Motion: Establish and Fund a Campaign Support Fund (Special Fund)

[Jacob Bradley]

And guys -- the candidate/campaign training element is the front and center piece of this motion right now. While I hope that we eventually get to a place where our campaigns are running like well-oiled machines and we have surplus dollars in the fund to help out our candidates, I don't think we'll be there in the near-term (at least probably not this election cycle).

So while I wrote the motion in a way so as not to close the door on the possibility of helping our candidates financially in the future (again, to the extent election code allows), I don't want the logistics of that to be an obstacle for this motion. Right now, we just want to establish the fund and start training our folks how to run efficient and effective campaigns.

I am 100% on board with the training aspect of this motion, but I cannot support a state party sanctioned fund that picks winners and losers in our candidates. While you have said that there will be a review process for these donations, the process with turn down candidates and more than likely turn them off from running again. What you are asking for will without doubt, hurt the party in the long run and discourage people from running for office as a Libertarian. No matter how "impartial" the application process is, people are partial, both knowingly and unknowingly. Certain candidates with supporters will be turned down and candidates who others don't support will be given support. In both scenarios this will cost the state some donors. Are we at the point financially, that we can risk turning off donors?

 

[Carol Unsicker]

As a former candidate that was behind on fundraising, thus.
I will co-sponsor.

 

[Jacob Bradley]

I strongly co-sponsor
I've read the comments and there is a lot I want to respond to but will have the time later. I suggest we start by converting the supplemental fund of ~$5k to this special fund.

Why not then cut out the parts people are addressing, and "have the time later" to add in new stuff instead of passing the motion with objections and removing them later?

 

[Jacob Bradley]

As a former candidate that was behind on fundraising, thus.
I will co-sponsor.

Carol, if you asked for funds and were denied, would you want to run again? What if you were denied 2, 3, 4 times in a row, still on board to run? What about donate to a party that doesn't support you while supporting other campaigns? Still on board with that?

 

[Amanda Gibbs]

I feel like and have been in conversations where we absolutely should be doing training on all levels (candidate, county, leadership, campaign staff, etc) but am hesitant on the donating as a party to only certain campaigns. I feel like this could turn people away if they are running but didn't make the qualifiers to have LPTexas be a donor.

 

[Ginny Moore]

I will co-sponsor.

 

[Paul Darr]

I will co-sponsor. Ultimately the donors will decide if they want to support this effort or not.

 

[Matthew Gibbs]

I am fully on board with creating this special fund for candidate/campaign manager training, providing paid block walkers, etc. I am not okay, at this time, with considering using any of the funds to directly give donations to individual candidates. (assuming it is even legal for a political party to do so) If the language is updated to reflect that then I would be happy to co-sponsor!

I am in the same mindset on this one. The legality of direct donations is in question, and it would be almost impossible to not give off the appearance of favoritism if the party does directly support individual candidates.

 

[Jodi Cole]

I will co sponsor

 

[Kenneth Feagins]

While I do have reservations on the donations to candidates, ultimately donors will decide if they want to donate to a general fund or direct to candidates. I would caution us to tread lightly here, and put a strict set of objective qualifiers in place. If we could donate to each at a nominal amount, that would be great, but I understand limited resources and stretching too little too thin.

That said, the training is desperately needed to run effective campaigns and is not just limited to just candidate campaigns - this knowledge is applicable to other things within the party. And since that is the primary focus of this motion, I am fine moving forward. We can always roll back the other if it becomes a significant issue that we cannot solve internally.

I will co-sponsor.

 

[Jessi Cowart]

Thank you to everyone who has shared their concerns and/or co-sponsored this motion.

There seems to be general support for establishing the fund to pay for training, block walkers, etc. but a bit of concern about direct financial support to candidates.

As I mentioned throughout this thread, there is much diligence that would need to be done before we would even consider that, including a through review of election code(s) and establishing criteria/review process for distributions. In other words this would be more of a “Phase 2 or Phase 3” type of thing.

That said, I would like to hear more from you all before we take this to a vote. If you haven’t weighed in yet, please do so now so all opinions can be considered.

 

[Nathan Polsky]

I know I've already weighed in already, but I would encourage that the language be updated to remove the direct donations to candidates at this time. In my opinion, if we ever have such a surplus of funds in the special fund that we can even entertain donating to an individual candidate, that money would best be spent on additional training, more block walkers, running ads, etc.

 

[Jack Westbrook]

I agree with Jacob, Nathan, Amanda, and Matthew. Anything else I would write would be redundant. If we want to establish a fund where all candidates receive support, then that’s different.

