As linked by Dr. Tom Stevens in comments on a previous post, and posted on his blog (note, any opinions expressed are those of the source and not editorial statements by myself or IPR):
Sam Sloan, who like Kristin Davis, was denied the opportunity to communicate with eligible voting delegates prior to the State Convention of the Libertarian Party of New York being held, began circulating rival statewide petitions identical in every detail to those being circulated by the LPNY except that it lists Sam Sloan as the Libertarian Party’s gubernatorial candidate instead of Warren Redlich, who was nominated at the LPNY State Convention held on April 24, 2010 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Albany New York. Mr. Sloan has hired a number of paid petitioners who are collecting petition signatures for him in a number of Congressional Districts throughout New York State.
It is Sam Sloan’s position, which has been confirmed by election law experts at the New York City and New York State Board of Elections, that the Libertarian Party is not a recognized major or minor political party under New York State Election Law and that since all its candidates file Independent Nominating Petitions, that the first candidate petition to be filed for a particular elective office gets the right to use the Libertarian Party name.
Kristin Davis, Sam Sloan and Warren Redlich were the three announced candidates who were seeking the gubernatorial nomination of the Libertarian Party prior to the State Convention being held. Sam Sloan and Kristin Davis wanted to mail their campaign literature to eligible voting delegates in order to encourage them to attend the State Convention to vote for them. However, this opportunity was denied to both Kristin Davis and Sam Sloan. Ms. Davis decided to abandon her efforts to seek the LP nomination while Mr. Sloan decided to sue the Libertarian Party. Warren Redlich was handed the gubernatorial nomination by obtaining only 27 votes.
Kristin Davis, who is now running for governor as the candidate of the Anti-Prohibition Party, is still bitter regarding her experience with the Libertarian Party of New York and there is strong evidence she intends to challenge any petitions filed on Warren Redlich’s behalf. In an e-mail dated July 8, 2010 to Dr. Tom Stevens, LPQC Political Director and Founder of Empire State Libertarians, Andrew Miller, Director of Communications for the Kristin Davis campaign, wrote the following:
The New York Libertarian Party is a joke. As you know the “party” declined to give a list of potential convention voters to Ms. Davis prior to the meeting of their “club” which enjoys no recognition or status in New York State other than the distinction of never being able to win 50,000 votes because they have nominated candidates with no resources and no public identity. I am certain the petition for the Libertarian Party will be challenged – there is no place on the ballot for a man who advocates sex with under-age children.
On Friday, July 9, 2010, Sam Sloan filed two separate appeals with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. The first appeal seeks to overturn the decision of Justice Edmead ruling that Sam Sloan’s lawsuit to force the Libertarian Party of New York to turn over to him a list of eligible voting delegates was moot. The second appeal seeks to overturn Justice Edmead’s Order dismissing Sam Sloan’s lawsuit alleging a fraudulent election process on the grounds that the LPNY convention challenge is subject to a 10-day statute of limitations noted in the Election Law.
Prior to the LPNY State Convention, Sam Sloan obtained an Order from the Supreme Court of the State of New York signed by Justice Edmead ordering Chris Edes, the State Chair, to turn over to him a list of eligible voting delegates. Mr. Edes ignored that Order and when a Hearing was held, Justice Edmead, although stating that Mr. Edes was in contempt of court for ignoring her Order, nevertheless ruled that Sam Sloan’s request for relief was moot since the LPNY State Convention had already been held. The basis of Sloan’s appeal is that Justice Edmead, as a matter of law, failed to consider how many of the 300-400 LPNY members may have attended the State Convention had Sam Sloan been allowed to mail his campaign literature to them prior to the convention being held.
Sam Sloan’s second lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York before Justice Edmead, argued that even though delegates were given a wristband identifying them as eligible to vote and even though Dr. Tom Stevens, LPQC State Representative at the time, vehemently and publicly objected to Mark Axinn’s decision to ignore the wristbands and to let people vote on the “honor system”, the election went forward and resulted in actual fraud taking place during the vote on the gubernatorial nomination. Mr. Sloan has at least two witnesses who saw ineligible people vote, people voting twice, and people pocketing the votes of others as they collected other people’s ballots in order to place them into a passing hat. Justice Edmead dismissed this second lawsuit claiming that the Election Law states that a 10-statute of limitations applies to anyone challenging a convention held by a “party committee”. It is Mr. Sloan’s contention that the Libertarian Party is not a “party committee” under the Election Law of the State of New York and that, therefore, Justice Edmead made an error in law when she found the statute of limitations applicable.
