National Convention 1975
The 1975 Libertarian Party National Convention was held at the Statler-Hilton hotel in New York City on the last week of August. It had roughly 330 delegates from 38 states.
Presidential Nomination
Roger MacBride won the presidential nomination on the first ballot against Kay Haroff of Michigan and Guy Riggs of New York.
After Tonie Nathan, Manny Klausner, and Jim Trotter all failed to secure the vice presidential nomination, David Bergland was literally flown in to serve as a compromise candidate.
This needs to include the battle between MacBride and those who sought to present a less conservative GOP approach. Jim Trotter was the leader in the VP voting, but RLM declared he would not accept him, due to his "one issue" status (Jim was an alleged tax resister, gold smuggler and activist in other "left wing" causes). So his name was withdrawn, and that of John Vernon, an Oklahoma restaurateur, was proposed nomination. John had a strong libertarian background and had nearly been elected to the OK City Council; he was also openly gay, and Roger again raised the "one issue" claim. The convention adjourned with no VP nominee yet.
A group of LP activists then stayed up all night, deciding whether or not to propose withdrawing the nomination of Roger unless he accepted the convention's choice for running mate. The next morning they yawned and downed lots of coffee, then placed Vernon's name into nomination, with Robert Nozick delivering the nomination speech, though he did not know and had never met Mr. Vernon before that morning. After the speeches were completed, Roger took the microphone to declare that he was prepared to accept anyone the convention nominated; this was followed by the nomination of David Bergland, who had been flown in from California on a red-eye plane overnight. The nomination them proceeded, and Bergland won on the first ballot.
Libertarian Executive Committee
Ed Crane was re-elected as national chair without opposition.
Andrea Millen was re-elected as vice chair without opposition
Fran Youngstein was elected as treasurer and Greg Clark as secretary, also without opposition.
Out of a large pool of contenders, the following people were elected to the LNC at-large positions:
- Jim Blanchard of Louisiana
- Ed Clark of California
- John Hathaway of New York
- Richard Kenney of Massachusetts
- Phil Mangler of Maryland
- David Nolan of Colorado
- Bill Susel of California
Regions were also selected. For example, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana formed Region 5 and selected Martin Jahn of Kentucky and Bill Krebaum of Michigan to represent them.
Platform
Peter McAlpine of Michigan chaired the platform committee and accepted several proposals from Murray Rothbard and Bill Evers. The focus was on increasing the emphasis on civil liberties and foreign non-interventionism.
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