Original IPR article by Paulie. Disclosure: I am a member of the executive committee of the Libertarian Party of Alabama, and actively involved with many of the coalition groups. For background, see my previous report on what we are doing in Alabama.

The Libertarian Party of Alabama executive committee and guests heard this past Saturday from several candidates seeking our nomination. None of these candidates have been nominated at this time by the LPA, except Loretta Nall who was nominated as a write-in candidate for Governor in 2006, and I am not aware of any of them having a campaign website yet:

Jason Granholm, US House District 3, is Program Manager at Camp Robert E. Lewis of Coosa Valley Youth Services:

Camp Lewis is a military style “boot camp” for male delinquents 14-18 years of age. Serving our six member area, Camp Lewis provides a 90 day treatment program, followed by an aftercare component, for 30 “cadets”. Serving as a community-based trial program initiated by the Alabama Department of Youth Services, Camp Lewis was one of three programs selected for funding as an attempt to divert youths from commitment to DYS. The program is designed for delinquents who have shown themselves to be at high risk for further involvement in the juvenile justice system. It is designed to be used for delinquents who have not been charged with any violent or sexual offenses. The 12 week program combines physical training, discipline, camping and wilderness survival skills, team-building techniques , drill and ceremony, academics, counseling, and community service. The program seeks to provide an overall atmosphere which contributes to each youth developing a positive self image. An individual treatment program, focusing on their individual needs, is developed for each youth by the Case Manger, Counselor, Teachers, Juvenile Training Officers and Juvenile Probation Officers. The Case Manager ensures the goals of each cadet’s Individualized Treatment Plan are achieved. This effort is continued after graduation by the Aftercare Coordinator for up to nine months. Aftercare plans are established with the cooperation of court officials, cadet family members, Camp Lewis personnel, and the cadet himself. Each quarter, cadets provide up to 800 hours of community service to a variety of locations. Examples include Habitat for Humanity, Anniston Museum of Natural History, Red Cross, Salvation Army, National Forest Service, YMCA, Boy Scouts of America, Calhoun/Cleburne Mental Health Board, local churches, city and county governments.

Granholm is an Army veteran. He said he opposes the war on drugs. His main campaign promises:

1. He is not a career politician, and would serve one term only.
2. He will donate the balance of his Congressional salary above $40,000 to the counties in his district.
3. He will travel to talk to people in his district every weekend to different counties, and will make himself available by phone to his constituents, rather than having aides field calls.
4. Support for youth development programs.

Leo McDermott, US House District 1, has been involved in Ron Paul meetups in the Mobile area, and would like to run for Congress from that area. He is currently the new District Chair for the Mobile region of the LPA, as of this past meeting. As of the meeting, McDermott was not yet a dues paying member of the Libertarian Party, and LPA Vice Chair Mike Rster gave him the membership paperwork at the meeting.

We approved Leo McDermott as interim District Chair for the Mobile area, which previously seceded from the state party several years ago. A concern was raised that Mr. McDermott disagrees with the Libertarian Party’s official non-interventionist foreign policy position. I asked Mr. McDermott if, as the party’s regional representative, he will be able to separate his personal views on foreign policy issues from those of the party. He said he would. Given his answer, I made a motion to accept Mr. McDermott as the interim Mobile District chair, and it passed unanimously.

J. Scott Glennon, US House District 5, grew up in Western Michigan. He attended the US Naval Academy and has served in the US Marines, and has a Masters degree in Engineering. He volunteered for the war in Afghanistan and worked on pre-planning for the Iraq conflict. In between stints in the military, he worked on underwater robotics in Boston, then moved back to Michigan.

Through the military, he ended up working on robotics at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, then stayed in the Huntsville area to work in civilian defense contracting. Glennon is new to the libertarian movement, having gotten involved with the Ron Paul campaign in 2008. He has been married for 19 years and has two children. He wants to run against first term Congressman Parker Griffith. Due to his profession, Glennon said he knows a great deal about waste, fraud and abuse in the military and civilian defense contracting.

From Wikipedia: Loretta Nall…

is the founder of the United States Marijuana Party (USMJP) which calls for the legalization of cannabis. She was the Libertarian Party write-in candidate for governor of Alabama in 2006.

