Steve Trinward Steve Trinward is "Soul Proprietor" of Trinwords.Com (wordsmithing and editing services) and a contributing editor for Rational Review. CLICK HERE FOR RATIONAL REVIEW NEWS DIGEST SUPPORT OUR
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My first (and ONLY)
campaign It’s occurred to me, more than once over the last several months, that there are probably some folks reading these columns under my byline, who wonder a bit where I get off being so critical about Libertarian Party candidates, and how they run their campaigns. A lot of you may have taken the attitude that I must be just another armchair Quarterback -- always ready with the second-guess, but never willing to put my own ass on the line … or on the ballot. You would be correct about that -- in the present tense! To put it bluntly, I am NOT willing to run for public office, nor do I think the best interests of Liberty would be served, were I to become so deluded as to think I should! My value is much greater as an analyst/watchdog and commentator, and coupled with my current status as a Libertarian National Committee Regional Representative for the Southwest Region, I think I am doing something to further the cause as effectively as I can at this time. Discuss this
article at However, it would NOT be accurate to say that I have NO idea about what running for elective office entails. As noted in an article recently published on "that other network" -- "My First libertarian [sic] National Convention" -- I was once elected as Chapter President of my fraternity, and ended up also going as Chapter Delegate to the National Convention in Memphis, back in 1970. Also, within the LP itself, I've taken two shots at the LNC -- one abortive, in 2000, for an At Large seat; one successful as noted above. Prior to that I ran for LP of Massachusetts State Chair in 1976 (lost by two votes), and was elected as State Treasurer once (1974) and to the State Executive Committee (2 or 3 times, I forget which) in the late-1970s. Since I moved to Tennessee, I have assiduously resisted all attempts to get me to run for anything but Convention Delegate (although I did serve for a short time as Davidson County LP Vice Chair when the spot needed a warm body for a few months last year). When such a crown was offered a couple of weeks ago, by the outgoing LP of Davidson County Chair, I quickly shook my head. I vastly prefer to stay in an "advisory" capacity, where my ideas and advice do not set policy but only influence it. (As a result I've been a "kitchen cabinet" member for each of the last two LPTN State Chairs … I hope with some effectiveness.) But I know, I know … I'm evading the question. The real issue is, did I ever run for PUBLIC office? The short answer is, YES … The longer one follows. Even based on that ONE attempt, I MIGHT have some useful information to share. Back in 1978, the Libertarian Party was just beginning to achieve some degree of public awareness. Nationally, we had gone from running an essentially write-in campaign for President in 1972, which by fluke or design received a single Electoral College vote from a disaffected Republican elector in Virginia, who could not bring himself to endorse the landslide for Richard Nixon. That elector, one Roger Lea MacBride, was then rewarded by the LP for his courage; we made him our 1976 Presidential nominee, despite some concerns among more than a few of us that we were sliding into Republicanism by doing so. (That's yet another story, for yet another time.) More locally, in the LP of Massachusetts, there had been a series of "growth spasms" along the way which, although they did not produce large numbers, gave us for the most part a broad variety of folks … who deep down shared two things: (1) they were hardcore in their libertarianism and desire for true Liberty; and (2) they knew that if they didn't find a way to coordinate efforts, it was a complete waste of their time! So over the first few years the discussion had more to do with limiting exertion of authority from within than with how to fight the State. (I'll save this little story for another time, too. Stay tuned!) The aftereffects of attending the 1975 LP convention in New York (dang! There's another story to tell ... ) got me rolling in a much more public way: First, I ran for the LPM[A] State Chair spot in '76, and nearly got elected. Then I got involved, first as a freelance writer, then as Managing Editor (in title, but de facto Editor in Chief) with Esplanade, a Boston-area "special interest" biweekly. The fact that the primary "interest group" was local gay (male) community and the establishments that served the culture, was less important to me than that they were paying halfway-decent money for freelance articles, and that I could choose mostly what topics I covered; I was simultaneously also writing for a series of State Trooper monthly journals, on everything from Kidnapping and the Moonies to gun rights issues, to the history of bowling. But I digress … even within the main story. J After a few months of this, I attended another LP National Convention, this time in San Francisco. I used my Esplanade position to: (a) obtain limited press credentials for the con, and thus get to interview (however briefly) Dr. Timothy Leary; and (b) promote and support the Party's pro-privacy resolution on gay rights issues, which passed rather overwhelmingly. I then