[Lnc-business] EPCC - Paladin Strategies - Fwd: RE: Omaha Un-Convention Proposed Logo Copyright Question

Mon May 8 22:34:14 EDT 2017

Wes,

Thank you for bringing up the conflict of interest question regarding
Paladin Strategies. Frankly, the thought had not occurred to me. During the
conflict of interest portion of the April LNC meeting, I did seek the advice
from an LNC friend regarding the question as to whether my promotion of the
"Omaha Roads to Liberty Un-Convention" could be considered a conflict of
interest. The answer was an emphatic "No" so I promptly forgot it.

Under separate cover addressed to Alicia, I will offer possible conflict of
interest scenarios in the following three areas:

1.	I am promoter of the Omaha Roads to Liberty Un-Convention, a
non-profit event under the legal and financial responsibility of my "2017
Omaha Un-Convention, LLC" corporation

2.	I have had verbal and email discussions with John Engle and Mike
Fishbein of Paladin Strategies about their availability to speak at the
Omaha Un-Convention and provide their advice on event publicity. We have not
agreed on any specifics yet since the event is 8 month away. Paladin
Strategies has done no work yet for the Un-Convention nor has any
compensation been discussed although I will certainly be offering to cover
their travel and lodging expense.

3.	I have offered some LNC members and LNC staff the opportunity to
speak at the Un-Convention and have suggested arrangements to cover their
travel and lodging expense

That being said, I am puzzled as to where the conflict of interest concern
arises from. Paladin is a partnership with previous clients. I have not
signed or been asked to sign a non-disclosure on behalf of Paladin. I
believe the question of previous clients was raised but the response as I
recall was general in nature for obvious reasons and no contract had been
signed.

Once the objection to the partnership nature of Paladin Strategies was
raised at the April LNC meeting, on top of our understandable stress and
exhaustion following social media and committee elections as Caryn Ann has
pointed out, I was certain our motion would fail and saw no point in
pursuing further discussion.

That being said, I believe in transparency perhaps to a fault in the eyes of
some. I have not been reticent in advertising the subject matter referred to
in the above three conflict of interest declarations to any and all that
would listen. However, the quoted email was sent just to LNC members I
thought would be interested. 

I would ask the question: What does the content of the motion that was
defeated 4-10 have to do with the content of the original motion to solicit
bids from political consultants. Was anyone on the LNC operating under the
illusion that we were soliciting bids from political consultants for any
purpose other than seeking their professional advice on applying messaging
technique strategy to facilitate presenting our excellent Libertarian
message in a manner that connects more effectively with the broader
audience?

>From my personal perspective, our heated discussions and concerns both pro
and con about "dumbing down" our message entirely miss the point of what
Paladin Strategies has to offer. Our fixation on changing or not changing
the content of our message continues our focus on hitting the broader
audience over the head with where we are coming from. It is not surprising
to me that our messaging success rate has been limited to less than 50% of
the LP and maybe 15% of the broader audience. I am concerned that we will
never connect effectively with the necessary higher percentage of the
broader audience until we change our messaging strategy to focus on where
they, the broader audience, are coming from in their struggle to adapt to
the quicksand of the current status quo.

Focusing on where they are coming from requires using leading questions
instead of the message bomb to connect with them emotionally first by
putting ourselves in their shoes, not forcing them to step into our shoes.
Through careful targeting and testing of our leading questions, we can find
out what their concerns are about the status quo and get them to think about
how they would like to change the status quo to better address their
immediate concerns. This may plant a seed of doubt in their current statist
beliefs and prompt them to ask how Libertarians would address their status
quo concerns. That is when the real discussion of Libertarian principles,
goals and courses of action starts to which we can each lend our personal
version of our Libertarian principles.

Thoughts?

~David

Dec 28-Jan 1 Omaha Roads to Liberty Un-Convention

~David Pratt Demarest

LNC Region 6 Representative (IA, IL, MN, MO, ND, NE, WI)

Secretary, LPNE State Central Committee

Cell:      402-981-6469

Home: 402-493-0873

-----Original Message-----
From: Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org] On Behalf Of Wes
Benedict
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2017 11:20 AM
To: Libertarian National Committee list <lnc-business at hq.lp.org>
Subject: [Lnc-business] EPCC - Paladin Strategies - Fwd: RE: Omaha
Un-Convention Proposed Logo Copyright Question

Dear LNC:

I recently sought advice from Jim Lark in his role as chair of the
Employment Policy and Compensation Committee, and he indicated that I should
bring this matter to the attention of the LNC.