Nall founded the USMJP in 2002. In 2005, she co-founded Alabamians for Caring Use (now called Alabamians for Compassionate Care), a medical marijuana advocacy/lobbying group. Before his 2005 Vancouver, Canada arrest, the so-called “Prince of Pot,” Marc Emery, employed Nall under the auspices of Cannabis Culture Magazine. Nall herself was booked and jailed for less than one day on September 17, 2002 for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia after police made a search of her home.

Besides advocating the legalization of cannabis in the United States, Nall is also an outspoken critic of the world-wide War on Drugs. After a 2004 visit to Colombia, she has spoken and written against the United States and Colombian militaries’ aerial destruction of Colombian coca fields with herbicides, citing dangers to local human populations and the environment.

Nall also calls for tax credits for homeschoolers, American withdrawal from the Iraq War, and she opposes the No Child Left Behind, USA PATRIOT, and REAL ID acts. Nall is a contributor to LewRockwell.com.

In November 2007, Nall organized a sex toy drive, encouraging people to mail sex toys to Alabama Attorney General Troy King, who wants to prosecute shops that sell the devices.

This time, Loretta would like to run against current State House District 81 incumbent, Democrat Betty Carol Graham, who has not had a challenger for her seat from any party in over a decade.

District 81 covers portions of Lee and Tallapoosa counties.

Loretta will be talking to small business owners and other people in her district in the course of her campaign, and will develop a legislative agenda to address local issues in addition to the national and state issues she is already well known for her activism on.

The next Compassionate Care meeting is this Saturday in Birmingham:

Our next Compassionate Care meeting will take place on Jan. 31 from 1-3 pm at the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge (same place as last time) located at 4th Ave N and 17 st. This will be our last meeting before the legislative session starts so it is important that y’all be there with as many people as you can round up.

Pass this invite along to everyone you know and I hope to see you on Saturday Jan. 31.

If anyone needs further info I can be reached at 256-625-9599 or lorettanall@gmail.com

Best,
Loretta Nall

Free The Hops has meetings throughout the state. In response to an inquiry about meetings in Tuscaloosa, Yuriy Ustinov writes,

Please mark you calendars for two upcoming events for FTH Tuscaloosa.

On Thursday, January 29th, 8pm -11pm at Epiphany.

Beer, food, and the music of Erin Mitchell. Cost is $30. RSVP.

On Wednesday, February 11th at Little Willie’s, Free the Hops benefit show, featuring Dividing Numbers. Doors at 7pm show 8pm – ’till. Cover is $3 and all door proceeds go to FTH!

Independent Alabama met this past Tuesday in Birmingham, with members of the Libertarian, Reform and Democratic parties in attendance. We caught the Green Party‘s Matthew Hellinger on his way out the door, but he was not able to stay for the meeting due to a schedule conflict.

We discussed making youtube clips, DVDs and postcards to distribute on behalf of the legislative bills for ballot access reform and proportional representation, and organizing a letter writing campaign to legislators and newspapers.

Also meeting on Tuesday was the UAB Students for Liberty. Libertarian Party of Alabama Vice Chair Mike Rster talked about the LPA legislative agenda, touching on all the different issues that our coalition is working on:

Through Alabama Compassionate Care - We will be supporting legislation to legalize medical marijuana for patients (http://compassionate-care.blogspot.com/) Loretta Nall has been heading up this issue and has developed a great network of folks. We expect to work once again with her and expect additional progress with this issue.

NO to RealID – Various folks are lobbying against Real ID. Last year we helped introduce a resolution opposing Alabama’s participation with the Federally mandated program. Although it passed out of committee and the House, it stalled in t he Senate. We would encourage folks to once again call their representatives and ask them to fight against the privacy intrusions of the Real ID program. For additional details about the issue visit No2RealID.org.

Through Independent Alabama (IA) – Proportional Representation- We will be supporting a bill for proportional representation for presidential electors. This would help open the political process to third parties by changing the rules regarding the allocation of presidential electors (who really elect our president) from a winner-take-all system to a proportional system in Alabama. Unless a third party or independent candidate is capable of taking a state – they are incapable of gaining any electoral college votes and therefore virtually powerless. (www.IndependentAlabama.org)

IA Ballot access Reduction – We will be supporting a bill reducing ballot access requirements for third parties and independent candidates. This will save us a great deal of money and create opportunities permitting us to focus on running candidates as opposed to gathering inordinate numbers of signatures. (www.IndependentAlabama.org) Rep. Cam Ward was the sponsor last year and we look forward to working with him.

