Request for time on August agenda - Resolution Against the Kennedy Victory Fund

Kyle Russell

SLEC Member
I request time on the August Business Meeting agenda to present a resolution to SLEC (~10 mins). The resolution is below,

A similar resolution was passed this morning in Louisiana and I believe other states in our region are looking at passing similar resolutions.
 

Attachments

For those of us not paying attention to national, can you provide full details of what is going on as well as how that is broken down to each of the articles that you mentioned (as well as provide what those articles are)?
 
For those of us not paying attention to national, can you provide full details of what is going on as well as how that is broken down to each of the articles that you mentioned (as well as provide what those articles are)?
I can do the bylaws part but I too am very focused on our state party that I am not sure what the LNC is doing.
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Has anyone seen this agreement with RFK Jr's campaign?
If there is nothing forbidding it within the agreement, I will likely motion to amend this to add something along the lines of: "Any funds raised via this agreement, shall be sent towards our duely elected presidential candidate and ballot access drives, forthwith". - actual wording TBD.
The National shall not profit over losing ground for our elected candidate.
 
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I am planning on speaking of the agreement made by the Executive Committee concerning the Kennedy Victory Fund at the SLEC meeting next week. The items in this resolution are also key points in a National Judicial Committee challenge on the matter. The essential details are that on 7/11/2024 the Executive Committee voted in favor of entering a joint fundraiser with the RFK campaign. Minutes of the meeting can be found on the LNC list at: https://groups.google.com/g/lnc-business-list-public/c/n34qzmZhDsY/

I would expound on what publicly available details of the agreement are but they are contradictory and we are still trying to clarify details with the Chair. As for myself since one variation of the explanation violates Federal Election Code, I attempted to distance myself by supporting a pause in the execution of the agreement until the Judicial Committee rules on the matter. I'm hoping the actual agreement doesn't violate election code though. I really don't want the party or myself to become financially responsible for easily avoidable violations.

I don't feel the actual words of the agreement matter too much with this resolution though as it mostly deals with our bylaws and how the vote came about and resulting impact. If you are interested in how the Kennedy campaign interprets the agreement you can find more at: https://kennedyvictoryfund.com/ where it says:

Paid for by Kennedy Victory Fund 2024, a joint fundraising committee authorized by Team Kennedy and the Libertarian National Committee (LNC).

The first $6,600/$10,000 from a person/multicandidate committee (“PAC”) will be allocated to Team Kennedy, with the first $3,300/$5,000 designated for the general election and the next $3,300/$5,000 for the primary election. The next $41,300/$15,000 from a person/PAC will be allocated to the LNC.

Back to the Resolution. The key point with Article 9 from the bylaws is that while the Executive Committee has many powers, they key to the "purse" is with the full LNC. The point of contention there is that this should have been a full LNC vote and not just an Executive Committee vote.

All the other Bylaws citations boil down to the argument that entering into this agreement shows support for RFK and not full support of our candidate and blurs our political distinctiveness.
 
I am fine with the first part of the resolution. The censuring is a moot point. Remember the last person we (well y'all because I wasn't on SLEC then) censured was Mark Ash and we ended up getting one of, if not the highest, vote total that election.... I am not on board with the RFK joint agreement and have expressed my distaste of what I think has been an approach that has tossed Chase to the side. But still a censure is meaningless.
 
I am fine with the first part of the resolution. The censuring is a moot point. Remember the last person we (well y'all because I wasn't on SLEC then) censured was Mark Ash and we ended up getting one of, if not the highest, vote total that election.... I am not on board with the RFK joint agreement and have expressed my distaste of what I think has been an approach that has tossed Chase to the side. But still a censure is meaningless.
Likely wouldn’t happen. We aren’t doing the censuring (we don’t have the authority). It would be symbolic at best. I have been pushing to condemn the agreement in general. Ask them to rescind.
 
Also this will be my first SLEC meeting so I have a question- is there a cutoff before the meeting date about agenda items/requesting time for things like this? I’m used to my rigid county bylaws about meetings. Was curious how SLEC operates in this regard.
 
I'll be publishing a draft agenda later today, or tomorrow at the latest. The practice has been to get reports published to the forum a week in advance for review by District Reps. So given I'm working to get an agenda published before COB tomorrow, it's usually best to get agenda requests in the 1-2 wks before the meeting range.

NOTE: Best practice for District Reps is to prepare a brief report on what they've been doing in/for their district and post it before the meeting, though we don't present those in the meeting. Good discipline, though.

Bylaws IV.a.6.v.
The District Representatives shall actively work to further the growth of the Party.
This includes, but is not limited to, communicating current organizational status within
their districts to the Party
, communicating Party information to their districts, assisting
with candidate recruitment efforts, developing county affiliates, oversight of Party
administration, and assisting to ensure proper function of official Party events.
 