Dr. Tom Stevens, LPQC Political Director and Founder of Empire State Libertarians, said:
It was going to be difficult enough to obtain a sufficient number of valid petition signatures to get the Redlich slate on the ballot but now with Kristin Davis likely to challenge the petitions and Sam Sloan circulating a rival statewide petition being carried by many LPNY activists, the task now becomes Herculean, despite the commitment of $25,000.00 from the national LP.
I must say that the Libertarian Party of New York has brought this entire situation upon itself. First, when you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable. Hence, by denying Kristin Davis and Sam Sloan a level playing field to compete for the LPNY gubernatorial nomination, you end up forcing the reactions you have observed. In addition, Carl Person, the LPNY candidate for Attorney General, and I negotiated a proposed settlement of the first Sloan lawsuit where Mr. Sloan agreed to drop all challenges to the alleged corrupt process in return for being named as a replacement gubernatorial nominee should Warren Redlich resign from the race. Mark Axinn, LPNY Chair, refused to consider the compromise because of rules he has in his head about not letting anyone gain an advantage because of their having filed a lawsuit. The result was a second Sloan lawsuit and now the two appeals. In my rule book, I believe in settling when the best interests of the party are served especially if you know that individuals are claiming they witnessed actual fraud take place in the election process that nominated your party’s gubernatorial nominee.
I believe Sam Sloan and Kristin Davis have raised issues that needed to be raised. I have been commenting on what I considered to be a biased process from December, 2009 right on through to the LPNY State Convention held on April 24, 2010. I have no idea what the outcome of this situation will be except that I will say that it could have been avoided.
Sam Sloan is the State Representative of the Manhattan Libertarian Party, and Dr. Tom Stevens is the Political Director of the Libertarian Party of Queens County. Dr. Stevens is also the Founder of Libertarian Patriots of New York and Empire State Libertarians.
I would not reduce the age of consent. The blog post had nothing to do with that issue – I was mocking the “shock” of the Miley Cyrus photos.
Re 15: Clay, if we only have state jobs, where does the money come from? You sound like you completely reject capitalism and markets in favor of government running everything.
Re: 18.
The thrust of the reason I posted the entire quotation was to show Miller’s justification for why someone (or the Davis campaign) would challenge your petitions. Miller’s implication, given that whole paragraph, was that he was pissed at the LP and he thought his perception of you justified a petition challenge. The truth of his perception was not what I was posting about and my response to him about you certainly wasn’t relevant.
But I do have a question for you. I really paid no attention to these accusations against you and I always assumed they were false either because people were simply lying or because you wrote the article at a satirical site.
Now that I actually read the article you posted, it does seem like you are raising issues about why some people should not have serious objections to the age of consent being reduced or to adults having sex with teenage boys and girls. If this is your position, that is fine but perhaps you should clarify your view on the matter.
Would you reduce the age of consent to either 13 or 14, as implied in the article? Did you seek to make serious points in that article about why certain individuals should not object to lowering the age of consent?
Read Clay’s #15 post again. Nearly forty years in and NYLP is a club that attracts 40-50 people to a convention. Years ago, when Andrea Millen Rich was active there, NYLP conventions were large — and had barely scratched the surface in a state with one of the highest populations in the U.S. This demonstrates, once again, the disarray in state and local organizations that, apparently, the LNC tolerates in its affiliates.
Are we serious or are we posers????
Dr. Stevens: Strangely, your response to Miller didn’t make the blog post. What was your reason for including Miller’s quote if you did not intend to republish the libel?
The dispute is not about whether you were quoting Miller accurately, but whether the substance of the quote was accurate. You have now confirmed that it is not.
So what’s the purpose of including the quote?
and posters wonder why nick names might be a good idea!
Re: #5 & #13:
Paulie asked whether the quotation I posted by Miller was accurate. Redlich says, “of course its not accurate.” You really have to wonder how good Redlich’s reading comprehension is!
Yes the quotation is 100% accurate.
Then Redlich questions my credibility and earlier in the day, his Campaign Manager called me a loser and someone who was bitter and off his rocker. That should tell you about the quality of the arguments made by that undynamic duo.
FYI – what was my response to Andrew Miller about the accusation made against Redlich? Here it is:
“Redlich, who I do not like, doesn’t really advocate sex with underage children. That was an article he posted to a satirical site.”
Enough said!
