The Libertarian Party

LNC Meeting of December 2002

TO:     Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
        December 14-15, 2002 * Washington, DC

FROM:   George Getz, Communications Director
        Jonathan Trager, Staff Writer

* MEDIA REPORT 2002

SUMMARY:

Over the past three months, media coverage of the Libertarian Party has been
driven largely by the November elections, as expected, and also by the
continuing war on terrorism and related legislation.

News reporting on our candidates was, in general, overwhelmingly positive,
and we got a significant amount of national publicity, thanks to a number of
well-run, high-profile races.

The number of media contacts and interviews remains slightly higher than
last year, and significantly higher than in the last non-presidential
election year (1998).  Since the last LNC meeting we also generated three
more TV interviews for LP spokespeople - two of them on national networks -
bringing our TV interview total to 20 for the year.

This report will focus on the elections and on a few other issues that
generated coverage for the party. It will also describe an interesting media
experiment that revolved around trying to give a few candidates a boost of
publicity in their local areas. We would like to get input from the LNC into
whether this approach is worth adopting, since it would involve using
resources differently than we have in the past.

Finally, after a post-convention lull, we have managed to get our op-ed
program up and running again. Our Nov. 25 op-ed on government-mandated
cell-phone etiquette - the first one faxed out under Geoffrey Neale's byline
- has already generated four hits. It is scheduled to be printed in the York
(PA) Daily Record on Sunday, Dec. 1, and is also set to run in the Greenwood
(SC) Index-Journal; the Vincennes (IN) Sun Commercial; and the Journal chain
of four papers in the Washington, DC suburbs.

THE NUMBERS:

From January through the end of October, we averaged 118 media contacts a
month. That's up 14 percent from the 104 contacts we averaged last year, and
up 44 percent from the 82 contacts that we averaged in 1998, the most recent
non-presidential election year.

From January through the end of October, we averaged 59 interviews a month.
That's up 11 percent from the 53 interviews a month we averaged last year,
and up 113 percent from the 28  interviews that we averaged in 1998.

From January through the end of October, we booked 20 TV interviews - 9 of
them on major, national networks, such as Fox, CNN and C-SPAN.

* THE ELECTION:

What generated national coverage for the LP?

                                Specific issues or candidates.

        *       Ed Thompson in Wisconsin earned largely favorable articles
in dozens of papers, including The New York Times magazine,The Washington
Post, USA Today, Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, National Review, and
even The Economist of London, which called Thompson "a more modest creature
than Gov. Jesse Ventura." Ed also taped an interview with NBC's "Today"
show.

        *       Carla Howell's Proposition 1 to End the Income Tax garnered
national coverage from Fox News.com, CNS News, the Los Angeles Times,
syndicated columnist Jeff Jacoby, WorldNetDaily and others.

        *       Rachel Mills, star of the North Carolina "Ladies of Liberty"
calendar, was interviewed on CNN's "Crossfire" and MS/NBC's "Nachman" show.
Her unorthodox fund-raising method was also covered by the Associated Press,
CNN.com and other major media outlets.

        *       Constitutional Amendment A, a fully informed jury measure in
South Dakota, was covered by The New York Times, The Washington Times and
other major papers. CBS' "60 Minutes" also contacted the measure's chief
sponsor, LP member Bob Newland, to inquire about an interview.

        *       Stan Jones, the Montana candidate for U.S. Senate who turned
his skin blue by drinking a colloidal silver solution, was covered by the
Associated Press, CNN.com., and The National Enquirer. He was also
interviewed by Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central.

        *       California gubernatorial candidate Gary Copeland, who spit
on a radio talk show host, was covered by the Associated Press, Los Angeles
Times, and others.

What's clear from looking at this list is that the national media will be
attracted, for better or worse, to whatever is either important or unusual.
Ed Thompson's candidacy, Carla Howell's plan to repeal the income tax, and
the South Dakota measure were all deemed important, because each had a
chance to win, and because had they won they would have had a significant
impact on the state.