At the April 15-16, 2017 LNC meeting in Pittsburgh, a company, Paladin
Strategies was considered for hire. From the draft LNC minutes, there was a
motion  "to allow the Chair to initiate a contract with Paladin Strategies
to create a general messaging strategy for up to 6 months." 

That motion failed 4-10.

In any case, before the vote, when various LNC members asked the body who
the firm was or who were some of their other clients or projects, the
responses were along the lines of "we don't know or we can't disclose due to
non-disclosure agreements".

I was surprised that no one spoke up and mentioned that Paladin Strategies
was a firm working on the "Omaha Un-Convention". The excerpt from an email
received below discloses that fact.

Perhaps others mentioned in the email below are bound by non-disclosure
agreements or did not notice the connection, but I am not bound by any
on-disclosure agreement with Paladin Strategies or the "Omaha Un-Convention"
event. Therefore, I feel obligated to disclose the situation.

I am not familiar with Paladin Strategies beyond what has been in emails
about the Nebraska event and what occurred at the LNC meeting as far as I
recall. They very well may be a fine organization. As a former management
consultant myself, I'm acutely aware it's not uncommon for staff members to
be uncomfortable about bringing in outside consultants for services. Here I
am on the other side of that equation. Before the LNC meeting, I did inform
the chair that I was not particularly in favor of the LNC hiring consultants
for messaging for various reasons and the chair suggested it was not a good
idea for me to bring that up in the LNC meeting. I agreed with the chair
that it was not a good idea for me to bring up my opposition to hiring the
consultants at the LNC meeting.

I'll also mention that recently one of my staff members told me they were
recently offered to provide training at the Nebraska event as well as to
have expenses paid for that staff and staff members' family to travel to
attend the Omaha Un-Convention.

In bringing this matter to the LNC, I wish to emphasize that I am not
alleging any untoward behavior.  As a matter of proper procedure I believe
it would have been appropriate for those LNC members with knowledge of
Paladin Strategies and its association with the proposed Nebraska event to
provide this information to the LNC during the discussion.

> > Subject:

> >

> >     RE: Omaha Un-Convention Proposed Logo Copyright Question

> > Date:     Thu, 6 Apr 2017 11:23:07 -0500

> > From:     David Demarest < <mailto:dpdemarest at centurylink.net>
dpdemarest at centurylink.net>

> > To:     'Wes Benedict' < <mailto:wes.benedict at lp.org>
wes.benedict at lp.org>

> > CC:     'Nicholas Sarwark' < <mailto:chair at lp.org> chair at lp.org>,
'Robert Kraus' 

> < <mailto:robert.kraus at lp.org> robert.kraus at lp.org>, 'Brett Bittner' <
<mailto:brett.bittner at lp.org> brett.bittner at lp.org>, 'Vohra 

> Vohra' < <mailto:vicechair at lp.org> vicechair at lp.org>

> 

> <snip>

> 

> Joe Hedlund, our Publicity Committee Chair, is about to launch an 

> aggressive and carefully targeted publicity and branding campaign that 

> leverages the services of Paladin Strategies, the political messaging 

> strategy firm built on skills of John Engle and Mike Fishbein. Paladin 

> is the same pollical consulting firm that Larry, Trent and I have 

> selected and will present for LNC approval in Pittsburgh to proceed 

> with the targeted messaging technique strategy goal of the EFC 

> committee. John and Mike will have a significant role in our event at 

> multiple levels, including workshops, seminars and publicity messaging 

> strategies. While Paladin is a for-profit firm, Mike and John and 

> their liberty-conscious pricing approach continue to impress me as 

> dedicated Libertarians that share my primary Libertarian motivation - 

> freedom, nothing more, nothing less.

> 

> <snip>

Wes Benedict, Executive Director

Libertarian National Committee, Inc.

1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314

(202) 333-0008 ext. 232,  <mailto:wes.benedict at lp.org> wes.benedict at lp.org
facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at:
<http://lp.org/membership> http://lp.org/membership

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

 <mailto:Lnc-business at hq.lp.org> Lnc-business at hq.lp.org

 <http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org>
http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://hq.lp.org/pipermail/lnc-business/attachments/20170508/746e91e5/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: Untitled attachment 00087.txt
URL: <http://hq.lp.org/pipermail/lnc-business/attachments/20170508/746e91e5/attachment-0002.txt>