FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 12, 2016
Contact Caryn Ann Harlos
Cell 561.523.2250
Email [email protected]
Website www.LPColorado.org
Denver, CO, January 12, 2016– At the Libertarian Party of Colorado’s January Board Meeting, Lily Tang Williams resigned her position as State Chair in order to focus on running for US Senate. Following her resignation, the Libertarian Party of Colorado’s Board voted to appoint Nathan Grabau to fill Williams position as State Chair. Nathan Grabau was the Communications Director for the State Party but resigned his position to be Chair. The Board then voted to appoint Caryn Ann Harlos as the State Party’s Communications Director. Newly elected State Chair Grabau had the following statement:
“While I am sad to see Mrs. Williams resign, I am excited to see what she can do as a US Senate Candidate, and I am ready to take on the new challenge of leading the Libertarian Party of Colorado. Libertarianism is on the rise, and we are ready to capitalize on this opportunity.”
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If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Caryn Ann Harlos at 561.523.2250 or email at [email protected].
Paulie,
That’s what has me wondering. I specifically remember the matter being brought up. I thought it was for the LNC bylaws, and that an “18 and over” measure was adopted. But I don’t see it now. Then I thought maybe it had been in Missouri, but the Missouri LP’s bylaws don’t seem to mention it either. So I either I imagined the whole thing, or it took place somewhere other than where I remember, or it’s since been repealed. Maybe someone will remember.
Perhaps worded as a requirement that they be eligible voters?
I’m not seeing an age 18 requirements for delegates in the bylaws either.
I was just looking through the bylaws and can’t find it anywhere, but I could have sworn that some time in the early 2000s the bylaws were amended to require members — or at least national convention delegates — to be 18 years old. Has that changed at some time since, or did it not actually happen?
My daughter is 17 and already fairly active in Students For Liberty. I’m hoping to get her involved in the LP as well.
Yep! I have been harping on that point since I was barely older than Nathan is now, so while I am pretty tired of harping on it I still think it is true…. I’m just less active in making a big deal about it anymore and no longer think I am the best person to do youth outreach anymore at my age with my graying hair. Luckily some younger people are stepping up.
That’s surprising if true. It’s definitely true in recent years but I would have guessed otherwise back in the 1970s. Just out of curiosity I checked and David Nolan was a little older, so I don’t know off the bat that you weren’t. However, most of the party leadership was in their 20s then, in fact I read that it was a big relief when Hospers showed up because he was actually over 35 and eligible to serve as president.
Hope you feel better.
Just out of curiosity, did you resignation have to do with Johnson announcing for president, his (since retracted) burka comments, plans to step up to chair, something else, some combination…? Of course you don’t have to tell me, I’m just curious.
I thought Johnson but I could be wrong. Nathan has been doing a great job with the Kerbel campaign. Is he doing the graphics? Those are very nice.
Great point.
In my case iirc 1994, but they had my last name as Frankeo based on me verbally spelling it into an answering machine and did not update the records correctly so my current membership with the corrected last name says March 1995.
After that college meeting in 1992 when Joe Knight was doing his tour, the next one I remember was when my county party re-formed in 1997, and I have been going to lots of them regularly and been actively involved since 1997.
I was a delegate. I was petitioning in Illinois, asked them and they told me either no or maybe. Called up Alabama and they told me maybe. Got there, talked to several states and got a bunch of maybes. Michigan said yes but they wanted me to join their state party with a separate $25 membership even though I was already a life member of national as of earlier that year (as of the petition drive here in Oklahoma in fact) so I gave them their $25 and was a delegate from one of my least visited states. Afterwards a bunch of states told me yes, but I already paid. Every other convention I went to after (2004, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014) I was an Alabama delegate.
I voted for Browne for P-nom and Kubby for VP.
I really didn’t either, but got “whipped” on those votes by other people I knew who knew more and/or my delegation chair. I think that happens with a lot of first time delegates and other delegates who pay little attention to national party internal politics, which is most of them.
