the course of the
negotiations in both agreements.  At some point I asked Mr. Hall about
the advisability of making the provisions of the contract public both
before and after the election.  His advice was that it would not be
advisable at any point, but definitely would not be prior to the
election.  Based on that discussion, my preference would be to keep it
confidential until inauguration day.  That was what I communicated to
the list, but that communication was in error.

The actual contract requires confidentiality of the terms.  Mr.
Goldstein pointed out that phrase to me and I sent a correction to the
email list as soon as I realized that I had misspoke. I understand
that this misspeaking has created a lack of confidence and a motion to
rescind the entire authority to execute the contract.

I would like it to be clear that making the contract public was not,
to my knowledge, one of the stated objectives at the LNC meeting
following the convention for our contract with the campaign.  A very
small and vocal minority making it into an absolute requirement at
this late stage of the negotiations is shifting the goalposts in the
final seconds of the game (after, I'm not sure if signatures are
already on the campaign's copies).

I think the contract negotiated is a good one.  Others who have seen
it are probably within their bounds to say whether they consider it a
good or bad agreement, without discussing specific terms with LNC
members who will not agree to keep it confidential.

The effect of this motion would be to cancel everything negotiated
because I misspoke and/or people value transparency over any other
goal.  If that's what you want to do, you should co-sponsor it and
vote for it.

Yours in liberty,
Nick

P.S. Recognizing that eventual transparency is important to the
aforementioned small and vocal minority, Oliver and I are actually in
negotiations with the campaign for some kind of addendum that would
modify the confidentiality terms to address those concerns.