The libertarian split

I may not be a member of the Libertarian Party, but I can tell you about political infighting.

I’ve been noticing a new thing here in Delaware, and now it’s hitting close to home.

I was persuing my social media last Saturday when I saw a post under the banner of Non-Partisan Delaware announcing that Sonja Mehaffey was filing as a candidate in the 21st Senate District, which happens to be my Senate District. So I have been engaging with her campaign on social media since there’s no website with an issues page up yet, trying to get a feel for whether she would be a better alternative to the State Senator I already have, Bryant Richardson (who has been our Senate representative since 2014.) After all, Bryant began his Senate career by toppling a 26-year incumbent Democrat, Robert Venables. It was Richardson’s second try, as he lost to Venables in 2012; in both elections a Libertarian candidate, John Potter, got a small percentage of the vote. In neither case was it enough to make the difference as both winners won outright with <50% of the vote.

While the Democrats found a candidate to oppose Richardson the last time he ran, in 2018, there was none to be found by the July 12 filing deadline. However, instead of Bryant automatically gaining re-election by acclamation, there will be an opponent with a libertarian bent running under the banner of Non-Partisan.

According to voter registration records, there has been a Non-Partisan “party” in Delaware since at least 2010, and enough people have signed up for it over the years that it finally gained the 1/10 of 1% where Delaware ballot access is granted in November, 2016 - my guess is that the final push was, ironically enough, #NeverTrump Republicans who trickled over to allow ballot access that was seldom if ever used, until now.

At the same time, the Libertarian Party has had ballot access in Delaware for decades, although they haven’t won elections with it. Over the last couple years, however, a split in the Libertarian Party has occurred between the “traditional” Libertarians who favored fiscal conservatism but were more known for social liberalism - the “legalize pot and keep the government out of my bedroom” crowd - and what’s called the Mises Caucus, who are, by and large, adherents to the limited-government and Austrian economic philosophies espoused by former Republican Congressman and onetime Libertarian (as well as GOP) presidential candidate Ron Paul. One big split with libertarian orthodoxy appears to be abortion, where the MC is more ambivalent and not expressly pro-choice, while another is that traditional libertarians charge the MC with bigotry and transphobia. Judging by what her campaign page has posted so far, I would say Mehaffey is more of a traditional left-leaning Libertarian.

Like the Ron Paul Republicans of a decade prior whose greatest successes came in a caucus or convention scenario, the Mises Caucus has made its name by taking over state-level Libertarian parties around the country, Delaware included. But we don’t see this battle played out at the ballot box like we did in the Republican Party in the heyday of the TEA Party insurgency because Libertarians seldom have a primary - in the states I’m most familiar with, a state convention doesn’t just select party leadership but their candidates as well.

Once that schism was complete and the Mises takeover consummated, the “traditional” Libertarians who had filled out election ballots for a decade here in the First State had to make the decision to leave the party they had supported, and somewhere the choice was made to migrate to a ballot position that was viable but dormant, that being Non-Partisan. So Non-Partisan Delaware now has a social media and web presence, along with a handful of candidates.

As a matter of fact, in looking at the state ballot, there is currently a Libertarian running for Congress (Cody McNutt), but most of the names which I’m familar with as being Libertarians have migrated over to the Non-Partisan ballot line - David Rogers, Will McVay, and John Machurek are some of those that the Libertarians cycled through a number of previous races to hoist their banner who are now shown as Non-Partisan. Mehaffey was the seventh Non-Partisan candidate to file last week; since their filing deadline is later than the primary calendar we may see a few more trickle onto the electoral docket.

(As an aside, I’d be curious where Nadine Frost, who I supported for Senate in 2020 over three other candidates, falls on this spectrum. She was a pro-life Libertarian, which appealed to me greatly, and the Dobbs decision scrambled her party, too.)

To broaden this out to a national perspective, though, the struggle within the Libertarian Party is echoed in each of the two “duopoly” parties. On the one side, Republicans are warring between the populist “America First” faction that doesn’t mind big, intrusive government as long as it uses its power toward certain pro-traditional family ends - the portion that mainly supports Donald Trump - and the traditionalist Republican group that’s embodied by supporters of free trade regardless of the merits of the trading partner, foreign intervention at the drop of a hat, and a serious allergy to addressing social issues. I suppose you can call them the “good government” side of the party. There’s also a third segment of Republicans who have libertarian tendencies and also demand better fealty to the Constitution’s limits on government - basically those who began the TEA Party over a decade ago. That group is perhaps most sympathetic to, and likely cross-pollenates with, the Libertarian Mises Caucus.

The recent Maryland primary was a great example of this GOP struggle, with the Trump-backed Daniel Cox winning the nomination for governor as a part of the “America First” faction and Michael Peroutka winning the primary for Attorney General as a member of the third, long-neglected Constitutional faction. (Which makes sense: in 2004 Peroutka was the Constitution Party’s presidental candidate.) The “party over everything” group that favored a continuation of the more moderate but feckless administration of Larry Hogan in Maryland was pretty much shut out, unless you count the nomination by acclamation of Comptroller candidate Barry Glassman, who is trying to advance from being a former Maryland House member, State Senator, and two-term Harford County Executive. Glassman has been in local and state politics for over two decades; the very essence of a party insider.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are pulled in a number of different directions based on whether Joe Biden should run for a second term and how far we should go down the road of the Green New Deal when just the little bit we’ve traveled has brought economic hardship to millions. The group of elites in the Democrat Party who are backing increased government control of the lives of the unwashed masses are ironically counting on the importation of new unwashed masses to be willing (or, perhaps, unwitting) subjects. Facing off with them are the traditional Democrats of the Bill Clinton moderate triangulation wing, for whom Joe Manchin is a last stand of sorts. Their political position is being overrun because the heretofore working-class Democrat base is abandoning them on two sides: the Big Labor rank-and-file is bolting from them to become Trump-backing big government populists, while the first- and second-generation Hispanic voters that Democrats were counting on are vacating the Democrats because of their stance on abortion and gay rights, which offends the traditional social mores of that group. They’re switching to the GOP in droves as well.

Truly the factionalism in our political system could support five or six viable parties, but the rules in place that favor the Republican-Democrat duopoly prevent these natural fissures from occurring. We only see this with the Delaware Libertarians because they were out of the duopoly, making it easier for them to change their spots.

I just don’t think the 21st Senate District is looking for the kind of change Mehaffey would bring, but that’s why we have elections. I’m happy to see her in the race so we get a choice - anything to break up the duopoly and give us more options is a win in my book.