Libertarian Party of Colorado Coordinates With Colorado GOP
Libertarian Party of Colorado Coordinates With Colorado GOP
Agrees not to run candidates in close races
The Libertarian Party of Colorado recently received media coverage when it announced an agreement with the Colorado Republican Party that it would not run candidates against Republicans in close races.
It is a bad idea and the Libertarian Party didn’t get anything of any substance out of the agreement.
This morning, the Libertarian Party of Colorado announced a follow-up agreement with the Republican Party that the Republican Party wouldn’t target libertarians in non-partisan elections. Please note that outside of the Libertarian Party, non-partisan elections are not typically recruited for directly by state political parties. The Libertarian Party got nothing from this follow-up agreement.
Criticism of the agreement included the Classical Liberal Caucus, which wrote:
The Libertarian Party is the Party of Principle, not the party of selling out. In a state with easy ballot access, this is little more than handing control of that ballot access to the GOP. In many states around the country, Republicans and Democrats work hard to keep Libertarians off the ballot. According to this agreement, so will the Libertarian Party of Colorado. Under no circumstances should the Libertarian party promote another party’s candidates over its own. This agreement is little more than a repeat of Bill Weld vouching for Hilary Clinton, except it would be LPCO vouching for Republican candidates.
Perpetuating the false narrative that third party candidates are nothing more than spoilers will have a devastating effect on morale and membership. Libertarians join the party to fight the duopoly and work towards liberty in our lifetime, not pander to one side or the other. Libertarian candidates aren’t spoilers in the electoral process, we are participants. Stifling Libertarian candidates’ in order to promote Republicans will never succeed in growing the liberty movement.
Secretary of the Libertarian National Committee and Colorado resident Caryn Ann Harlos, doesn’t appear to support the decision.
Supporters of the Colorado decision include influential Libertarian Party member and podcaster Dave Smith who said the following:
It's often argued that we shouldn’t run against libertarian-leaning Republicans. The problem with this is defining what libertarian-leaning means and what libertarianism means always seems to get less stringent with time. Particularly when promises start to be made.
What kind of Republican candidates might be endorsed? There's a record of which Republican candidates Smith doesn’t want Libertarians to run against. Last year, he endorsed authoritarians Blake Masters and Ron DeSantis. In fact, Dave Smith encouraged Libertarians not to run candidates against either.
Don’t forget, out of all the candidates running in 2022, the Libertarian National Committee spent most candidate support money (outside of Larry Sharpe’s campaign for Governor) on keeping two Republican candidates on the ballot as Libertarians.
This is a bad idea
“As long as we keep kissing Republican ass, Republicans will keep giving us an ass to kiss.” Lee Wrights - Former Vice-Chair of the Libertarian National Committee
There are several obvious issues with this ill-thought-out strategy, if you can even call it strategy.
The Republicans have been promising smaller government for decades and have failed to deliver. They are notoriously bad for delivering on campaign promises. Additionally, the party leadership doesn’t control who runs as a Republican. Republican voters do that through primaries. Oh and don’t forget once the ballot is set, they can change their stances and it will be too late for Libertarians to be able to run against them.
Non-partisan elections are non-partisan and the Colorado state GOP wouldn’t officially be targeting them. They got nothing with this agreement. It certainly wasn’t a major concession. In fact, it wasn’t a concession at all.
The purpose of a political party is to run candidates. If the candidates running as Republicans or Democrats are just as libertarian as the Libertarian candidates or close to it, they will pick up the Libertarian votes. You need not be a political party if you are just going to be a social club.
You have just given the media a reason not to cover your candidates and the voters a reason not to vote for your candidates.
Shouldn’t the party membership vote upon such a radical notion?
Third parties move the other parties in their direction by running candidates and spoiling elections. See my 2018 OpEd in the Des Moines Register. They do not do so by endorsing candidates from other parties.
The Socialists were perhaps the second most successful third party behind the Republicans. The Socialist Party didn’t win a lot of elections, but by running candidates and winning several local offices, many of their ideas were adopted, including the income tax, the 40-hour work week, and women’s suffrage. And who can forget what the Prohibition Party helped prohibit?
There is no strategic benefit in this agreement. It does not move us in a libertarian direction. It is a losing strategy and one that should be soundly rejected before it kills not just the Libertarian Party, but also libertarianism in general.
As my late friend and former Vice-Chair of the Libertarian Party, Lee Wrights once said, “As long as we keep kissing Republican ass, Republicans will keep giving us an ass to kiss.”
It's a backroom deal, and putting it in writing is politically naïve; it only happened because the Republicant in Colorado is as clueless as the Libertarian.