Repeal Groceries Tax – There has been talk about this issue for some time from various quarters. We are looking to see if there are any brave sponsors and if introduced we expect to jump on board and help get this passed.

Free the Hops http://www.freethehops.org/ – Gourmet beers need to legalized. The group behind this issue has done an incredible job and we ask libertarians that enjoy fine beverages to get involved.

Death Penalty - A segment of our membership has been fighting for this issue behind the scenes for years and if you would like to step up please contact the folks at: Alabama Committee to Abolish the Death Penalty PO Box 948, Leeds,AL 35094 205-699-2274.

Animal ID – This is an issue simmering in the background.Few folks are even aware of it… This commentary from Rep. Ron Paul:

The House of Representatives recently passed funding for a new federal mandate that threatens to put thousands of small farmers and ranchers out of business. The National Anima l Identification System, known as NAIS, is an expensive and unnecessary federal program that requires owners of livestock – cattle, dairy, poultry, and even horses – to tag animals with electronic tracking devices. The intrusive monitoring system amounts to nothing more than a tax on livestock owners, allowing the federal government access to detailed information about their private property.

Smoking issue - The American Cancer Society has been successfully pushing the ban on public smoking for some time. We are searching for sponsors of legislation that would protect business owner’s rights.

Sex Toys – This is the issue that has our lawmakers blushing. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys, ending a nine-year legal battle and sending a warning to store owners to clean off their shelves.The only remedy is to pass legislation legalizing the sale of “sex toys” We have supported this bill in the past and expect to make additional progress in 2009.

Transparent Government – We will supporting legislation that would require our state government to provide to the public over the internet a clear and easily accessible database that details spending. In 2009, the Alabama Right to Know legislation will be introduced by State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) and Rep. Mike Ball (R-Madison) that will include:

Transparency in government spending. A searchable database of all state expenditures; contracts; legislative grants; and state grants.

2) Requiring electronic filing of campaign contributions and expenditures.

3) nbsp; Disclosure of all public officials or family members of public officials who are employed by the state, or who have a contract with the state, county or a municipality.

Also at the Students for Liberty meeting was the Boston Tea Party‘s Darryl W. Perry. We briefly discussed the BTP’s plan to teabag Congress. We are hoping to send them so many tea bags that they will have to be delivered by Cleveland Steamer (inside joke, folks; don’t look that up if you are easily grossed out).

The LPA’s tentative plan for 2010 and 2012 ballot access, and for building our issue coalition:

It will cost $180,000 over 3.5 years for field organizers and fund raisers, plus about $20,000 in overhead such as maintaining the HQ (over 3.5 years). [Total $200,000]

This is far more than we have raised previously; it will get us statewide ballot access for all races in 2010 and 2012.

In addition to getting about 40,000 valid signatures for each year
(about 60,000 raw) we want to:

• Database contacts and give out thousands of brochures/fliers/business cards for the party.

• Get thousands of voters to sign postcards to their state
  legislators to improve our state’s ballot access laws, and for the other legislative issues we are pushing.

• Start county chapters in all 67 counties, or as many as we can.
• Start campus groups at every college in the state, or as many as we can.
• Hand out fully informed jury rights information in every county.
• Register thousands of voters and spread information about restoring ex-felons voting rights to as many people as possible.
• Help organize and build single issue lobbying groups in every county on issues such as: compassionate care (medical marijuana), No to REAL ID and National Animal Identification Systems (NAIS), Proportional representation, Government transparency, Repealing the grocery sales tax, Free the Hops, ending the death penalty, Ending mandatory smoking bans for businesses, Ending the ban on sex toys, and other issues we identify in the course of field organizing throughout the state.
• Identify and recruit teams of candidates to run as a slate of Libertarian candidates for local and state office in each and every county.
• Market the Libertarian Party door to door to small businesses
  throughout every single county in the state.

Let’s take the lemons that the state legislature has handed us in the form of prohibitive ballot access barriers and turn them into lemonade!

This business plan needs a lot of work; if anyone reading has experience with writing business plans and would like to help, please let me know how to get a hold of you in the comments.