Massachusetts Finds Itself at the Center of the Battle for the Future of the Libertarian Party
Racist tweets and accusations of theft pervade Massachusetts Libertarians in wake of conservative shift in the national Libertarian Party, dimming the Libertarians’ already uncertain future
Summer Maxwell
Cris Crawford isn’t just a member of Massachusetts’s Libertarian Party. She eats, sleeps, and breathes it. The bespectacled ex-software engineer, raised by one Republican and one Democrat, holds the Treasurer office for the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts State Committee (LAMA) and ran for State Treasurer this November. Her husband, Peter Everett, was the Libertarian candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Crawford garnered a surprising 23% of the vote, the strongest performance of any Libertarian candidate.
But suddenly, Crawford sits at the center of a salacious political showdown. In January 2022, a handful of Libertarians representing the new far-right wing of the party, the Mises Caucus, signed a petition to elect new state party leadership.
The signers were expelled from the party as a result of their petition; in turn, they formed the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts (LPM), assuming controversial positions that reflected the new, notorious national Mises Caucus, including backlash to policies designed to reduce hate speech within the party.
The Mises Caucus, named after the Austrian liberal economist Ludwig von Mises, is an alt-right faction of the party that gathered steam in 2021, with the goal of taking control of the national Libertarian party and nationalizing their stances, including banning any government efforts to improve equality.
After the petitioners were cast out of LAMA, the Mises Caucus seized control of the national Libertarian Party at the annual convention in Reno, Nevada, in May, 2022. With their newfound power, the Mises Caucus made major changes to the official Libertarian Party platform, including removing language that denounced bigotry and pro-choice abortion policy.
Under the leadership of Crawford and her fellow State Committee members, the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts has boldly defied this far-right trend, one of just a handful of state parties to reject the new national platform.
Historically Libertarians have presented themselves as a legitimate alternative to the Democrats of Massachusetts, who have heavily dominated state politics for decades. But if the Libertarians of Massachusetts succumb to the alt-right national trend, some Commonwealth voters will find themselves stuck between the Democrats’ status quo or the conservative extremism of the Republicans and Libertarians.
While the Libertarian party represents less than 2% of voters nationwide, the fight for the soul of Massachusetts’s party reveals a deep divide in the limited government movement. As the national party continues to align with far-right Republicans on key issues, the fight between the LPM and LAMA may embolden other state parties to push back against the national leadership.
The Path to Division
Founded in 2017, the Mises Caucus was launched as a backlash to Gary Johnson and former Mass Governor Bill Weld’s pragmatic take on Libertarianism during the 2016 presidential election. While the Mises Caucus retains some core Libertarian values, like opposing war and state economic intervention, it has taken on contentious positions, such as promoting anti-LGBT and pro-sucessionist content.
The Mises Caucus is aware their policies may not sit well with everyone, but that doesn’t worry them. “We don’t want to chase votes for votes sake,” says Aaron Harris, Communications Director for the national Mises Caucus. “We wanna be boldly libertarian and not water down that message, and that message isn’t everyone.”
The ascendant Mises movement prompted the party split at the state level, according to LAMA officials. “They essentially have their own view of how the party should be run that was not congruent with what many would consider libertarian principles and values,” says North Adams city councilor Ashley Shade, who served as chair of the party when the split occurred.
Crawford became aware of Massachusetts’s chapter of the Mises Caucus’s efforts to control the party thanks to some “moles” who forwarded her emails they were getting from Mises leadership explaining the goal of a party takeover. “[The Mises Caucus] didn’t used to be so bad but they got this idea they were gonna take over the party and they used all kinds of methods to do it,” she says.
The Mises Caucus was not only planning a power grab; the Mises Massachusetts Twitter account also set a belligerent tone, spewing racist, fat-phobic, and anti-semitic tweets.
In a dossier of Tweets provided to the Student Dispatch by Crawford, the Mises Caucus of Massachusetts account called LAMA leadership “rootless cosmopolitans,” a Stalin-era antisemitic slur, and posted tweets such as, “Were the lives of the slaves materially different after their freedom?" and “Were women better off being owned by their husbands or the State?”
There was also the parody account of Ashley Shade, which appeared under the name “Fat Ashley Shade,” filled with transphobic and body-shaming attacks on Shade. Another account, under the handle Rothbirdian, who later self-identified themselves as one of the members expelled from the party, used the n-word during official Libertarian Zoom meetings.
