For some Free Staters, there's no place like home
By ANNE RUDERMAN
Monitor staff
The libertarian group is trying to recruit thousands of members to
move to
New Hampshire. Some have already landed.
LANCASTER - At the Free State Project's New Hampshire gathering
yesterday,
introductions went something like this:
"Kat, Texas to Keene."
"Jackie, Portland to Merrimack. Nice to meet you."
About 300 Free Staters converged on a Lancaster campground to swap
everything from libertarian ideals to house-hunting strategies and
talk
about where to take their project next. With spontaneous barbecues,
excursions to places like Mount Liberty and a breathtaking backdrop,
they
also celebrated their chosen state: Last October, the group selected
New
Hampshire to be the new home for 20,000 libertarians.
But growth for the Free State Project has slowed, reaching 6,000
members
from 5,000 last year. So Free State Project founder Jason Sorens, a
27-year-old political science lecturer at Yale, also set out a new
recruitment strategy yesterday - based less on ideology than
realpolitik -
to get 20,000 libertarians on board by 2006.
"To get the other 14,000 people, we need to take more of a free market
approach to selling ourselves," Sorens said. "We have to sell the idea
to
these people as being in their interests: the nice things about New
Hampshire itself, why the Free State Project will enhance their
lifestyles
and the economic incentives over the long term."
The 20,000 threshold might not matter all that much in the end. From
the
looks of it, individual Free Staters like Kat Dillon of Frost, Texas,
and
Jackie Casey of Portland, Ore., are already well on their way here.
"When the plane landed, I was almost in tears," said Dillon, who
closed on a
house in Keene last Monday and is moving with her 13-year-old
home-schooled
daughter after the Free State Project's Porcupine Freedom Festival
finishes
up.
Jerry and Julie Bennett of Orange County, Calif., missed Sorens's talk
altogether. They were busy driving through Nashua, Portsmouth and
Durham
looking for a place to live (Portsmouth has an early lead).
"It's a chance to actually make something happen the way we want it
to,"
Julie Bennett, 30, said. "Being able to participate in government is
much
more achievable in New Hampshire than in California. I don't have the
kind
of money I would need to run there, but I could certainly get elected
to
something like a city council here."
The Bennetts hope to move in a year, after Jerry, a 33-year-old
computer
programmer, finds work. Although Julie plans to get involved in
politics,
he'll stay out of it. ("I'll be the man behind the woman.")
The Bennetts, who have the well-heeled polish of John Kerry staffers,
take
hands-off libertarian ideas all the way: Public school funding should
be
negligible. Drugs and prostitution, legal. Guns? No restrictions.
Basically,
people should be responsible for themselves.
"We see people without helmets on motorcycles and we think, 'Great for
you.
You're stupid, but great for you,'" Jerry Bennett explained.
When they move, the Bennetts will leave their entire families behind.
And,
yes, there has been some jaw-dropping.
"Mostly they're shocked we're actually moving to New Hampshire, more
than
the reason why we're moving to New Hampshire," Jerry Bennett said.
"Let's
face it: New Hampshire's got seasons."
The Bennetts plan to visit again this winter, just to have a sense of
the
cold before they commit. Not that political philosophy has much to
fear from
Mother Nature.
"It's not going to change my mind, but we do want some idea of what
we're
getting into," Julie Bennett said.
New Hampshire, after all, is not an easy place - one Free Stater hit a
moose
on the way up - and the Bennetts are not the only laissez-faire
activists to
consider the weather.
"We moved the day before the first Nor'easter. Is that timing or
what?" said
Karen Pratt, a former financial services vice president for Merrill
Lynch
who moved from New Jersey to Goffstown with her husband last December.
Calvin Pratt became interested in the Free State Project in 2002 and
studied
the group before joining and voting in the election last fall. When
New
Hampshire won, Karen Pratt signed on, too, agreeing to retire early
and move
up. (Wyoming, and he would have been going alone, she said.)
"It wasn't an overnight decision to do this," Calvin Pratt said. "This
was
an investigation. I was convinced that they were serious and could
make this
work."
Snowstorm aside, the Pratts say they have found their new neighbors to
be
hospitable to them and open to their Free State ideas.
"We had a stereotype of the taciturn New Englander, but we haven't
found him
yet," Karen Pratt said. "There's not a day we wake up and say we wish
we
hadn't done this."
For other Free Staters, including Free State Project president Amanda
Phillips herself, moving to New Hampshire is still only a dream.
Carol McMahon, a 42-year-old accountant from Massachusetts, poured
over a
population-density map of New Hampshire yesterday, getting advice from
other
Free Staters about where she might want to go.
Her first pick? Pittsburg - No question about it.
It isn't likely to happen, though.
"Although I'd prefer to live in the far north, I'd probably have to
work
south of Keene, or commute to Massachusetts," McMahon said.
Maine, McMahon admitted, was her first choice for the Free State
Project,
but since the project picked New Hampshire, she'll relocate here
instead.
The four-day-long Porcupine Freedom Festival included a full day of
lectures
yesterday on subjects like "Home schooling and alternative education
in New
Hampshire" and "Industrial Hemp 101: A Summary of the United States'
Forgotten Billion Dollar Crop."
On Friday night, many Free State members also heard Republican Gov.
Craig
Benson speak at a fundraiser for the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, a
political action group that is closely aligned with the Free State
Project.
Free Staters generally cite Benson's enthusiasm for their endeavor as
a
reason they chose New Hampshire over places like Wyoming and Alaska.
Last
year the former Cabletron executive signed on as a friend of the Free
State
Project, becoming the only governor to do so.
"I welcome them. I don't know if I support them," Benson said Friday.
The Free State Project has also drawn a fair amount of protest, mostly
from
Democratic activists who say the party will foist its way of life on
the
state and criticize Benson for welcoming them here.
But if downtown Lancaster is anything to go by, Free Staters are
keeping a
fairly low profile - for now.
"I'm surprised they haven't come in here: This is the exact place you
would
think they'd be," said Randy Hofmeister, owner of Lost Nation Natural
Foods.
Hofmeister said hadn't seen Free Staters on the streets either. "No
one
knows they're here."
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