I think what happened tonight at the convention will go down as the worst
thing that has ever happened to the Libertarian Party, worse even than the
Howard Stern and Warren Redlich debacles.
What happened is Republican Party Operative and notorious dirty trickster
Roger Stone showed up with 40 non-Libertarians who had just joined the
party within the last few days.
The by-laws were passed when Howard Stern did that decades ago to prevent
this from happening again. These by-laws were ignored.
That would not have been a problem as Kristin Davis apparently had enough
votes to win even without the Roger Stone people, but then suddenly and
unexpectedly Kristin Davis withdrew as a candidate in favor of
non-Libertarian Joe
Lhota<http://capweb1.alleyinteractive.com/article/politics/2012/12/6934222/what-we-dont-know-about-joe-lhota>who
is one of seven candidates seeking the Republican Party nomination for
mayor of New York City. Joe Lhota's principal qualification is that he was
MTA Chief under Rudy Guiliani.
When Blay Tarnoff who is the author of many of the LPNY bylaws objected he
was shouted down by the Roger Stone people.
Finally, the Chairman John Clifton ruled that everybody who wanted to vote
had to identify themselves. Then armed with lists of members of the various
chapters of the Libertarian Party, Blay Tarnoff started asking the Roger
Stone people to identify themselves so it could be determined whether they
were members of the Libertarian Party or not.
When he did that, the Roger Stone people started screaming that he had no
right to ask them their names. "How dare you ask me my name", " You have no
right to know that."
The meeting descended to chaos with almost everybody yelling and screaming,
including Randy Credico who suddenly decided he wanted to run for mayor
after having previously declared that he was not a candidate.
Then the Roger Stone people made a motion to overturn the ruling of the
chair that all those voting had to identify themselves. The motion passed
as all those who had refused to reveal their names voted in favor of this
motion.
Thus, Joe Lhota<http://capweb1.alleyinteractive.com/article/politics/2012/12/6934222/what-we-dont-know-about-joe-lhota>who
had not attended the meeting so we do not know what his positions got
the nomination with the 41 Roger Stone people all voting for Joe Lhota and
almost all of the Libertarian Party regular members voting for None of the
Above. As there were only about 20 Libertarian Party regulars at the
convention, Joe
Lhota<http://capweb1.alleyinteractive.com/article/politics/2012/12/6934222/what-we-dont-know-about-joe-lhota>barely
got a 2/3rds majority.
Finally, a young woman declared she was running for public advocate. She
identified herself as a "Union Member" and a Green Party Candidate. Almost
all of her positions were exactly the opposite from Libertarian Party
positions.
Nevertheless, the 41 Roger Stone votes were enough to give her the
nomination.
The convention ended with Blay Tarnoff mulling whether he should ask the
State Committee to nullify the results of the convention on the grounds of
by-law violations and the fact that people were allowed to vote who refused
to give their names.
It remains to be seen if Joe
Lhota<http://capweb1.alleyinteractive.com/article/politics/2012/12/6934222/what-we-dont-know-about-joe-lhota>will
accept the Libertarian Party nomination. I predict that he will do
what William Weld did, which is decline our nomination if he does not get
the Republican Party nomination.
Sam Sloan