went back home and did my best to spread the word, in both "Espy" and other local publications. (Note: You can well imagine how much of a chuckle I get now when I see ESPN present its "ESPY Awards" …We actually called them that back in '78, when we honored things like "Boston's Best Gay Bar"!) And then, the following spring, I became part of the LPM[A] slate for 1978. As I recall it there were about a half-dozen of us, running for the state legislature; I was the only State Senate candidate. The rep seats were fairly wide open around Boston, at least in my area, and there seemed little or no purpose in running in a three-way race. However, the State Senate candidate was another story … Francis McCann was well-entrenched, a clear "big-D" Democrat. He had been in office then for somewhere between six and ten terms; he was in his 60s as I recall it, and not all that far from retiring. He was a combination of a Liberty-lover's worst nightmares: a social fascist and a big-spending economic socialist. He despised sexual freedom issues -- and he had helped his fellow Demoncrats (and more than a couple Republicants) piss away millions of taxpayer dollars during his time on Beacon Hill. He was an old-school ward-heeler on politics: He had the local unions, the police and firefighter folks, the then-nascent AARP crowd, and several of the other "usual suspects" all tucked firmly in his pocket. He was an authoritarian, paternalistic creepoid in office. Most people I knew whose opinions I even vaguely cared about considered him one of the biggest menaces in the State Legislature. Meanwhile, in previous elections, McCann had crushed every opponent in the Dem primary, using just his immediate contacts and GOTV procedures. He had then faced little more than token opposition from whatever local Republicant chose to ignore reality, thinking he (no woman having been simultaneously so egotistical and delusional) could fight the machine and the demographics successfully, in an area where being a GOPer automatically brought one under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. In this particular year, I guess the local GOP leadership must have changed pharmacists, since nobody had been delusional enough to even file for the office representing that party! The only opponents were a pair of his fellow Democrats: one a rather nice fellow as I recall, with the unusual name of Jarvis Kellogg; the other a guy named Mike something-or-other, who offered only token opposition (and so I didn't bother even researching). It was a very longshot possibility that Kellogg’s upstart campaign might motivate enough liberal Dems and Unenrolled voters to show up on Primary Day and pull his lever, but in reality his chances were those of a crippled antelope among lions. Whatever the case, though, the final race would be completely uncontested, whoever won the primary. It seemed an obvious place to step in to present a Libertarian perspective. And where was this opportunity waiting to happen? In the heart of academia and Eastern establishment liberalism: The district included my own neighborhood in the Allston-Brighton "borough" of the City of Boston, an area containing both "Boston" colleges (B.C.'s Eagles; B.U.'s Terriers) and a goodly portion of the off-campus student populations of each, as well as other smaller campuses and their matriculates; it also ranged from Old Bostonian retirees to young upscale Yuppies, first-homeowners and DINKs. The population was about 65,000, roughly the same as the adjoining Town of Brookline, about which I later came to learn almost as much … But I DO digress ... This Senate District also comprised a large part of Cambridge (including Harvard and MIT), as well as all of the adjacent towns of Belmont and Watertown, which were in many ways the "bedroom communities" for the former two. The former community ranged from environmentally and socially conscious liberals, to a small enclave of blue-collar workers, to the site of the John Birch Society headquarters. Watertown, meanwhile, perhaps appeared like a world of blue-collars and small homeowners; in fact, it was also home to a number of local university professors and college students. Frank McCann was not only an Enemy of the People in the War Against Tyranny, he was also nearing retirement, would be running unopposed in the final … and he had a serious "negative factor" in the opinion polls, long before such things came into vogue. What better opportunity in which to present a clear and hardcore (yet positive) libertarian position, in a principled yet goodhearted manner … and in a race where, although "winning" was hardly an option, the chances of getting news coverage and achieving some increase awareness of the existence of the Libertarian alternative, were very much present. Meanwhile, I had a clear channel to news coverage (though as editor of Esplanade it would have to be handled subtly). I also had a pre-established rapport with several segments of the public in the area; in addition to the gay community itself, I was in contact with tax-resisters, Drug War battlers, gun rights and property-ownership groups and a number of other freedom-fighting organizations. It seemed pretty likely that at least some of these folks would endorse me against such a tyrant as Frank McCann, at least in the final election. An INTENTIONAL Digression … But a necessary one? I must now acknowledge that