Excellent Small Business Conference

I was delighted to speak to a gathering of Libertarian leaders and strategists yesterday in Fort Wayne, on the invitation of Allen County Chair Mike Sylvester.

Simply put, the Libertarian Party's "Small Business Initiative" is brilliant. The LP has long lacked a core constituency akin to the ones the Republicans and Democrats have. Consider:

Abortion foes will vote Republican no matter what policies the GOP advances in other areas, because so many anti-abortion voters are single-issue voters, the GOP gets these votes.

Where is our single-issue voter? The small business owner.

Conference speakers. From left: Jason Shelley, Indiana Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses; Mike Kole; Ron Reinking from Indiana Policy Review; Mark Schreiber, former Marketing Director of the National Libertarian Party, and developer of the LP's Small Business Initiative.

While the Democrats champion big labor and the Republicans claim big business, the small business owner is devoid of high-dollar lobbyists. They're busy plowing profits back into the business. They can't afford to pay lobbyists $150,000/year to represent them in Washington or in state capitols. So, policy works against them.

Readers of this blog are familiar with how my campaign has been an implemetation of the Small Business Initiative. I have reached out to business owners in the hospitality industry in particular, showing them how the other two parties are killing them, while only the Libertarian Party speaks up consistently in defense of them, against higher taxes, and in favor of their property rights.

Explaining how championing small business owners helped defeat a tax in Fishers.

I have every confidence that this program will begin to spread rapidly throughout the region, to the great benefit of the state affiliates that pick it up. Libertarian representatives from Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri were in attendance.

I urge our County Chairs here in Indiana to get on board, and to always look for small business owners to defend and to promote. After all, issues devide, but constituencies unite.