Pretty cool, Nathan worked on presidential campaigns since 2008, when he would have been 11 or 12. I have also been working on campaigns from about that same age. I was born in 1972 and worked on Gary Hart’s campaigns in 1984 and the aborted one in ’88. In ’92 I started working with Jerry Brown and switched to LP by the fall, but took another couple of years to become fully libertarian on the issues enough to where I felt comfortable joining the party…although by today’s watered down standards I could have joined in ’92 as I was already 100/80 on the quiz by that fall. But in ’92 I already did a little bit of tabling and meeting attendance with the LP at my college and was already submitting notices about my college drug legalization group that I started to LP News.
In other news… Caryn, are you running that lpcolorado site? You need to swap yourself for Nathan at communications director 🙂
I thought Myers was the treasurer but I could be wrong. Maybe he has been both at different times?
Seems like Colorado takes charge in many areas.
Peace and Good Luck.
TLK
Well, at least one of us has a problem with long term memory since I seem to remember you commenting frequently at FMN in the late 90s and you remember it was rarely. It’s probably me because I seem to remember things wrong all the time.
This may very well be true, but I am dubious you can find all their pictures online easily, or even necessarily accurate information on who the current state chairs are in every state. They change frequently and at different times, websites are often not updated in many states, social media pages are started and then new ones are started for the same state because no one remembers the password or can get it from someone who used to run it or even knows who that would be or even remembers that a page existed at all, and even if they are current they don’t necessarily contain a picture of the current officers. National has a pretty well updated sheet of who the current chairs are in every state, but a lot of them are hard to get a hold of in any way shape or form, so it’s possible that some of that is actually outdated without anyone’s knowledge. In some states everything on their websites and social media accounts is updated and current. Others not so much. Not all the websites have pictures of officers or even an accurate listing of who they are.
Again, though, all that being said, Nathan probably is the youngest right now, I am just dubious as to how well we can know it to be an absolute fact. But he probably is.
Mark, your logic seems perfectly reasonable to me!
I was born in 1956, a mere 40 years before the current contender for youngest state chair. That was a leap year and as I missed Leap Day by less than ten hours, it could have been that I was born on Feb. 29, 1956 in which case my birthday would have occurred only 13 times before I was elected LPNY State Chair in 2010.
I know that my claim based on those grounds for youngest state chair is pretty tenuous, but then I just heard the President say our economy is robust so it’s clear you can lie about anything in politics!
It is interesting and good to see that the state where the Libertarian Party started still has a very active party.
@Matt Cholko
Agreed.
I am really excited about Lily’s campaign.
Nathan and I will both serve until our Convention in March at which point we have to run to retain the positions.
I intend on running, I was planning on running before this happened for whatever position was available that I was qualified for.
As far as I am concerned, age is a non-factor, in and of itself. If one convinced me that they’d do a better job than the other candidates, I’d vote for a 12 year old for national chairman.
Congratulations to Nathan and Caryn! Good luck to Lily!
I was ancient when I got involved… although I joined the national LP in early college and registered to vote as a Libertarian, I didn’t get active until after college when I was 23 I think.
However, I matched Andy Craig’s feat of running for Congress at 25. Also I’m told I was the youngest person to ever chair an LNC meeting at 27 (I chaired 1 LNC meeting as vice-chair when Redpath was indisposed at his own wedding or honeymoon or something like that and the 2nd half of the post-convention LNC meeting in 2006 when Redpath needed to leave early to make his plane).
We need far more young people involved in the Party.
Thanks for the clarification, and congratulations.
How long does the rest of the term run for, and do you intend to seek re-election? Lily was just elected earlier this year, no?
Nathan,
I didn’t think anyone thought you were claiming to be the youngest state chair ever — the talk about other young state chairs in the past is just nostalgia. The only question I had was why the press release referred to you being the youngest in the headline, but then didn’t mention your age in the body. Inquiring minds wanted to know!
Congratulations, by the way!