very little of this analysis went through my head at the time. I frankly don't even know if I even gave it all that much thought, or if maybe someone prompted me by some word or action to think that, "Bigod, I've got to run against this guy!" I don't even recall, after … 25 years? … whether I even talked about it with anybody, or discussed it with my parents (I seriously doubt that, at least then. Consider what it was like, getting something in a brown-paper wrapper every couple of weeks, delivered to your small-town conservative Maine woods town's post office …and if you really want to read what your son wrote this week, you'll have to sift through or ignore … the Horror … The HORROR!) But I'm pretty convinced that something else was leading me there ... So, if anyone happens to remember anything about that context, which would enhance this tale and make it more accurate … Please e-mail me! One of the things that makes the Web so valuable as a communications medium is this: although it is only a SNAPSHOT of reality, it is an EDITABLE one! As further details in a story … or correction of inaccurate data … come to light, a piece can be marked up to reflect the new information. Meanwhile, although we do run the risk of the Internet becoming a repository for DISinformation and statist historical rewrites … we also have more eyes on the medium, and more folks dedicated to keeping it at least as free and reality-driven as it mostly still is. I like the balance there … ... back to the story ... I should also note in passing that this was 1978, the same year, as it turned out, that L. Neil Smith decided, for whatever conceivable reason, to give the electoral thing a flier, in the midst of his Platform Committee standing in each of the surrounding national conventions. Neil would have to describe his campaign in more detail himself, but as I get it he filed, got the signatures, made a couple of speeches maybe, and collected the votes on Election Day. GET MORE DETAILS FROM NEIL … Anyway, for whatever reason, I went down and took out the papers, and stood on street corners in Brighton Center and in the local supermarket parking lot for the next several weeks. I did it almost entirely myself, with one notable exception: Walter Ziobro, Jr. (one of the very few people who can attest to the change in the LPM[A] over those years, since he has remained active through it all) joined me on one memorable Saturday and helped greatly in boosting me over the top for the required signatures. (IIRC, I needed 1004 valid ones. More on that below.) I put what money I had been able to raise into publicity: a leaflet … a bumpersticker -- and later on a poster; more about that later. During the petitioning, I passed out the leaflet, which was in retrospect a marketing major's worst nightmare: WAY too much text; minimal white space; clunky paragraphs and some of the most ill-considered artwork in the history of politics. The campaign slogan was "Trinward!: A New Direction in Politics" and on the bumperstickers it actually looked pretty good, with the "Trinward!" part in Gorilla Bold, angled upward like those TANSTAAFL gold lapel-pins that were then all the rage at LP gatherings. It had its desired effect, and perhaps even subliminally tied the reader's consciousness to the "non Left-Right" approach I was going after. On the leaflet, however, it got lost in the shuffle. Not content to stick with this simple (if ambiguous) slogan, I felt it necessary to elaborate with, "Decriminalization … Deregulation … Decentralization" -- and then to write a longwinded paragraph about each one. (I think now of the phrase "timing is everything" … Had I been blessed with Internet capacities back then, I would probably have simply included a link under each word, leading to the elaborate explanations for those who chose to seek them, and settled for a five-word capsule on the actual printed handout.) And as for the photo-art … I decided to use a friend with a camera, and then purposely NOT clean up my act to present my best possible side. So what I got was: (a) a frizzy-haired, scraggly bearded me, slouched in a t-shirt with a Bonnie Dalzell black-and-white sketched unicorn spread across my paunchy belly; and (b) a shot with my hair blowing wild in the breeze, and me stuffed in a three-piece tweedy suit, standing on the State House steps. The effect as I look back from 25 years was more crackpot militant than would-be State Senator; although I realize the intention at the time was surely not to look "moderate" … I could have gone a little less overboard to make that point! Note: The leaflet DID lead to one amusing experience during the petitioning. The day that Walter helped me out in the supermarket parking lot, things were not going all that well at first. As I recall it, we'd been there for about an hour or two, and had maybe a dozen signatures each. Given that I was coming down to the wire, and was still a couple hundred short of the target (needing about a thousand, I was going for 1200), this was not good news. It started to pick up a little, and then during another lull I saw Walter heading my way with a huge grin on his face. "I just had an encounter with a couple of ladies," he began as he walked up to me, "and they weren't going to sign at first. And then one of them looked at your leaflet, and turned to her friend and said, 'Oh, look, Beverly! He looks just like Sylvestah