 

[Susan Barney]

I will co-sponsor and would be interested in working on a committee on the proposal. I do so with the opinion that direct funding of campaigns is extremely problematic, both per state law and within party. I think the concerns that Jacob brings up are very valid in that not all campaigns would be able to get direct funding and the candidates left out would see the party as not supportive. However, I feel there is so much more the party could be doing to support candidates, especially smaller, local elections. Having some support from the party could also help expand the types of elected positions that candidates & county affiliates pursue. The campaign manager training that all affiliates could access is essential, but there are others options that could be fairly available to candidates: block-walking, signs and materials, etc.

This is absolutely the direction LPTexas needs to go and I believe concerns/issues can be hammered out.

 

[Nathan Polsky]

I will co-sponsor and would be interested in working on a committee on the proposal. I do so with the opinion that direct funding of campaigns is extremely problematic, both per state law and within party. I think the concerns that Jacob brings up are very valid in that not all campaigns would be able to get direct funding and the candidates left out would see the party as not supportive. However, I feel there is so much more the party could be doing to support candidates, especially smaller, local elections. Having some support from the party could also help expand the types of elected positions that candidates & county affiliates pursue. The campaign manager training that all affiliates could access is essential, but there are others options that could be fairly available to candidates: block-walking, signs and materials, etc.

This is absolutely the direction LPTexas needs to go and I believe concerns/issues can be hammered out.

For clarification, if a motion fails to gain enough co-sponsors or if the vote fails, we can always change the language of the motion and re-submit.

 

[John Wilford]

Ana and I spent a good amount of time digging through the history of this account last night. I don't have time to line it all out as I'm at work. Hoping one of us will have time later today. In short, I'm ok with allocating the money this way and don't have strong preferences for if it's done through special projects or the PA department budget. However, I will not be co-sponsoring and will be abstaining online for the purpose of defeating this motion and ask everyone to join me. The only reason is there is a meeting weeks away and I would both like to get a full treasurers report and hear discussion on this matter before approving. Additionally I haven't heard any reason why this needs to be done in 48 hours instead of a few weeks. I guess my one question on the matter is, is there any anticipation of us spending the money before the August SLEC meeting?

 

[John Wilford]

For clarification, if a motion fails to gain enough co-sponsors or if the vote fails, we can always change the language of the motion and re-submit.

We wouldn't even need to reword it, we could just make it again. The RONR restrictions on making the same motion twice apply to it being in the same meeting but we are not in a meeting.

 

[Nathan Polsky]

We wouldn't even need to reword it, we could just make it again. The RONR restrictions on making the same motion twice apply to it being in the same meeting but we are not in a meeting.

I'm on the assumption that the reason it wouldn't pass is because of the language so putting it up a second time without changing it would yield the same results.

 

[Andrew Amelang]

While I do have reservations on the donations to candidates, ultimately donors will decide if they want to donate to a general fund or direct to candidates. I would caution us to tread lightly here, and put a strict set of objective qualifiers in place. If we could donate to each at a nominal amount, that would be great, but I understand limited resources and stretching too little too thin.

Whichever way the body goes on this particular piece of this project, I want to be clear that as this project has been conceived and discussed,

(a) the primary elements are anything that builds up this party's capability to support our candidates—campaign manager training, campaign volunteer training, voter data, extensions to our NationBuilder capabilities or other software platforms that facilitate GOTV efforts, possibly mass marketing if we're bringing in significant funding, other stuff like that, and

(b) when and if we were in a position to directly support candidates, which assumes our fundraising has been very successful (a nice problem to have), the concept is that this is for strategic support of active campaigns, so there most assuredly would be objective criteria in place to steer funding toward any campaign that qualified, without respect to partisanship or favoritism.

 

[Jacob Bradley]

Whichever way the body goes on this particular piece of this project, I want to be clear that as this project has been conceived and discussed,

(a) the primary elements are anything that builds up this party's capability to support our candidates—campaign manager training, campaign volunteer training, voter data, extensions to our NationBuilder capabilities or other software platforms that facilitate GOTV efforts, possibly mass marketing if we're bringing in significant funding, other stuff like that, and

(b) when and if we were in a position to directly support candidates, which assumes our fundraising has been very successful (a nice problem to have), the concept is that this is for strategic support of active campaigns, so there most assuredly would be objective criteria in place to steer funding toward any campaign that qualified, without respect to partisanship or favoritism.

My reservations are that it would be objective criteria. Some members would be happy with the decision while others would be unhappy, and this would go for candidates as well. The state party shouldn't objectively be picking winners and losers with the people who stepped up and ran as a Libertarian. These are the face of our party, and the ones who will be our biggest out reach to the community. Setting up a plan to reject our candidates the funds needed as someone (or a group of some ones) is not a plan that I, nor this party should get involved in. We should either make this plan to fund all candidates equally or none at all.