So, I've been somewhat avoiding this one because of the subject. I used to say I avoided national like the plague, but after having lived through a global potato, I do realize that statement was somewhat harsh, and I do owe a bit of a public apology to the plague. That said, here we go...

We aren’t doing the censuring (we don’t have the authority).
Excuse me? This statement is so wrong I'm not sure how to rebut it except to say as much. There is nothing in the fundamental nature of censure or our governing documents that limits our authority to censure whoever we want for whatever reason we want. The only mention of censure in any of our governing documents that I could find is in LPTexas Bylaws, IV.b.4. which deals with the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee. I guess if someone disagrees, please provide sources.

It would be symbolic at best.
This is completely true but in a deceptive way... Censure is symbolic unless your organization's governance ties some other penalty to censure, which is the exception, not the rule. To expound upon this point, if I was part of an organization that passed a censure under normal circumstances, then years later, in a moment of nostalgia, someone recanted to me that it was only symbolic in the end. I would then reply with, "Oh, how serendipitous that it worked correctly!" That doesn't mean it's meaningless. Many people renew their wedding vows after a time together. That is an entirely symbolic gesture, and yet, is also among the most meaningful moments in some of those peoples lives, symbols matter.

The censuring is a moot point. Remember the last person we (well y'all because I wasn't on SLEC then) censured was Mark Ash and we ended up getting one of, if not the highest, vote total that election....
I'm not sure if you read that motion, but the point was never to discourage people from voting for Mark; it was to distance ourselves from the Democratic opponent he endorsed and I would recommend today as I did then that we should do the same for candidates in the future who endorse political opponents. I would say if anything were a failure in that process, it was Mark's attempt to toss his votes from our party to Garza. While I don't think our motion was causal to that failure, hooray, it didn't work... I guess... For anyone needing context to this here are a few fun links for you the retraction occurred after the discussion on censure began which makes it sound like non-binding motions can have real world effects...

https://web.archive.org/web/2022102...ey-general-recommends-democrat-rochelle-garza
https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/ryanjrusak/article268231107.html
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/medi...ral-mark-ash-endorses-democrat-rochelle-garza
and this is the original article as it sits today
https://www.amarillopioneer.com/blo...ey-general-recommends-democrat-rochelle-garza

Here is the link to the motion itself
https://forum.lptexas.org/index.php?threads/535/

So as the author of the motion to censure Mark Ash I will assure you if your reading of the intent is that we wanted people to not vote for Mark then your understanding is completely contrary to the intent.


All that said, we can censure members of national, it will not have any binding effect on them, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done or that it should. I'm completely open to hearing debate on this as to why we should or shouldn't use censure to distance ourselves from the actions of the LNC, as to why this is or is not the right list of members to censure, and as to why this does or does not violate national bylaws and how that should play into our decision. It could be the case that the LNC violated bylaws and we should distance ourselves from that action, that the LNC did not violate bylaws and we should distance ourselves from that action, that the LNC violated bylaws and we should not distance ourselves from that action, or that the LNC did not violate bylaws and we should not distance ourselves from that action. All four are possible and I'm open to hearing about it and rendering a decision based on the facts presented but to say we can't censure for some jurisdictional reason or that a motion not having a binding effect makes it useless or ineffective is a complete misunderstanding of censure.
 
@John Wilford I understood the censure you made against Ash and one could argue it’s sort of similar to this situation where instead of pushing for the L candidate it’s for another. So I totally understand what you’re saying but I still believe the censure here is a moot point. I’ll still be open to hear more reasoning why it should be considered but as of right now I’m against it.
 
All four are possible and I'm open to hearing about it and rendering a decision based on the facts presented but to say we can't censure for some jurisdictional reason or that a motion not having a binding effect makes it useless or ineffective is a complete misunderstanding of censure.
My main objection to censure is that I've already spent more time reading this thread than I want to invest in anything having to do with National. Also, I am reticent to put my name on any censure of people I have no idea who they are. As you said, symbols matter, and I am unwilling to consider a motion to censure anyone just because they've been mentioned in a bulleted list. I really do want details, consideration, and review. And most importantly, I want to care enough to spend my time on all of that.

I am in favor of the bulk of the resolution in that it makes our position clear, which IS important.

And then I want to get back to the business of growing Texas LP.
 
The national chair resides in Texas, and partake in our conventions, therefore is affiliated with LPTexas. This is a disgrace. The Kennedy campaign is calling this a "non-partisian Libertarian National Committee " agreement. Censure was appropriate for the trump rally, and this impropriety with kennedy.
Still I would like to hear from @Paul Darr and others on this subject.
 
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