I think Sloan and Davis are just making noise to get attention. From my outsider perspective, the Libertarian Party in New York State seems like such a small club that, although they’d never admit it publicly, these judges probably just get a headache from even having to bother with this. When you’ve got such a small group of people selecting the candidates it just sort of seems like the rules almost don’t even matter. I think the most apparent thing to be learned by this is that Sloan and Davis are more interested in getting attention than they are about encouraging New Yorkers to adopt Libertarian views. The club likes Redlich the best. Sloan and Davis could have run for congress, or they could make themselves useful by campaigning for Redlich. But they’re not Party loyalists. Davis is just a pet project for Roger Stone anyways.
Personally I’m a little bit happy to see this dissention happening. Having lived in Albany my whole life, I really don’t think libertarianism works for New York. I especially don’t think it works for New York City, or any major urban center. The fact that Redlich is an Upstate guy attests to the fact that, I believe, most City residents would agree with this. Less government may work in suburbs and rural areas, but it will kill cities.
And it kills my chance of getting a job in a place where all you’ve got are state jobs.
Yeah, I don’t see where you advocated sex with children in that.
Paulie, of course it’s not accurate. It’s a grossly inaccurate and intentional mischaracterization of something I said in a blog post.
You be the judge:
http://www.wredlich.com/stop-wasting-money/2008/04/best-miley-cyrus-quote.html
Sloan and Stevens copped the lie from Kristin Davis and her boy Roger Stone. This should give you some idea of the credibility of that foursome.
Paulie – The mailing house solution is a good one. I like it. I agree that it would be ideal for states like New York that are either populous enough to make contacting all Libertarian-registered voters impractical or in states where registering as a Libertarian is impossible. I’ll pass that along.
As for the voter registration list, Nevada’s isn’t small – even here, that’s roughly 9,000 voters. The motivation behind that decision was to improve the membership rate (i.e. out of that 9,000, maybe 40-50 are actual “members” of the state party and its local affiliates – not good). Even if candidates hit a fraction of that, it’d be a ton of free outreach that the state party wouldn’t have to pay for and would presumably encourage people that have already expressed a leaning toward the LP to become more engaged at the local and state level.
The compromise we came up with in Nevada is to encourage people to use voter registration rolls. Gather up a list of “Libertarian” registered voters, canvas them, encourage them to become members of their local affiliates, and, if you can get more in than the other guy, you win. If you can’t, well, you only needed to come up with 40-50 people – if you can’t do that, you deserved to lose anyway.
Of course, that compromise only works in states where the LP has ballot access and voters can register as “Libertarians”. I have no idea if NY has such luxuries.
NY does not have ballot access.
As for registering Libertarian, it appears to be at the discretion of county registrars — some counties process Libertarian write-ins as a party of choice, others do not, or make it so difficult as to be practically impossible.
I think Nevada’s solution does make sense for some states that have a voter reg list of similar size (low thousands). It may even make sense in California, although few if any candidates would have the means to contact anything close to the full list.
A mailing house is probably the best solution for states like NY.
Andrew Miller, as quoted by Tom Stevens:
“I am certain the petition for the Libertarian Party will be challenged – there is no place on the ballot for a man who advocates sex with under-age children.”
paulie // Jul 12, 2010:
If this is an accurate quote, and if it is supposed to be about Redlich, when and where did he advocate sex with children? Does anyone know what this is about?
Lake: While stumbling out of the pink SUV on that extended New England trip with Doctor Gruntman on that tour and convention of child hood sexual fisting? [I’m just saying ………]
Second, the state party is going to be understandably nervous if the mailing is particularly controversial, in no small part because half of the libertarians you run across are naturally allergic to censorship while the other half really aren’t interested in reading about “advocates sex with under-age children” and don’t understand why their state party can’t exercise a bit of common sense and filter out some of the wharrgarbl that the crazies want to push. That puts the state party in a no-win scenario that most sane Executive Committees reflexively run screaming from.
Problem solved if you use a mailing house. Nothing on the mailing has to indicate that it came from the state party.
It gets worse when you realize that, if you’re requiring mailings through your state party to garner support for political offices, you’re probably going to use the same requirements for state party offices, at which point you have a rather nasty conflict of interest – is the incumbent Secretary going to be interested in sending mailings for their competition, for example?
If you leave it up to the incumbent state officers, that can certainly become an issue. If it is a standing rule that all candidates for internal or external office who have the means can pay the party to send a mailing on their behalf to its list by way of a mailing house, that problem can largely be solved.
