 The main function of the Libertarian Party is to try to make the United States a freer place to live. People disagree on what strategy to take to achieve that purpose. I believe there's room for both strategies to send out strong messaging campaigns and to win elections. Meet the Libertarian Party's new boss. And I hate making promises because I sound like a scumbag politician but I will move heaven and earth to make this thing functional and not embarrassing for you. We are going to change the country. Angela McCarta won her election for Libertarian National Committee Chair with an overwhelming 70% of the vote at the party's national convention in Reno, Nevada this May. Congratulations incoming chair, McCarta. She had the backing of the Mises caucus whose candidates swept all the leadership positions at the convention and she used her opportunity on the main stage to lay out her vision for a new direction for America's third largest party. If anything like a lockdown or a vaccine mandate happens again we don't whiff the ball and humiliate ourselves and alienate everyone out there. I sat down with McCartlyn Reno a day before she became the party's new chair to better understand what changes she wants to make to the party's messaging, political strategy, and official policies. So I have a couple of passion projects and one is reforming the messaging that comes out of the national party and that's not just the Twitter, that's our email campaigns, that's everything that's forward facing for the party. And the other thing that is really critical to me is that we start behaving like the giant organization that we are with some basic planning, project management, conflict resolution, internal marketing, communications, those are things that we don't have and they're things that are not prioritized right now. So they're priorities for me. Let's start with the messaging. What's wrong with the current or you know recent LP messaging? Sure. So let's look at the war stuff for example. We're engaged indirectly right now in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and right on the heels of that there could be, there's talk about a conflict happening between China and Taiwan. And we are the party of peaceful foreign policy and non-intervention. And what message does the national party put out? Taiwan is a country and that is what, well people on the left and the right from the Republican and Democratic parties are yelling right now that we've got to throw money, financial aid, firepower, artillery support to Taiwan. I don't think that's libertarian. As much as I feel for the people of Taiwan, I think we need to be much more consistent in our messaging on war. Taiwan is a country. That statement coming from the LP offends you. Why shouldn't the LP assert the self-determination of a country or a foreign place? We can advocate for self-determination without repeating the talking points of the Biden administration. And I believe that the simple message Taiwan is a country is unclear about how we feel, where we stand on the issue of war. We need to be clear on the issue of war. So does that mean, you know, Taiwan is a country we wish them well would be something coming out of you or out of your party? We oppose war and engaging in foreign conflicts while recognizing the autonomy or sovereignty of the people of Taiwan. Is that the type of message you would put out or would you just be silent on it because to acknowledge Taiwan as a country would overlap with either a Democrat or Republican? We have to speak to the issues. We just need to be clear on our position. You know, a lot of people in the media are saying messaging has to be more bold. Yes. What does that mean fundamentally? Does the national platform have to look like the LP of New Hampshire? No. Okay, so what does it mean? So when I talk about bold messaging I'm thinking about two instances in particular that almost all libertarians can relate to. Ron Paul's Giuliani moment where he goes on the national debate stage and to discuss his blowback for the first time and explains what happened on September 11th. That was a crucial pivotal moment in libertarian history and it was shocking and it upset people, but it was not edge lordy. It was not using offensive language. It was just telling the truth and I think that we need to come back to being truth tellers. And the other moment that I point to was when Ron Paul was on the debate stage and people asked him about drugs and he said that he would decriminalize heroin and people laughed and they were shocked and they asked him to explain and he just laughed it off and said, oh, come on now. You think you're all going to go shoot up heroin once it's decriminalized and then people laughed and they said, you're right. I'm never going to do heroin. So you're not talking about being edge lordy and so when the LP New Hampshire says something on Martin Luther King Day saying America owes blacks nothing. They should be happy to be here. That's not what you're talking about. No and I will tell you that I did negotiate quite a bit behind the scenes to have that particular message changed and I think that it's very important for us to understand what's actually transpired here. The New Hampshire LP has been reactionary against the poor messaging at the national level and sometimes they do a fantastic job. But that doesn't ever get discussed. You know, it only comes up in the news when they kind of whiff the ball and have a little bit of a blunder. Everyone does theirs are just a little bit louder than ours. So what I would like to do is have really good messaging come out of national so people don't become so reactionary and angry and go to such extremes. What's the key reforms or changes that the Mises caucus would bring to the LP, something that you take charge. So changing the messaging is going to be one and also making the libertarian party environment friendlier to the larger liberty movement because it's not very friendly right now. We tend to push out to people who are a little bit more socially conservative and I think that there's room in the party for people who are libertine and socially conservative and I would like them to feel that way. Are you conservative or libertine? I think truthfully I'm sort of a social