Chapter 1: After Winning Every Battle

May 26, 2024, on the floor of the giant hall in the Washington D.C. Hilton hotel for the 2024 Libertarian Party national convention, I’ve been in knots for hours. The sixth and final round (at least for me) of voting for the party’s presidential nominee is underway.

Only Chase Oliver and I are left standing for a head-to-head finale.

Everything is unfolding just as my campaign manager, Michael Heise, had predicted months before. I’ve handily won the first five rounds. Candidate after candidate has been eliminated. My vote tally has increased with each round until round five, although my lead percentage has just diminished. In round four, I garnered 335 votes and held my largest lead of the day, with an 11.67% edge over Oliver. But in round five, I lost one vote and my lead over Oliver has narrowed to 5.52%.

Before the vote, Heise and I talk to Mike ter Maat (MtM) for the third time. MtM was eliminated in round five. Just as Heise had predicted, he was last to come off the board before this one-on-one contest between Chase and me. Heise and I head to the center of the convention floor again, where MtM has been posted with the Virginia delegation.

Dave Smith, Jeff Douglas, Clint Russel and several other people are huddled with us. Chase Oliver stands outside the circle with that characteristically and terminally angry scowl on his face.

Heise and I had told MtM after rounds three and four that he was going to come off the board soon. MtM denied the prospect, saying a shakeup was in the offing. MtM had promised me no less than three times through the course of the campaign that he’d endorse me when or if he came off the board. That time has come, so we are trying to call in the promise. In fact, in Texas, at the Texas LP convention, MtM emphatically told me that he did NOT want Chase Oliver to be the nominee and would make sure of it.

But now he equivocates. We can’t get him to confirm his commitment.

After some wrangling, he lines up behind a microphone to make an announcement. Before he makes a statement, I walk up to MtM and ask him, point blank: You’re not going to endorse Chase now, are you? He says no while shaking his head as if the idea was preposterous.

He announces in a point of parliamentary procedure that he has accepted the role of vice president with Chase Oliver. If that is not an endorsement, then nothing is.

Meanwhile, MtM’s statement was not a point of parliamentary procedure, but it’s too late. He’s said it already. The election has shifted entirely. This is the endorsement that Heise said would clinch my nomination, but it’s just gone south. MtM also complains that he’s tried to work with Heise and the Mises Caucus (MC), to no avail. I guess he means that he tried to get the caucus’ endorsement, or else to shake them from their exclusive endorsement of me but failed. In other words, MtM suggests that he’s been scorned by the caucus and is now retaliating.

Panicked, Heise and I return to the Pennsylvania delegation on the left side of the hall. We need to vote. The only hope, several of us say, is that MtM’s announcement came only after many delegates had already cast their votes. Otherwise, his delegates would naturally follow him onto Chase’s slate, and I will lose the nomination, even after winning the first five rounds.

The nearly 950 delegates are astir. The chatter intensifies, coming to a crescendo. Arrayed like multiple judges to decide my fate, the delegates have returned their completed ballots. It all seems all too informal to me. And surreal, like so much of the weekend. We’ve voted on index cards, on which we’ve written the name of our preferred candidate. We’ve folded our ballots and remitted them to our respective state chairs. I’m seated with Pennsylvania and of course I’ve voted for myself.

The media is swarming, including a Washington Post reporter who interviewed me earlier about what happened the night before, and a cameraman for Politico, who’s been following me around for at least the past hour, taking hundreds of shots. I’d even posed for a thumbs-up photo after the round five results were displayed on three big screens. Everything that’s gone on before this point is now one giant blank.

During the counting and tabulation, although the votes have already been cast, I take a knee, praying for one last intervention. As far as I am concerned, I’ve been granted several miracles already. Thanks to the added scrutiny I’ve brought upon myself, my detractors would use this impromptu genuflection against me after the fact. Was he falling over?   

But it must have been two hours ago by now when much of this same delegation burst out laughing in approbation at the first few lines of my nomination speech:

Good morning fellow libertarians.

I have a confession.

I’m high…

On liberty!

This came after my final video “It’s Time to RecTheRegime” was received with thunderous applause. It came after Dave Smith’s nomination speech in which he said that I am the educator that the party needs. It came before several standing ovations from delegates during my speech. It came after the infamous gummy.

[Chapter 2 to follow shortly.]