Rachel Mills falls into the "unusual" category. Her innovative fund-raising
method -  a calendar featuring lingerie-clad Ladies of Liberty - gave the
media an opportunity to cover sex disguised as politics. Had Rachel been a
"bimbo," as the talking head shows had anticipated, the coverage would have
been "bad" coverage for the LP. The fact that she was a smart, articulate,
candidate who got out a positive Libertarian message turned it into "good"
coverage.

Stan Jones and Gary Copeland also fall into the "unusual" category: It's not
often that a Senatorial candidate turns himself blue, or that a
gubernatorial candidate spits in the face of a radio talk show host during a
live interview.

The fact that the LP ran so many candidates sparked the media's curiosity.

We received dozens of calls from reporters who noticed a sudden influx of
Libertarian or other third-party candidates on the ballot and were wondering
why.  Most of these calls came from Florida, which ran a huge slate of
candidates for the state legislature. We fielded calls from the St.
Petersburg Times, Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Tribune, and Palm Beach Post - all
inquiring about this phenomenon.

A typical example: On June 18 we got a call from reporter Kevin Connolly at
the Orlando Sentinel, who asked: "Why are there suddenly so many
Libertarians on the ballot? Where do you expect to do best? How does it
compare with other states?"

Other state parties that generated several media calls to the national
office as a result of a large number of candidates were North Carolina,
Texas, and Indiana.

Speaking of candidate-related media calls: We fielded dozens and dozens of
calls from reporters who wanted to interview LP candidates, and couldn't.
The reason: No phone numbers, or non-working phone numbers, on web sites. In
many cases, the phone numbers in our database were outdated as well, so all
we could do was refer calls back to the state party. We also received calls
from local print and TV reporters who wanted candidate photos, which we
usually didn't have. So it might be a good idea to routinely put candidate
phone numbers and photos on web sites.

Questions about whether the LP could have an impact on the outcome of an
election.

USA Today reporter Tom Squitieri called at least three times as the election
neared to get an update on federal races in which we might have an impact,
and to get a list of likely state and local wins. His post-election analysis
on Nov. 8 noted, "Nationally, Libertarians reported electing at least two
dozen candidates to local offices. There are 538 Libertarians in local
office."  Squitieri is working on a book about third parties, so perhaps we
can expect continued interest on his part.

On Oct. 30, Steve LeBlanc of the Associated Press called the national office
to ask about our election prospects. His Nov. 4 article, "Third Parties Try
to Make Inroads," observed, "Libertarians are the most aggressive this year,
with more than 600 state legislative candidates, 24 gubernatorial
candidates, 21 U.S. Senate hopefuls and 219 for the U.S. House."

Other major papers that showed an interest in LP candidates: Tom Brazaitis
from The Cleveland Plain Dealer called on Oct. 30 to find out whether we
would have an impact on any federal races. On Oct. 24, Juliette Eilperin
from The Washington Post called to talk to Ron Crickenberger about the
Georgia Senate race, in which the LP had targeted incumbent Max Cleland for
defeat.  On Oct. 16 FoxNews.com reporter Kelley Beaucar called to find out
how many federal candidates we had and whether any would have an impact.
(Fox also posted the above-mentioned AP article on its home page.)

An article on the LP's impact also ran in National Review, and a
post-election analysis in The Weekly Standard was headlined: "Spoiling Some
of the Fun. Libertarian candidates cost Republicans a number of victories in
the last election." (Those will be attached to my written report.)

Finally, on the "Beltway Buzz" section of MS/NBS's "Ludlow and Cramer" on
Nov. 26, one of the guests talked about the LP's "spoiler role" and said it
cost the GOP four seats in the Senate.

Interestingly, although the media seem to care somewhat about the LP's
impact, they don't respond when we write press releases about it. Our
release calling attention to the fact that we made history by contesting a
majority of U.S. House seats for the second election cycle in a row was a
dud - it generated zero calls.

So while reporters in a particular state do notice a sudden emergence of
candidates on the ballot, national reporters don't seem to care how many
candidates we run; they only care what impact those candidates will have.