moderate. I don't count as a strict social conservative. I'm divorced. I'm in my 30s with two cats. You know, I just don't count. So a couple or three of the biggest issues that are being talked about this weekend are the Mises caucus withdrawal of the abortion plank. This has been something that has been in the libertarian party platform since it began saying basically that women have a right to an abortion and in the early stage it was that the state did not have an interest for a certain period of time in a pregnancy. Now it's throughout you know that the government should have no role in regulating abortion. Why is pulling that plank meaningful? So the platform has changed actually over the course of several decades and what it is now is not what it was when the party was founded. And even though I think that you can read the language in the plank to interpret it that abortion is wrong or abortion is okay and it's up to you. I do think that that language is there on its face when people encounter it. People who are outside of the party think that it is an explicitly pro-choice plank and we are never going to agree on it in the party. We're just not. My personal view on it is to be fairly agnostic. I don't have strong feelings on the abortion plank but many people in the Mises caucus do and many people in the pro-life caucus do and there's not a hundred percent overlap in those two groups. But isn't the plank is really about the role of government? I think it is and I don't think that it's phrased well enough to communicate that. So why not change the language as opposed to officially I mean that has to be seen as moving away from being a choice party. I think it's been tried in the past many times to change the language and it has changed some and people feel that they are at a crossroads now where it's an irreconcilable difference and we should remove it and have no comment on it as a national party because there are members on both sides of the issues who are arguing in good faith. Immigration is another big issue. What is the Mises caucus you know a take on immigration? We do not take a stance officially on immigration. So we have members who are open borders anarchists and we have members who believe in private borders. If that I know I understand that that is not something that most people get what we're talking about but it's very far reaching into the future that eventually all land must be privatized and the landowner decides who crosses borders. And then we have some members who think not yet we should have semi-closed borders for now but we should ease our immigration it's all over the place. So what the LP should have no position on immigration? I don't know that the LP should have no position on immigration. I think that we need to work over the next couple of years to see what our members want and what they'd be comfortable with and whatever changes we end up making to the immigration plank if we go there need to be something that convey libertarian principles clearly while making room for people who are anarchists and menarchists. What is the libertarian principle in closing borders or restricting free you know free movement of people? There are some libertarians who believe that the welfare warfare state must be ended before we can open the borders because of the crisis that has happened with government spending because illegal immigration is incentivized due to other bad government policies like the drug war and like the war on terror. And so some libertarians think that those problems need to be resolved before we can open the border. Another issue that's come up a lot in discussions about the Mises caucus taking over is getting rid of the language that condemns bigotry. Why is that something that should be taken out of the libertarian party platform? What is a bigot? No one can agree. People think I'm a bigot because I have certain friends they don't like. I think a bigot is probably somebody who talks about Martin Luther King Day says blacks have nothing to complain about. But no one agrees. All it leads to is everybody in the party pointing fingers and calling each other a bigot. I believe in freedom of speech. I prefer when people don't say horribly racist offensive things. I think that it's not well met, that it's pointless, it's senseless. It's not a good position to take regardless of your political affiliation. But there's room for that in the Mises caucus libertarian party. Can you explain what you mean when you say there's room? Is the Mises caucus position that you can be a bigot and be a member of the libertarian party? Yeah, I think that that is absolutely the position. Because we don't agree on what being a bigot means. Can segregationists be voluntary segregationists are welcome into the libertarian party? Segregation based on what? Race. They can. We're not going and trying to pull segregationists into the party. But we also don't do litmus tests. Yeah. Well, on race. Because there's litmus tests on religion, on race. But on foreign policy, on economic policy, etc. We would not welcome anyone into the party who wanted to secede and make an ethno-state and use government force for that. And I also find that most of the people who engage in that sort of rhetoric, they're not comfortable with what we do. They're not comfortable with tolerance. Really, the question needs to be reframed to like, what do you tolerate? It's not what do we welcome or what do we want to be a part of it. We tolerate some pretty rotten people sometimes in the larger party. There are people out there trying to curse me and steal my hair and wish me death. They're tolerated in the party. There's a lot of bad things out there that are much worse than someone spouting off some crappy racist comments. What are the most pressing threats to liberty right now? War, inflation, mandates, the potential rise of lockdowns again. I think that. How has the Libertarian Party fared in terms of pushing back against lockdowns and mandates? The National Libertarian Party didn't speak out against lockdowns for an entire year, so not very well. State parties and county parties did a much better job. What will be the relationship between the state parties and the national party under your leadership? Well, it'll be a better