Some Lib­er­tar­ian Party lead­ers are fum­ing over the party’s de­ci­sion to have for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump head­line their na­tional con­ven­tion this month, with na­tional com­mit­tee mem­bers call­ing on the party to re­scind the in­vi­ta­tion.

The choice has in­flamed grow­ing schisms within the party. State and lo­cal fac­tions, pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates and crit­ics of the right-wing cau­cus that con­trols the party are reg­is­ter­ing their an­ger with Trump’s planned ap­pear­ance. Dis­sent­ers ar­gue there should be a vote over al­low­ing Trump to at­tend “when over half of the mem­ber­ship is up in arms,” ac­cord­ing to emails The Wash­ing­ton Post re­viewed.

Na­tional com­mit­tee Chair An­gela McAr­dle told The Post that the dis­sent has come from “a small noisy fac­tion,” from “a hand­ful of peo­ple al­ler­gic to rel­e­vance, afraid to con­front their po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion, afraid of los­ing con­trol of the nar­ra­tive.”

Grab­bing the spot­light

But “in 50-plus years, the Lib­er­tar­ian Party has never been on the main stage po­lit­i­cally and this is an in­cred­i­ble op­por­tu­nity for us to bring some­one who grabs the spot­light and put them on our stage.”

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The Lib­er­tar­ian Party be­lieves in lim­ited gov­ern­ment and a free-mar­ket econ­omy. It has his­tor­i­cally clashed with some of the plans Trump has dis­cussed im­ple­ment­ing if he wins a sec­ond pres­i­den­tial term, such as de­ploy­ing the mil­i­tary do­mes­ti­cally, ex­pand­ing tar­iffs and in­dem­ni­fy­ing law en­force­ment.

Trump’s par­tic­i­pa­tion comes at a time when Dem­o­crats and Re­pub­li­cans worry that third-party can­di­dates might sway an ex­pected close con­test in No­vem­ber. (Lib­er­tar­ian can­di­dates have typ­i­cally at­tracted small shares of the pres­i­den­tial vote, but in a close race be­tween Trump and Pres­i­dent Biden, even a sin­gle-digit per­cent­age show­ing can af­fect the out­come.)

Trump said in a state­ment that he aims to ap­peal to lib­er­tar­ian vot­ers who share his goal of de­feat­ing Biden. And McAr­dle said the speech will at­tract at­ten­tion the party needs as it has seen a re­cent down­turn in its mem­ber­ship rolls and cof­fers. “We must all work to­gether to help ad­vance free­dom and lib­erty for ev­ery Amer­i­can,” Trump said in a state­ment af­ter his in­vi­ta­tion was an­nounced.

But Chase Oliver, Lars Map­stead, Ja­cob Horn­berger and Mike ter Maat, who are all seek­ing the Lib­er­tar­ian Party’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, told The Post they wor­ried Trump’s pres­ence at the con­ven­tion might be seen as their party’s en­dorse­ment of his can­di­dacy.

“Could you imag­ine if the Re­pub­li­can Na­tional Com­mit­tee in­vited me to come be a main speaker at the con­ven­tion,” Map­stead said. “It seems ri­dic­u­lous, right?”

Horn­berger called it “an abom­i­na­tion.” “People have come to per­ceive that Lib­er­tar­ian Party as right-wing, and he will just be re­in­forc­ing that im­age,” he said.

The party’s lat­est turn

Crit­ics of the lat­est turn in the Lib­er­tar­ian Party, which is now con­trolled by a fac­tion of the party called the Mises Cau­cus, said the group has al­lowed in­creas­ingly right-wing pol­i­cies and ideas to in­fil­trate the party. McAr­dle told pod­caster Austin Peter­sen last week that “Don­ald Trump is a much bet­ter per­son and pres­i­dent than Joe Biden,” fur­ther in­fu­ri­at­ing those in the party seek­ing to dis­tance them­selves from Trump.

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“I think we’re see­ing a lot of peo­ple who said, ‘Oh this is go­ing to be turned into the Don­ald Trump party,’ and they have been feel­ing like they’ve been proven right,” Oliver said about the rise of right-wing party lead­er­ship. “I think it’s up to lib­er­tar­i­ans to shout Don­ald Trump down and to boo him and to give him the re­cep­tion he de­serves to prove them wrong. Oth­er­wise, they’re proven right.”

Divi­sive­ness within the na­tional com­mit­tee lead­er­ship spilled into pub­lic view af­ter the an­nounce­ment of Trump’s speech at the con­ven­tion, when Trea­surer Todd Ha­go­pian mo­tioned to re­scind the in­vite, a move sup­ported by lead­ers in south­ern re­gions, ac­cord­ing to emails The Post re­viewed.

In an in­ter­view, Mal­agon said Ha­go­pian and Tu­nie­w­icz rep­resent “the loud­est peo­ple,” but he said many Lib­er­tar­i­ans want Trump to speak at the con­ven­tion.

McAr­dle also faces a law­suit from Lib­er­tar­ian Na­tional Com­mit­tee mem­ber Beth Vest, who filed a case Fri­day that ar­gues McAr­dle has uni­lat­er­ally taken ac­tion vi­o­lat­ing the party’s by­laws, al­though the com­plaint doesn’t ex­plic­itly men­tion the Trump in­vi­ta­tion.

“People are ter­ri­bly up­set,” Vest said. “I know very few party in­sid­ers, ex­cept the few that are con­nected to this cau­cus and to [McAr­dle], who think this is a good idea.”

Trump and the oth­ers

McAr­dle said con­ven­tion pack­age sales picked up af­ter the Trump news and she ex­pects more me­dia cov­er­age of the event.

She said she has also ex­tended an in­vi­ta­tion to Biden and in­de­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Robert F. Ken­nedy Jr. and rap art­ist Afro­man. Cor­nel West, who is run­ning as an in­de­pen­dent, and Jill Stein, a Green Party can­di­date, were not in­vited, McAr­dle said.

Trump is set to ap­pear at the con­ven­tion on May 25, af­ter a de­bate among the Lib­er­tar­ian can­di­dates, and his re­marks will be open to the pub­lic, McAr­dle said.

Meryl Korn­field is a staff writer on the Pol­i­tics desk of The Wash­ing­ton Post.

The Allegheny County Libertarian Party can be found here.

First Published: May 8, 2024, 9:30 a.m.