On the other hand, it’s rather trivial to get much of the same info from voter registration rolls, though it obviously is much less selective than the “40-50 people” that you would get from most state affiliates.
That depends on the state. In about half the states, there is no such thing as an LP registered voter, nor can there be. Either they have no registration by party, or the LP is not one of the parties into which voters may register.
In some other states, the list of LP registered voters is very large (thus beyond the means of most candidates to mail to) and not very useful for internal LP politics. For example, in California, there are still I believe over 80,000 registered Libertarians, of which perhaps 0.1% show up at recent state conventions – and not all of those are registered as Libertarian voters.
First, you’re assuming that the state party has the means to reliably mail anything out – that’s not quite the slam dunk you’d think it’d be since it’s probably an all-volunteer organization.
I’m assuming no such thing. If the candidates foot the bill, companies which specialize in this sort of thing – called mailing houses, for anyone who does not know – can be hired by the state parties to handle the physical details of the mailing. Part of their contract is that they do not keep or share the list, and since they do this sort of thing for all sorts of organizations all the time and have no vested interest in LP politics — but on the other hand do have a vested interest in maintaining their professional reputation — the chances that they would break their confidentiality agreement are minimized.
I am familiar with the issues smaller state parties have with orchestrating the mechanics of mailings, believe me.
Having run into issues with “the list” in my home state, I can understand both sides of the issue. Many libertarians are a private lot and don’t appreciate their state officers handing out their contact info (physical and mailing addresses tend to match up) to every single wacko with an ax to grind (and, believe me, there are quite a few). On the other hand, it’s rather trivial to get much of the same info from voter registration rolls, though it obviously is much less selective than the “40-50 people” that you would get from most state affiliates.
On the other hand, the issue with requiring the state party to send out mailings is two-fold. First, you’re assuming that the state party has the means to reliably mail anything out – that’s not quite the slam dunk you’d think it’d be since it’s probably an all-volunteer organization. Second, the state party is going to be understandably nervous if the mailing is particularly controversial, in no small part because half of the libertarians you run across are naturally allergic to censorship while the other half really aren’t interested in reading about “advocates sex with under-age children” and don’t understand why their state party can’t exercise a bit of common sense and filter out some of the wharrgarbl that the crazies want to push. That puts the state party in a no-win scenario that most sane Executive Committees reflexively run screaming from. It gets worse when you realize that, if you’re requiring mailings through your state party to garner support for political offices, you’re probably going to use the same requirements for state party offices, at which point you have a rather nasty conflict of interest – is the incumbent Secretary going to be interested in sending mailings for their competition, for example?
The compromise we came up with in Nevada is to encourage people to use voter registration rolls. Gather up a list of “Libertarian” registered voters, canvas them, encourage them to become members of their local affiliates, and, if you can get more in than the other guy, you win. If you can’t, well, you only needed to come up with 40-50 people – if you can’t do that, you deserved to lose anyway.
Of course, that compromise only works in states where the LP has ballot access and voters can register as “Libertarians”. I have no idea if NY has such luxuries.
Does anyone know what this is about?
Andrew Miller, as quoted by Tom Stevens:
“I am certain the petition for the Libertarian Party will be challenged – there is no place on the ballot for a man who advocates sex with under-age children.”
If this is an accurate quote, and if it is supposed to be about Redlich, when and where did he advocate sex with children?
Maybe the official candidate of the LPNY should consider changing his name to Warren ‘Redlight’?
No doubt the list issue was fumbled by the previous chair with regards to Sloan. It’s the excuse Davis used not to come.
Even if both had been given the list, the outcome would have been the same. LPNY delegates amount to about 40-50 people. Getting the confidence of those who regularly attend was all that was required. I had a fairly up to date list and never even used it.
This ruse is being fostered by a pair of perennially poor losers in Sloan and Stevens. Both attempted to subvert the LNC funding and now the petition process. Be assured that they always fail and most likely always will. They simply have no support other than a small coterie in Queens. Presumably their vasr membership could have attended and won the day, it did not happen.
Sloan was given the Capital District list, is the state rep for Manhattan and seems to have influence with Stevens in Queens. Both are wasting time and resources of the LPNY and LPUS.
There could be concerns about people joining the party and running for nomination just to get the list.
If so, candidates could pay the state party to mail information on their behalf.
Is there any legitimate reason to refuse to give convention delegate names to a member in good standing, for the purpose of circulating information about business (nominations) to come before those delegates?