Most successful election-related press release:  After Bill Winter wrote an
LP News article about Rachel Mills, he called to suggest that she might be
able to generate national publicity for the LP.  So he recycled the news
article into a press release, complete with Rachel's provocative photo from
the calendar.  (A few hours later we learned that Rachel had already been
invited onto Crossfire, which confirmed our belief in her marketability.) So
we faxed the release out to our national list and presto:  It generated 18
calls over the next several weeks and about a dozen broadcast interviews for
Mills, as well as several print media calls.

Other election-related calls: On Nov. 14 Matt Blanchard of The Philadelphia
Inquirer, who was writing a profile on LP PA gubernatorial candidate Ken
Krawchuk, called for background on the party. On Oct. 23, AP reporter
Kristen Wyatt in Atlanta called to ask "why the Georgia LP is so strong
compared to other state parties." On Oct. 2, Larry Elder's producer at KABC
in Los Angeles called after watching New Jersey Senate candidate Elizabeth
Macron on C-SPAN testifying in the Torricelli case. Elder interviewed her
later that day.

* A MEDIA EXPERIMENT:

This election season we decided to do something different: Offer to write
press releases for a few candidates in an effort to generate a little extra
publicity for their campaigns.

We hadn't done this in the past because we felt that, because of the time it
would take the national office to get up to speed on local issues, the
results wouldn't be worth it.  Obviously, we can't track the activities of
1,500 candidates, or be knowledgeable about the issues in 50 states and
thousands of communities.

In a worst-case scenario, a release could do more harm than good by
embarrassing the candidate. The way to avoid that, of course, is to consult
closely with the candidate and make sure he or she can sign off on the
release. But doing that, of course, only adds to the original problem by
spending even more time on the process.

Another argument is that there a limited number of candidates we could help,
and it's unclear what criteria we could use to select them.

The argument in favor of helping a candidate is that the national office has
infrastructure that most states and candidates lack - such as the software
to create lists quickly and fax releases, and experience in producing press
releases that generate calls.

So the media department embarked on an experiment. After consulting with Ron
Crickenberger, we developed a short list of candidates who could either win
their race or affect the outcome, and might welcome our help. (What better
way to measure our success, we thought, than to generate a last-minute
publicity blitz that put a candidate over the top?)

The list included Hardy Macia, who was running for the Vermont statehouse;
Jim Richardson, running for sheriff in Skamania County, WA;  James Dan, who
narrowly lost his state house race in Nevada in 2000 and was mounting a
rematch; Sandy Thomas, who was running against incumbent Sen. Max Cleland as
part of the LP's "spoiler strategy";  and Rachel Mills, running for North
Carolina statehouse.

For each candidate, we had planned to offer to produce a press release or
two; create a media list in their area using our Bacon's CD-rom software;
fax it out using our blast fax system; and perhaps follow it up with
proactive calling depending on whether we had contacts in that area.

We eliminated Richardson after a Bacon's search of his rural area turned up
just one media outlet. Hardy Macia politely declined our help, saying he
knew many of the reporters in his area, and had things under control.

That left us with Dan, Thomas, and Mills.

James Dan:  We agreed to write a release for Dan on the issue of bilingual
education, which Dan feels should be phased out of public schools. Though
it's not a clear Libertarian issue, since it involves trying to "improve" a
government program that we believe should be privatized (government
schools), Dan pointed out that implementing an English-only curriculum had
dramatically improved test scores in California, and saved taxpayers
millions in remedial education costs.

At any rate, we created a list of Las Vegas media, which included about 22
outlets. Then we wrote a draft of the release, ran it by James, who
suggested a few changes, and faxed it out. (The release is on the LP site
and will be included with the printed report.)

The result: Just one radio interview, on KXNT in Las Vegas. But considering
that we had only 22 outlets on our list, that's not too bad - it's actually
a response rate of about 5 percent.  For purposes of comparison, a typical
national release gets sent to a list of about 600 outlets, and gets about
six calls, for a response rate of about 1 percent.

