Excellent Convention
I spent Saturday in Clarksville, Indiana (north of the Ohio River of Louisville) for the joint conventions of the Libertarian Party of Indiana, and of Kentucky. I was rather impressed.
Right off the top, I liked the cost savings made available by working jointly. Rather than having two sets of expenses, one set allowed for more money to be allocated for speakers, and I have no doubt that the quality of them had a great deal to do with the record attendance for an off-year, where not a single candidate for office was nominated. I also enjoyed the opportunity to discuss regional differences with our neighbors to the south.
I suspect the attendance growth also can be explained by the sense I get of growing dissatisfaction with the two older parties. There were many new faces among the Indiana delegates.
But due to my 2006 campaign for Secretary of State, it was terrific to be with so many of the people who worked alongside me, and in support of me. I only wish I could have stayed an extra day.
On to business, the convention was a gold mine of interview subjects for the podcast. In no particular order, I interviewed:
Al Cox, Brown County
Ed Coleman, Indianapolis
Ryan Liedtke, St Joseph County
Doug Horner, Fort Wayne
Rebecca Sink-Burris, Bloomington
Sam Goldstein, Chair, Libertarian Party of Indiana
Ken Moellman, Chair, Libertarian Party of Kentucky
Luke McKellar, Ohio Central Committe Chair
Wayne Allyn Root, candidate for President 2012
I also recorded the speeches of:
Daniel Williams, on drug policy
Goldstein, acceptance speech
Radley Balko, Senior Editor, Reason Magazine
Root, on the media and his campaign
Look for much to come from the convention on the podcast in the next several weeks!
3 comments:
I think it was also a real boost for the Kentucky party. After bottoming out a few years ago, they're starting to grow again-- and a combined convention was probably useful and encouraging to them.
The only cost is making the convention less accessible to northern Hoosiers. Other options would be to combine resources with other bordering states or to go with regional conferences-- at least on occasion.
The conventions do alternate in region: southerly-Indy-northerly-Indy, etc., so those at the northerly or southerly extremes of the state do have some travel when the events are on the other end of the state. At least Indiana isn't as long as Kentucky from end to end, or California even. The Chair of the Kentucky party told me the drive from one end of his state to the other is 9-10 hours.
There was buzz about combining with Michigan in the future, or Ohio on one of our Indy/Central Indiana years.
If I were in Indiana's shoes, I'd approach Ohio and Michigan today about doing a joint convention in 2011 up at the NE corner of Indiana. And then Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky in 2013.
What a great convention!
The only thing I have to criticize is this: I'd personally like to see a bit more focus on sharing success stories, and failure stories as well. We need to share information across state lines. (I helped plan from the KY side, so I'm to blame as much as anyone)
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