relationship. We're going to have better communication and the national party is going to work harder to serve the needs of the state parties. What is the main function of the Libertarian Party from your perspective? The main function of the Libertarian Party is to try to make the United States a freer place to live and people disagree on what strategy to take to achieve that purpose. I believe there's room for both strategies to send out strong messaging campaigns and to win elections. So is under you the LP would be committed to running candidates and essentially every race that's that's possible? No, we're not running candidates in every single race. We don't have the resources to do that. We would be realistic. When you spread out your resources to thin no one gets elected and everyone is frustrated and insulted. So what we need to do is understand where we should spend our resources and sometimes that's going to be local candidates and sometimes that's going to be candidates who are running in pivotal ballot access campaigns. We have to have the discernment to understand where it should go. Is the determination done at the national level or at the state level? So when it comes to the national party's resources it's going to be done at the national level and some of that's going to it's going to involve various things. One of the things that's going to involve is better communication with the state affiliates to see what they need and it's not always money. Everybody needs money but why would we throw money at a state that doesn't have enough volunteers or manpower? Why would we throw money at them without first building them up and getting them other resources they need that are critical? We need to start having our subcommittees work together instead of recreating the wheel and stepping on each other's toes. So candidate support needs to work closely with ballot access. That that is how we can make better decisions to decide which candidates to back and run. We have to talk to them and see what progress they've made. What's their political background? What's the opposition like? What happens? Is there an opportunity if this candidate doesn't win? Can he drop down and jump in another local race very soon? How important is it to maintain ballot access right now? If we match this is there another person who can come out of the shadows and match that money equally? There are so many factors I don't feel that we take into consideration. I've talked to a couple people about the finances of the Libertarian Party which are pretty dire right now and some of them attribute that to the Mises Caucus takeover. How do you respond to something like that? I think the party has been very poorly financially managed over the last couple of years. We don't do our budget on a month-to-month basis. We don't keep track of our finances very well. We don't manage how much money we're spending every month. We have just a big pot of money and it just goes out and that's not the way to run an organization. You need better management of their finances. We need better fundraising appeals. There's been an issue with the Frontier Project which I totally support and want to make sure that we keep playing it. Explain what the Frontier Project is. The Frontier Project is something that the Libertarian Party at the national level works with to get people elected at the state level and there have been a lot of complaints recently about a lack of financial transparency and that people don't like the way certain decisions were made and where the money is spent and so unfortunately that has the result of having donors drop out or start whisper campaigns that they're going to pull their donations. Do you have membership goals as chair? What would those be? So first we're going to do an audit to see how many members we have actually gained in an off-year, a midterm election cycle here and we're going to try to meet that goal again because I think that's the most reasonable way to approach it. I would love to increase our membership by 10 percent every year but I have to make sure that that's actually reasonable and doable. The last three presidential elections, 2020, 2016, 2012, those are the three best outcomes at the presidential level for the LP and 50 plus years of history. Were those good candidates? Were those good races? I think it was the best we could do and I think that Gary Johnson had wide appeal because he was a governor. But unfortunately it didn't seem to move the needle much in the direction of liberty and so I don't know if electoral votes are always the only way we should quantify our success. What are the other ways? Membership growth, grassroots engagement, active participation at your county and state level, maintaining donations. Earlier today, Justin Amash, the only libertarian member of Congress in history to date, gave a speech where he said that the party has to appeal to people outside of Mises Caucus, a narco-capitalist. What do you think of that? I agree. Some of the grassroots groups that I've worked with in Los Angeles are ex-progressives. They are moms who are very active with school boards and recall campaigns and they're very interested in libertarianism. And the reason that they're interested in libertarianism is because we provided an actual solution to their pain points. They're not as invested in what's going on in social media, they're invested in what we can do in their lives. And so I think it's really important to make sure that we are active at the local level and communicating that at the national level. You've said that the libertarian party needs to be open and accepting to conservatives who might feel alienated by things. Social conservatives. Social conservatives who are alienated by positions on things like abortion and immigration. What are the issues or should the libertarian party also be looking at people on the left and what are the issues that would attract them? I believe we are looking at people on the left already quite a bit. I would like to say that anti-war is a left position although I'm not sure lately. I believe that civil liberties and freedom of speech, police reform, those are all issues that the left cares about and those are issues we'll continue to care about and continue to prioritize.