Sandy Thomas:  Thomas was targeting incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland as
part of the LP's drug war strategy. We thought we might be able to create
some publicity by announcing that Thomas was trying to peel away black votes
from the Democrat who, after all, supported a number of government programs
that harmed African-Americans disproportionately, such as the War on Drugs,
Social Security, and government-run schools.

Our Oct. 28 press release urged blacks to "throw off their chains and
abandon Max Cleland" - and support Libertarian Sandy Thomas instead.

We faxed this release to a Georgia list, as well as to our national and
"Inside the Beltway" lists, since it involved a U.S. Senate race.

The result: Two calls. One came from a radio station in Phoenix, AZ (!)
which scheduled an interview with George Getz about how the Cleland race
could affect the outcome of the Senate.  The second call came from a
reporter for the Columbus (GA) Ledger, three days after the election. She
was working on a post-election story about why Cleland lost and why the LP
targeted him, so we were able to claim some credit for his loss.

Rachel Mills:  In this case, Bill Winter had already created a release (as
described earlier) to send to our national list. That release was
responsible for some of the national publicity Rachel had already received.

We decided to fax that release to a newly created list for Durham, NC, which
is the city closest to her district. Then we followed it up with proactive
calls to familiar reporters and talk hosts.

The result: Three more interviews. The Alan Handelman show, which is heard
on 57 FM stations on the Fox Radio Network and has an affiliate in Rachel's
district, interviewed Rachel on Oct. 6, then invited her in-studio for
another interview a few days before the election. Bob Adams at WIOZ also
interviewed her.

It's likely that the local release would have generated more calls if Rachel
had not already had some national exposure.

So, what did we learn from the experiment?  That we can, indeed, generate
calls from the media in a targeted state or district, and that the process
of working with a candidate to produce it went more smoothly than we had
anticipated.

Unfortunately the experiment was too limited to be pronounced a success. The
real question is whether a sustained, targeted, media effort in a particular
district can substantially increase the media attention in a particular
race. A related question is whether those gains are worth the foregone
alternative, which is what the LP HQ media department would stop doing in
order to do this.

Perhaps the LNC wants to weigh in on this.

* NON-ELECTION MEDIA:

Press releases related to the possibility of war with Iraq, to the military
in general, and to domestic surveillance programs continue to generate
responses. Over the past two months, we have generated a total of 14 calls
and about a dozen interviews from our releases on Iraqi weapons inspections;
on a federal law requiring high schools to share student data with military
recruiters; and warning Americans about government propaganda.

Our Nov. 20 press release on the Pentagon's "Total Information Awareness"
database also struck a nerve, resulting in 9 calls, and interviews on about
65 radio stations.  A Nov. 21 CNN news story picked up a quote from the
release: "So much for the presumption of innocence and the right to
privacy," said George Getz, a spokesman for the Libertarian Party. "Unless
this Orwellian  project is dismantled, innocent Americans will suffer under
the kind of  high-tech, 24-hour surveillance that the Stasi and the KGB
would have envied."

Better yet, the quote was followed by a response from Undersecretary of
Defense Pete Aldridge, who said it is "absurd" to think the Defense
Department is "trying to become another police agency."

It's clear that rapidly expanding government surveillance programs have the
public and the media concerned, which should make it easier for us to join
(and in some cases lead) the chorus of opposition.

Other recent press releases that attracted media interest: Our Oct. 10
release on a government-funded retirement home for chimpanzees drew 8 calls
and 6 interviews. The Sept. 5 press release lauding McDonald's decision to
make low-fat french fries as a free-market solution to the "obesity crisis"
resulted in 6 calls and 5 interviews. Our Oct. 17 press release on gun
fingerprinting proposals that were unveiled after the Beltway sniper
shootings generated 6 calls and 5 interviews, heard on 191 stations.

