Libertarian Party of the District of Columbia: Difference between revisions

[[Scott Kohlhaas]] was the Libertarian Party candidate for an at-large seat on the Council of the District of Columbia in 1986. Kolhaas had worked in DC on an early unsuccessful education choice tax credit initiative, before DC had its opportunity vouchers or charter schools. <ref> https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1981/07/19/2-challenges-to-dc-education-tax-credit-initiative-are-filed/4663f916-fdb6-4b43-b958-5b2589340c44/ </ref>

Kohlhaas came in fourth place with 2,261 votes, or one percent of the total vote. Kolhaas moved to Alaska, where he finished his undergraduate education and is active in the Alaska Libertarian Party as a candidate and activist. <ref> https://ballotpedia.org/Scott_Kohlhaas </ref>

[[Dennis Sobin]] was the Libertarian Party candidate for an at-large seat on the Council of the District of Columbia in 1988. Sobin was an entrepreneur who published an adult magazine, an escort service, telephone party lines, and video stores. He campaigned to decriminalize prostitution and drugs. He said that drug addiction should be treated as a medical disease rather than as a crime. Sobin opposed a proposed law that would have prohibited minors from being inside certain clubs in late hours.

[[Prissy Williams-Godfrey]] was the Libertarian Party candidate for the Ward 2 seat on the Council. Williams-Godfrey was a prostitute and managed a brothel. Police arrested her, saying her campaign offices were actually brothels. Her name did not appear on general election ballots.

[[Nancy Lord]] ran for Mayor of the District of Columbia as a Libertarian in 1990. Lord campaigned promising a ten-percent decrease in the number of employees of the Government of the District of Columbia. She wanted to end welfare payments within two years and she wanted to end rent control laws. She promised to end government regulations that she said strangle small businesses, such as the Boxing Commission and most of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. Lord advocated for increasing property taxes on undeveloped parcels of land, and

[[David W. Morris]] was elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner for Single Member District 2F04. Morris also served as the treasurer of the Libertarian Party of the District of Columbia.

In 2012, Bruce Majors <ref> https://lpedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Majors? </ref> ran as the Libertarian Party candidate for the Congressional delegate for the District of Columbia. In 2010, Majors told a reporter from ''The Washington Post'' that he was comfortable working with people who support the Tea Party movement because they have common goals with libertarians. On his blog, Majors posted advice to attendees of the 2010 Restoring Honor rally that attendees should avoid two Metrorail lines because they go through certain neighborhoods. He wrote that many parts of the District are safe, "but why chance it if you don't know where you are?" <ref> https://www.thedailybeast.com/bruce-majors-an-unlikely-tea-partier </ref>

Martin Moulton ran for Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. Moulton received 18,713 votes, six percent of the total vote, re-establishing permanent ballot status for the Libertarian Party.

DC chair and convention delegate Joseph Bishop Henchman was elected chair of the Libertarian National Committee.  DC LP member Bruce Majors attended the convention and covered it for The Federalist. <ref> https://thefederalist.com/2018/07/03/convention-libertarians-struggle-distinguish-trump/ </ref>

The Libertarians fielded four candidates in the 2018 elections.  Totally coincidentally, the DC Libertarian Party became the first party in Washington, D.C., and perhaps in the nation, to run an all gay slate in an election cycle.  In another possible first, for D.C. if not for the nation as a whole, two of its candidates were married to each other. <ref> https://www.metroweekly.com/2018/11/in-final-tally-libertarian-gay-couple-outperforms-top-republican-in-d-c-election/ </ref>

Ethan Bishop-Henchman received 17,717 votes, or eight percent of the vote, as the only alternative candidate to the incumbent Council Chair, Phil Mendelson, thereby maintaining ballot status for the LP.

In 2020 the DC LP ran [[Patrick Hynes]] for Delegate to Congress in a crowded field with several independent candidates.  He earned over 9,000 votes, maintaining Libertarian ballot status.

=== 2022 National Convention ===

DC elected three delegates to attend the national convention in Reno, NV May 26-29, [[Tom Fleming]], [[Bruce Majors]], and [[Pranav Badhwar]].  Majors and Badhwar were unable to attend the convention and the DC LP allowed them to be replaced with alternates who were not DC residents, [[Stephanie Berlin]] of Texas and [[Amy Lepore]] of Delaware.  [[Tom Fleming]] was DC delegate chair.

The Libertarians managed to get no candidates on the Libertarian primary ballot, due to signature challenges.  However, Libertarian voters were mailed Libertarian primary ballots with spaces for write in votes.  The party conducted a mailing to registered Libertarian voters asking them to write in their votes in the primary during the early voting period.  [[Bruce Majors]] declared his candidacy for both Delegate to Congress and for Chair of the D.C. Libertarian Party.  [[Dennis Sobin]] declared his candidacy for Mayor. The party announced a convention to be held June 26 at the Southeast Public Library. <ref> https://dc.libertarianparty.com/event/dc-mini-convention-2022-06-26/ </ref>