I would like to apologize for being late to the party on this thread. I woke up today in very poor condition and have barely been able to vacate my bed. Where there were concerns earlier in the thread about whether I was the youngest State Chair Ever, I do not believe that the language implies that and I would like to apologize to anyone who took it that way. That of course is not to say this couldn’t be true, but I did not do any research on past state chairs.
I am 19 years old. My birthdate is April 2, 1996. The Boulder County Libertarian Party made a decision that they would allow people that were below the age of 18 to serve on their board so I could serve as their Outreach Director from 2013 to August 2014. I turned 18 on April 2, 2014. This then allowed me to be a Delegate Representing Colorado to the National Convention in 2014 and to vote in the 2014 midterm election. I was then elected to the LP Colorado Board on April 26, 2015 as the Communications Director.
Until last week, I had also served as the Colorado Outreach Coordinator for OAI. I am also Steve Kerbel’s Deputy Campaign manager.
I hope that my comment addresses all of the statements/ questions people have expressed up to this point.
I have been on each state page and eyeballed the boards (LOL that sounds creepy)? spend a lot of time on state pages with the research I do on platforms and now on bylaws, and none seem that young. This information came from Nathan, but he doesn?t appear to be reachable today. I will post more as I find out. Yes you do have his position with the Kerbel campaign correctly. I believe you are also correct on Lily?s position. I do not know if Lily has ever made any statement as to which candidate she supports. It would surprise me though if she didn?t come out to support Kerbel. He has a large base of support in his home state of CO which he has earned by attending numerous local Libertarian events and getting to know us.
I have worked with Nathan since I joined the Party and his maturity and political acumen have impressed me deeply. From the time we started working together, he immediately was mentoring me to be his eventual replacement if the Board should ever choose and he had other opportunities. It made it very easy for him to step up as he already ensured that his former duties were taken care of. (FWIW Nathan – along with Doug and Matt- also trained me up in the volunteer duties I do with National social media right now as well.)
In the LP we don?t do this enough. We should always be training our replacements.
Here is Nathan?s picture on the LPCO page
Nick, here is where I got the information about Maryland?
Should read, “but moved to a couple of other states…”
I joined the LP in 1996, but I did not attend any LP meetings until 1999, and I only went to one meeting that year. It was a Harry Browne for President Exploratory Committee meeting, which was held at a Radisson Hotel in Sherman Oaks, California (I joined the party in Pennsylvania, but two a couple of other states after that, the second of which was California).
Interestingly enough, the first person that I talked to at that meeting was Harry Browne, who happened to be the person who inspired me to join the party after seeing him at the LP National Convention in 1996 on C-SPAN.
The second LP meeting that I attended was the LP National Convention in Anaheim. I could have been a Delegate there, but since I had so little experience in attending LP meetings I did not even know that I cold have been a Delegate. I was living in the Los Angeles area at the time, so I commuted to the convention. So I just sat and observed instead of voting, but the candidates whom I would have voted for to be the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, Harry Browne and Art Olivier, ended up winning anyway. I did not think that I knew enough about any of the candidates to vote in the party officer races.
My recollection is that my mother was a delegate from Maryland at the 2004 national convention.
Also, I only spent time in the bar when floor business was not happening, so it’s plausible that you may have seen my mother and I then.
Nathan Grabau is a Mining Engineering student at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. He may be only 19 or 20–see
http://bellebrita.com/2014/07/libertarian-national-convention-2014/
He is still pictured on the homepage of the Libertarian Party of Boulder County (CO) where he was Outreach Director–see commenter link. He attended our LPBC weekly lunch last week and talked about outreach to young people.
Information on both Lily and Nathan might still be at
http://lpcolorado.org/about-lpco/lpco-leadership/
Lily attended the Free and Equal Electoral Reform Symposium in Glendale, CO in November 2015.
“Nicholas Sarwark
January 12, 2016 at 14:29
I was not Chair of the LP of Maryland in 2000. My guess is that Tom is remembering a vignette from the Atlanta convention in 2004, though I most definitely was at the Anaheim convention in 2000.”
