This article is the third and final part in series on libertarianism and liberty in New Hampshire. The full story is now available online.
It has been almost two decades since there has been an elected Libertarian Party member sitting in the state legislature in Concord. Libertarianism may run deep in the Granite State, but its ballot line has had election after election of weak showings.
Several Libertarian Party members were elected to the State House of Representatives in the 1990s, but since then, party has struggled to gain electoral traction. Part of that may be down to the libertarian streaks within the local Republican and Democratic organizations, however.
“In some ways, in New Hampshire the Libertarian Party is kind of a victim of our own success,” national Libertarian Party chairman Nicholas Sarwark said. “As the political culture becomes more libertarian, some people find it less attractive to join an actual Libertarian Party and would rather just work within the machinery of one of the old parties.”
In 1991, Calvin Warburton — a Republican state representative — switched parties to sit as a Libertarian. He died four years later, but paved the way for others to follow. Three other Libertarian Party members sat in the state legislature for periods in the 1990s, all from districts in the south of the state.
Then the ballot access problems started.
In Vermont, ballot access — and minor party representation — is a fairly straightforward issue. The state has a long history of minor-party strength and currently boasts a strong third party, the Progressives, who are well represented in the Green Mountain State. Organized political parties in Vermont must simply put candidates forward to run, but in New Hampshire, parties that are not recognized as major parties must garner over a hundred signatures to run for each small state legislative seat — and the difficulties only grow larger from there.
Changing the state’s ballot access laws is a major issue for the Libertarian Party, New Hampshire Libertarian Party secretary Darryl Perry said. The national party is currently attempting to regain 50-state ballot access, something it has not had since 2000, Sarwark said.
The difficulty of standing for election as a Libertarian has led many libertarian-minded people to run as Democrats or Republicans. Eighteen Free State Project entrants have been elected to the state legislature, Sorens said, and fully 20 percent of the state house are in some way supporters of the movement. But none are members of the Libertarian Party.
For Perry, the issue is one of compromising belief. People run on major party tickets because of the ballot access laws that block the Libertarians, he said, meaning many must compromise their views.
“I cannot in good conscious ever call myself a Republican or Democrat, so I encourage people to, if you’re a Libertarian, join the party that’s intended for you,” he said.
But libertarian-minded voters still essentially control New Hampshire politics, former New Hampshire Gov. Steve Merrill said.
“We have become a state that is approximately one third Democrat, one third Republican, and the critical piece is the one third libertarian in between the Democrat and Republican. No Republican can win without substantial libertarian support,” he said.
The huge chunk of New Hampshire voters who lack party affiliation — around 40 percent — are the key element in the state’s political calculus that swing between Democrats and Republicans and to which both parties must speak if they hope to win statewide elections.
Even so, the Libertarian Party itself hopes to make a comeback in a state where it has high levels of natural support, Sarwark said. The Free State Project could help the party to do it — or maybe not.
“I don’t think 20,000 people in a state of 1.3 million is enough to dramatically change it. They can only reinforce views that were already here,” Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy director Charlie Arlinghaus said.
But the Libertarian Party needs to get its own act together before it can begin winning elections. Recent state conventions of the party have seen only around 12 people participate, Perry said.
“There’s really a lot of apathy within the Libertarian Party in New Hampshire, and it’s very sad, especially considering that there’re so many libertarians that live in the state,” he said.
He only became party secretary when no one else ran, he said.
So what will happen at PorcFest — the Free State Project’s annual gathering — this year? Will this be a time — with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the likely nominees of the two major parties, candidates with whom most libertarians are thoroughly disgusted — that sees a breakout for Libertarians? After all, 2016 will see the first of the roughly 18,000 remaining Free Staters outside of New Hampshire begin to migrate into the state?
Government professor and Free State Project founder Jason Sorens and Sarwark both said the rise of a candidate like Trump presents a distinct opportunity for Libertarians running for office in 2016, when disaffected voters may search for a new outlet for their beliefs.
The Free State Project is a natural outlet for dissatisfaction in the political system, Merrill said.
“It’s a natural outgrowth of individuals wanting to be certain that government doesn’t intrude in their lives in an unreasonable manner,” he said. “I have yet to run into any Free Stater who wasn’t patriotic, interested in keeping government at an appropriate size, and willing to do their part. I think those are the kinds of people that will keep New Hampshire the state that it has been and should remain.”
Despite the affections of former governors like Craig Benson and Merrill and a fifth of the state legislature, the Free State Project is not universally beloved in the state.
“The Free State Project has become a little bit of a political football in New Hampshire,” Sorens chuckled.
The day the project announced that its destination would be New Hampshire back in 2003, state Democratic leaders attacked the group for being being anti-family, wishing to legalize prostitution and promoting the abolition of public education, Sorens said.
Another common critique of the movement is that Free Staters want to secede from the U.S., a perception that arose out of a claim in Sorens’ initial essay suggesting that one way for regions to gain greater localized power is to propose secession to force national governments to play their hand.
“Down the road, if we need to get more autonomy from the federal government, there’s always this option — the secession option — not so much as ‘we ought to secede’ as a way to get leverage to get more powers decentralized to New Hampshire,” he said.
Sorens said he would not be in favor of secession now, but “if Donald Trump is elected,” he said, laughing, “we need to preserve ourselves by any means necessary.”
In order to maintain its libertarian character, New Hampshirites need to actively fight for a more. limited government, Merrill said. The state’s unique brand of yankee liberty does not come without conscious effort. Once new government programs are started up, it becomes harder to get rid of them, he said.
Daniel Webster, the namesake of Dartmouth’s Webster Hall and the progenitor of the famed phrase about the College — “It is a small college, but there are those who love it” — was a native of New Hampshire and represented the state in Congress. To him, the state’s longtime symbol, the Old Man of the Mountain — now a pile of rock beneath Cannon Mountain — symbolized the very personal freedoms for which the state is famous.
He said: “Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.”
Disclosure: The author is also a descendent of Josiah Bartlett, for whom the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy is named. Bartlett died in 1795; the two have never met.