Stallone!' (Walter, although from Fall River, tried to deliver this with the proper Brightonian accent, and almost succeeded.) She signed … and then her friend signed … and then a couple of other ladies who knew them did so, too!" We cackled about that one for a bit, then went back to our duties. And for some reason, the signatures began to flow a whole lot more smoothly, and by the end of the day I was within sight of the total I needed. (Meanwhile, I still assert that I do NOT look anything like Sly -- maybe Daniel Stern in a good light, or a 70s tennis-pro Spaniard by the name of Higueras … but NOT Stallone!) [Publisher's note: Pump a little Iron, Steve, and get the voice down: AAAAAAdrian! -- you'll have the Rocky IV vote in pocket. - TLK] So I finished petitioning, gathered up my signature papers, took them to the Town Halls in Watertown and Belmont, and to Cambridge and Boston City Halls … and waited. About a week or two later, I had the tallies of certified signatures. And much to my surprise, I had come out about THIRTY short for qualifying for the ballot. So I went to Boston City Hall, where the vast majority of my names had been turned in, and asked to see the petition sheets. They brought them out, and even at the first glance I knew I had a case to fight for. You see, when an Election Commission has to certify a bunch of these things, they don't just put their staff on overtime and double the department budget (at least they didn't in Boston in 1978). Instead, they hire temps, even high school kids, to go through the process of checking signatures against the official ones on the voting lists, certifying those that are obvious, and questioning those that are not. Problem is, they pay these folks for the time they put in, and perhaps the number of signatures they get through, but nobody official makes sure they’re doing their jobs correctly. (Again … at least they did not back then) I looked at the first sheet, and the first name on the page. It was my own, and they had disqualified MY signature! I pointed this out to the Election Commission guy, noting that he had a pretty easy choice: Either this was indeed a valid signature, and I could go ahead and find another 29 that were marked wrong, and be certified … OR, he had to acknowledge that my signature was NEVER correctly registered -- despite the fact that I had voted succesfully from this address each election for the past four years -- and that his department incorrectly certified my signature on the OTHER side, when I came in to file as a candidate!" if it was the latter, we probably had a legal action to file. (I was pretty feisty, even back then …) I think he weighed the options, and saw no simple way to keep me off the ballot, even had he wanted to. I began the process, and found my "extra 30" signatures within the first fifteen minutes -- all but two of them on that first petition sheet. (This should be "word up" to anyone who gets knocked for being short on "certifieds" -- OR for those who think they need to collect double the number needed, regardless of the expense! The time you spend trying to go over by a safe margin MAY be better spent challenging the outcome at the Elections office afterward … or challenging your Reprocrat opponent’s submissions, until they throw up their hands and certify YOU!) So now I was on the ballot, in April, and could focus on the campaigning itself. I had talked a printer-friend into doing the leaflets, bumperstickers and posters, at as near to cost as possible, as his campaign donation; to my surprise, he ended up throwing in extra copies of each at no additional cost. (At this point he had already done all but the poster, which was my one good creative idea.) About a year earlier, an artist friend, who was teaching an introductory class in sketch-drawing, had asked me to be a figure model, perhaps in part for my rather craggy visage. At the end of this particular class, she was trying to show some of the students how to "set the eyes" in a drawing, and did a very quick sketch of me, head and shoulders, setting my eyes into their sockets to illustrate her point, as I sat there in the chair. Then, as the students were packing up, and she was writing me a check for my modeling services, she handed me the sheet and said, "This is a bonus for your good work!" It was a very nice and rather flattering sketch, about halfway to right-profile, which also still managed to actually look like me! When it came time to decide what I wanted on the poster, there was no other choice. The result was a rather artistic looking piece, with the sketch at the center and the cities and towns of the district in a box-array around it, and "Trinward! a new direction, etc." slogan at the bottom. I told the Esplanade art director what I had in mind and he laid it out for me. I showed the design to the printer and he was pretty impressed, too. A couple weeks later I had about 200 of those on your basic 2 X 3 posterboard, and proceeded to hang a few in strategic places, saving the rest for the final week or two of the campaign. (Nowadays, I keep looking through my storage spaces, but as yet have still not found even one of them still in my possession. Sad, really; oh well…) 1978 was in retrospect pretty much of a watershed year in Massachusetts politics. The gubernatorial campaign was to be won by a conservative GOPer named Ed King, whose backers were among