When were you the Chairman of the LP of Maryland?
I know that Roy Meyers was the Chair sometime after Steve Boone. Bob Johnston has been the Chair there for quite a while now.
Nick,
It could be. Although you would have been over 21 by 2004, I think, and I don’t recall this taking place at a bar, so it seems unlikely.
I’m always concerned about the possibility of Alzheimer’s, but I think that affects short-term, not long-term, memory. So it must just mean I’m getting old.
I was not Chair of the LP of Maryland in 2000. My guess is that Tom is remembering a vignette from the Atlanta convention in 2004, though I most definitely was at the Anaheim convention in 2000.
I thought I was pushing it, running for Secretary of State at 23 and Congress at 25. I had no idea Nathan was that young. Unless my math is off, he’s too young to have voted before, except maybe in 2015 nonpartisan school board elections. For those who don’t already know, worth mentioning that he is also Kerbel’s deputy campaign manager, or some position to that effect. Lily is the state director for OAI and, unless I’m mistaken, I believe a Johnson supporter.
As for the current state chairs; you might not need their exact ages to identify Nathan as the youngest. I’d be surprised if there are any for whom a picture isn’t available online, and a simple eyeball test should suffice to determine that most if not all of them are well above the age of 19.
My 2nd petition drive was in Maryland for a Libertarian Party candidate in 2000. I turned my signatures in to Steve Boone, and I am pretty sure he was the Chairman at that time.
Should read, “I thought…”
I am inquiring with Nathan.
That’s what I thought too.
For the current state chairs how do we know how old all of them are?
I though Steve Boone was the Chair of the LP of Maryland back in 2000. I knew that Nicholas Sarwark had been Chair of the LP of Maryland, but I thought it was after that, like around 2002 or 2003, or maybe 2004.
That I don’t know… but Nathan had written that release based on his information that he is presently the youngest. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were tied for historical youngest. That would be very interesting to know.
If you are looking at historical chairmanships, I suspect but don’t know that some were younger. Remember, most of the party was 20-somethings at one point. At the first convention they had a hard time finding someone old enough to be president.
Nathan is 19. If my math serves me correctly, which is iffy, Nick was 21 when he chaired Maryland.
The headline didn’t say youngest chair “ever”, but I agree that without mentioning the age it is difficult to say.
I’m pretty sure that the chips that national had implanted in all of us at the 2014 convention are reporting our current biological ages, as well as which candidate we are supporting.
Paulie, I don’t think we ran into each other. We didn’t really “know” each other by that time (I occasionally got on the FMN forums, but not that much). Also, I was chasing a two-year-old around quite a bit and trying to impress that two-year-old’s mom (I guess it worked — we moved in together a couple of weeks after that and are still together).
Your memory is better than mine. Do you remember me being there? I’m trying to remember if I remember you being there. I do remember talking to you on the free-market.net forums before then.
I recall him being state chair. And I also recall asking him “does your mother know you’re here” and him looking over his should and yelling “mom, do you know I’m here?”
But I suppose it’s possible that didn’t actually happen. I had reasons to be distracted at that convention 🙂
I actually remember Nick from that convention. Not sure if he remembers me being there. I didn’t know he was a state chair though. Also, I think he was 20, and if I met his mom there I don’t remember that.
How old is Nathan? It seems odd that the headline would claim he’s the youngest LP state chair in the country, but not actually mention his age.
When I attended my first LP national convention in 2000, Maryland’s state chair attended … with his mother. My recollection is that he was 17, 18 or 19 years old. Trying to remember that guy’s name … Nick something-or-other. I think his last name started with “Sar” …
Congrats to everyone involved on the new positions and good luck to Lilly on the Senate run. Just out of curiosity, how exactly did you ascertain than Nathan is the youngest state chair? Did someone actually call/email/text/message and get a hold of every single one? Because that would be even more impressive than youngest state chair if you managed to get all of them to reply 🙂
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