 * TV INTERVIEWS:

Since the last LNC meeting we have arranged three TV appearances for LP
spokespeople:

        *       On September 17, Ron Crickenberger appeared on Fox News'
O'Reilly Factor.  The invitation was prompted by the LP's press release on
the drug-related arrest of Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
The point of the release: After insisting that his daughter's latest drug
episode should be treated as a "family matter" rather than as a criminal
matter, Gov. Jeb Bush has a moral obligation to pardon every nonviolent drug
offender in the Florida state prison system.

        *       On September 20, Rachel Mills appeared on MS/NBC's "Nachman"
show to discuss her Ladies of Liberty calendar. A few days earlier we had
contacted MS/NBC producer Greg Cockrell, formerly with Brian Williams and
now with Ashley Banfield, to ask his advice about which show might be
interested in Rachel, and he agreed to "shop the idea around" to other
producers. Nachman producer Tommy Llamas then called to schedule Rachel, who
acquitted herself well on the air and did an excellent job promoting the
party, as she had previously done on Crossfire.

        *       On October 10 we booked an interview with LP NY candidate
Jim Lesczynski on New York City's CBS affiliate. Producer Erica Roberson had
contacted the LP office looking for someone to discuss Mayor Bloomberg's
plan to ban smoking in public places. As things turned out, Lesczynski was
perfect for the job, having taken the lead on criticizing previous smoking
ban in New York.

We also fielded several calls from TV producers that did not result in
interviews, indicating that the LP remains in their Rolodexes.

        *       On October 3, CNN "Crossfire" producer Amy Farrar called to
say they were doing a segment on Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to "ban noise,"
and she wanted other examples of silly laws in New York. (Apparently she was
aware of previous LP releases on silly laws or had heard LP interviews on
New York stations.)  We were able to give her a few examples, along with
suggested punch lines for the show.

        *       On October 28, a Fox News producer in Los Angeles who was
working on a segment about the Beltway sniper called and wanted examples of
parents who had taught their children to use a gun. She had discovered our
1999 "Kids and Guns" press release about a study that showed that kids who
were taught by their parents to shoot were less likely than others to commit
crimes. We referred her to Sandi Webb and other Los Angeles area LP members
who were known gun toters, but we don't think an interview resulted.

        *       On October 30, CBS "60 Minutes" producer Tom Anderson called
looking for contact information for Bob Newland, the LP member who
spearheaded the jury nullification measure in South Dakota.  Anderson didn't
have much time to talk, so we're not sure exactly what he had in mind. As
far as we know nothing aired, and it's unlikely it will air now that the
election is over.

Those three interviews bring the yearly total to 20, nine of which were on
national networks.

        *       A summary of those nine, with the most recent ones first:

                        Oct. 11:      Ron Crickenberger on Fox's "O'Reilly
Factor" - Noelle Bush's drug problem
                Sept. 17:     Rachel Mills on MS/NBC's Nachman show - Ladies
of Liberty calendar
                Aug. 27:     Steve Dasbach on CNN's "Crossfire" - USDA's
food pyramid
                Aug. 2:       Steve Dasbach on "Crossfire" -
government-mandated vacation
                July 7:        Geoffrey Neale on C-SPAN's  "Washington
Journal" - LP convention
                July 3:        Steve Dasbach on "Crossfire" - LP convention
                May 7:       George Getz on "O'Reilly Factor" - Let Mike
Tyson Box
                March 14:  Sheriff Bill Masters on C-SPAN's "Washington
Journal" - War on Drugs
                March 6:    Ron  Crickenberger on "O'Reilly Factor" - Drug
War ads



* MEDIA MISC.:

LP News editor position:

Bill Winter continues to do a superb job producing LP News from his home in
New England, along with help from Jon Trager at the headquarters office.
Currently Bill and Geoff Neale are reviewing the latest crop of resumes for
the LP News editor position and lining up another round of interviews.

Liberty Pledge News:

In addition to helping out with LP News, Jon Trager has also taken over
production of Liberty Pledge News from Bill Winter.  Jon also helps George
Getz with other media-related tasks.