Tensions came to head in December of 2021, when 47 members, two-thirds of whom Eddlem estimated were members of the Mises Caucus, signed the petition to elect new party leadership.
By doing so, says Shade, “[Mises Massachusetts] nefariously tried to bypass our constitution.”
Those cast out formed the LPM, and the original party leadership left behind rebranded as the LAMA. Both groups lay claim to the title of rightful Libertarian Party of Massachusetts.
One State, Two Libertarian Parties
While the Mises Caucus’s attempts to take over Massachusetts have been stalled by LAMA, they managed to achieve national domination at the annual Libertarian Convention held in Reno in May. “Almost every Mises-nominated person won in Reno,” says Eddlem. “So, if they wanted to take over they took over. It’s done.
According to Don Graham, who became chair of LAMA after the split, the national party refused to recognize the delegates the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts sent to Reno, instead acknowledging those from the pro-Mises Libertarian Party of Massachusetts.
Furious at the snub, LAMA voted to disaffiliate from the national party. “We didn’t wanna be a part of that,” says Crawford who doesn’t mourn the loss of the national party’s support, nor their choice to recognize the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts. “The national party is just horrible right now, they’re tweeting anti-semitic tweets. They’re terrible,” she says. “So [the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts] can have them.”
In Massachusetts, Libertarianism has become mainstream after achieving major party status thanks to high vote totals in the 2022 elections. That means LAMA’s choice to cut ties with the national party didn’t deter Libertarian voters in the state.
But without the backing of the national party, the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts stands alone against the goliath of the combined forces of the national party and the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts. “It’s been really demoralizing to have them attacking us constantly,” says Crawford.
While the LPM started with few resources, recognition from the national party has breathed new life into the organization by providing access to national party funds and member lists.
But what the LPM still lacks is cash. At the time of the split LAMA had $20K stored in their coffers, but Eddlem believes it’s rightfully his because the LPM was recognized as the legitimate Libertarian affiliate in the Commonwealth, meaning it should have the Libertarian funds. The sides have made salacious claims against each other as they battle for influence, but the most heated clash is over the money. “Chris Crawford was the treasurer, and when new leadership was elected she took off with all the funds, over $20,000,” Eddlem claims. He says that not being able to access those funds cost the LPM the ability to run any candidates in the 2022 state elections. “All our money was taken away, stolen,” he said.
“Pretty much everything that [Eddlem] said is false,” contends Don Graham.
Crawford agrees. “It’s our money, we threw them out,” she says, calling their claims “outright lies.”
Both sides seem confident their organization will become the dominant Libertarian organization in Massachusetts.“We’re the only one the [national party] recognizes,” Eddlem says. “People are universally firmly on our side.” Eddlem called the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts’s election efforts “a kamikaze vanity campaign.”
But Crawford thinks LAMA is here to stay. “We need to continue with recruitment and running people for office,” she says. “We can’t let them get to us.”
David versus Goliath
For now, LAMA is holding fast, setting a precedent for other state parties concerned about the hard-right turn at the national level. After the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts moved to disaffiliate from the national party, the Libertarian organization of New Mexico followed. On the same day, the Libertarian organization of Virginia voted to dissolve itself, citing concerns that the national party had become an alt-right group.
These state-by-state battles matter, because state affiliates are the ones who actually get to decide who goes on the ballot, not the national party. This means if more states continue to break ranks and offer their own separate candidates, it will hurt the Libertarians vote totals for national candidates, like for example, their 2024 presidential nominee.
In the meantime, the state-level split has caused some MA libertarians to give up on the party entirely. “I cannot be a part of a party that doesn’t believe in fighting for the rights of every human being,” says Shade, who is now registered as an independent. She says as the alt-right Mises Caucus took power “I found myself more battling against people that I’m supposed to be working with than I did actually finding myself working with people who believed in the same values that I did.”
For the Libertarians of LAMA who have chosen to stay and fight the Mises Caucus, the future of the Libertarian Party is at stake. Despite the Mises Caucus’s success at attracting national delegates, Crawford believes voters are more ideologically aligned with LAMA’s less conservative Libertarian approach, giving her hope that the Libertarian Party can eventually regain its balance after its pivot right. “All [the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts] does is pour hatred upon us,” she says. “I don’t think that’s gonna attract a lot of people.”