the early activists who brought Proposition 2-1/2 (a property-tax limitation measure) to the voters a couple years later. And in their national level campaigns, the stakes were even higher: this was the year Paul Tsongas ousted the only Republican U.S. Senator from the Bay State (Edward Brooke, also not coincidentally the only Black person in the Senate). Six years later, in 1984, with Tsongas bowing out for reasons both health (cancer) and political (presidential aspirations), John Kerry assumed that position, from which he has continued to reign ever since. Had Tsongas not ousted Brooke, one wonders if Kerry would have had such an easy time of it, or if he would now be among the nine dwarves competing for the Demoncrat Presidential nod … By the way, one of Tsongas' opponents that year, although he did not make the final election, was someone who might be a little familiar to Libertarians of more recent vintage. Or to put it another way: Does the name 'Howard Phillips' ring a bell? He didn't have quite so much of a "Der Fuehrer" look to him back then, but he was just as militant a conservative dogwhistle while still playing the Republicant role. In fact, Phillips may have inadvertently helped the Libertarian Party to gain some press coverage along the way … But that is yet another story … Meanwhile, also in 1978, the Libertarian Party was running some 300 candidates across the country, and would end up gaining a combined 1.3 million votes. Among them were: * Dick Randolph, who was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives as a Libertarian that year, then became instrumental in repealing the state's personal income tax, and set himself up for a rather serious run for the state's governorship in the next election; * Ed Clark, who parlayed a strong campaign for Governor of California (378,980 votes, 5.5% of the total) into his LP Presidential nomination in 1980, which gathered over 900,00 votes and is still the benchmark for Libertarian Party effectiveness at that level; * Neil Smith, who grabbed about 15% of the vote in a State Representative race in Colorado, with an almost invisible campaign; and * ME! Not much more to say, actually. I did the run, and even spoke at a couple of venues (like Barry Goldwater, I told the senior citizens I wanted to end Socialist inSecurity … and tried to tell them why and why it was a good idea!). I also got some endorsements: * Both Boston gay papers (perhaps one of the few times the folks at Gay Community News agreed with those at Esplanade) and the Gay Rights Legislative Committee (or whatever they were calling themselves back then); * The Gun Owners Action League (even then, I was a solid Second Amendment advocate, despite the fact that I both hated hunting, and had never picked up, let alone fired, a handgun); and * Then-State Representative Barney Frank himself (whom I had interviewed for my first feature article, in the inaugural issue of Esplanade, and who also played a role in another Libertarian Party activity that year), to a couple of other anti-establishment groups I've since forgotten. I did NOT get the endorsement of the taxpayer group Citizens for Limited Taxation, since I fell one short of a perfect score on their questionnaire. (Hey, the question was poorly worded, so I answered it honestly! My fellow LPM[A] candidates just shook their heads, gritted their teeth, gave the expected answers … and got endorsed!) On Election Day, I stood at a couple of polling places, and shook a few hands (had gotten at least a trim of the locks by then) … and ended up with … 6,440 votes, representing almost 15 percent of the vote! (Note: That’s only if you are counting only the actual votes cast in that race. If you consider that there were 11,383 BLANKS -- from people who voted for governor, or some other office, or a referendum question, but did not see fit to vote for State Senate -- the number drops a bit, to less than 12 percent.) This might have a little to do with the fact that I am far from impressed with similar results, from other Libertarians then and since, which fall in the same general vicinity of vote totals or percentages. I know firsthand how meaningless the numbers are in a two-way race -- unless you actually challenge for the win! I'm not certain, but I think my numbers may have stood for a good long while in LP annals, in terms of both percentage of votes, and actual vote totals; I DO know that very few folks in the LP's tattered history have managed to get any significant numbers while spending a little less than … FOUR CENTS A VOTE! And I still don't consider this to be anything of significance; you see why I can't be impressed with anyone else's accomplishments this way? The post-mortem: About four months after the election, I reached a turning-point in my journalistic career, and began to phase out of the Esplanade ghetto, writing a freelance piece for my local neighborhood weekly, the Allston-Brighton Citizen Item. This led to my application to fill an opening for a reporter there, and then a rather tattered spell as Reporter/Columnist/Layout Artist/Feature Writer, which segued into my taking over the Massachusetts phase of the Clark for President campaign, and being the paid Executive Director of that effort, less than a year later. But that is another story entirely, for another time. Only two things to add:
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