Become Ungovernable

The spectacular implosion of the Libertarian Party

- TIM MURPHY

THE WAR FOR control of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire began to escalate in the spring of 2021, when Jeremy Kauffman got the keys to the Twitter account. Kauffman, a tech entrepreneur, had arrived in the state a few years earlier as part of the Free State Project, which proposed to transform New Hampshire by convincing liberty-minded activists to move there en masse. The state was a small-1 libertarian success story. It had legalized raw milk, slashed budgets, and elected dozens of Free Staters to the legislature-including the House majority leader. But the state and national Libertarian parties, Kauffman felt, were too passive and too leftwing. They were trying to fit in, instead of trying to stand out.

He and his allies made short work of that. In the months that followed, the LPNH account made national headlines with a run of deliberately provocative statements. The party tweeted that "John McCain's brain tumor saved more lives than Anthony Fauci." It called for child labor to be legalized and advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act to fight "wokeness."

State party chair Jilletta Jarvis watched this shift with alarm. A group of rightwing activists was attempting a "hostile take-over," she announced. Jarvis pointed her finger at a new and rapidly growing caucus within the state and national parties that was named for Ludwig von Mises, a 20th century Austrian free-market economist who was one of the intellectual forefathers of libertarianism and who is particularly revered by followers of the former presidential candidate Ron Paul. "Their strategy is, frankly, designed to discredit the Libertarian Party in the state and in our nation," Jarvis warned.