A message from Radar
 

Greetings and Salutations my fellow Cellarites!

Today I'm very pleased with the election results. In my very first election, I got nearly 8% of the vote. This is double the number of votes the last Libertarian Candidate got, and 4 times the percentage.

My opponent won the election as usual, but she did so with 58,000 less votes than she got during the last election. She got her normal 83% of the total votes cast in this heavily gerrymandered district.

Since there was no Republican candidate in the race, the Republican vote was split between myself and the whacko AIP Party candidate. He got the majority of this vote since he was the only pro-life (aka anti-choice / anti-woman / anti-freedom / pro-fascism) candidate.

If I could have won the entire election by claiming I was against abortion, I'd prefer to lose. I will never give up my principles. I will always be an honest, hard-working, ethical, reasonable, logical, intelligent, and "modest" candidate. ;)

I learned a lot during my first experience running for congress and I'm confident that I'll do even better next time. In fact, I'm planning on coming in at least 2nd place next time.

To those of you, who supported me, thank you very much.



--
Your Friend in Liberty,


Radar
Libertarian Congressional Candidate
California - District nn

Well, good for you, Radar! Best wishes in your next attempt. At least no one can call you a quitter.

You didn't win, but at least you spent your time, energy and money on something unproductive.

Well done, Radar. Lib candidates here in Missouri only got 2-4% of the vote, so you kicked relative ass.

Libs got about 2% here in Texas.

In what way was it unproductive? Is it your contention that anyone who ever loses a race was unproductive?

I don't subscribe to that defeatist attitude. I have infinitely more respect for someone who tries and fails than the person who never tries and badmouths those who do. I don't like the "If you can't win, you shouldn't even try" camp.

I was very successful in getting the Libertarian message out there, and in getting more votes than libertarian candidates before me and in building name recognition for next time.

The last LP candidate in my district got 2.1% of the vote

I'll be better prepared, and better funded next time, although the way the LP is going, I may run as an independent.

You go, radar!!

A good showing indeed. And if it educated you in being politic, even better. Congratulations, and encouragement.

I'm sorry for sounding bitter about it, but it's important to remember that you lost. If in fact you "got the word out", 92% of people decided that it did not represent what they wanted from a government representative.

Through a lot of practice, Libertarians are excellent at digging victory out of every loss. You MUST remember that the bottom line is that, after all this effort, there was no ACTUAL political change. Which is supposed to be the point.

More people voted for you, sure: in an election where they knew the result all along. Politics dictate your total more than you did; winning the leftover protest vote is an exercise in irrelevancy. The L party is still throwing an "oh-fer" in Federal races, 35 years in.

UT's point is inescapable; if any libertarian, big L or small, actually wishes to see libertarian ideas take hold in this or any nation, libertarians must learn how to win. This is going to mean attaining a substantial power base, and not trying to kick out or alienate LP members, but instead to bend every effort to attract many.

I don't think it's a matter of learning how to win, I think it's a matter of having the resources (people, money, connections, etc) to be able to win. The Libertarian message is the best, it's just too expensive to get it out to everyone when you don't take dirty money or sell out your principles like the major parties.

I got the word out to some people. I certainly didn't get it out to most of them. It takes time to build up significant name recognition and respect in a community and it's extremely difficult to do it in a district where people vote on race and your race amounts to 10% of the population.

The only color that REALLY matters though is green. If you've got a lot of money, you can get the votes. If I had $500,000 to spend on the election, I'd have had a good chance at winning.

I'd remark, rather in the fashion of shutting things up like a telescope, that having the resources is learning how to win.

But you don't have $500,000, so this, like everything else, is merely fantasy politics.