- THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY'S SUCCESS'992600 Virginia Avenue, NW,Suite 100 * Washington DC 20037 * (202) 333-0008 * www.LP.org

The vanBuren Camp"".~'~-'L.Profile of a Winning Local Libertarian Campaign

The election of Bruce Van Buren to theAvondale Estates City Commissionwas importantfor the Libertarian Party on several levels. It.showed the Georgia Libertarian Party, and themedia and general public, that you can getelected to local office when-you are stronglyidentified with the Libertarian Party.

Van Buren's election, and the election ofDeWayneMetheny to the Auburn City Council,were the first electoral wins for the GeorgiaLibertarian Party. They are demonstrations ofthe LPCampaign Committee's national strategyof developing success stories on the local level,both at winning campaigns and once in office -in order to form a farm team of Libertarians whowill go on to. seek higher office.

. Bruce's election also showed that a fewpeople 'and a few hundred man-hours of workcan havevery significant success in cutting backcity hall, and keeping paychecks in taxpayer'spockets ~ rather than in city governmentcoffers. Bruce's ele'ction has already had such aneffect in Avondale Estates, and he hasn't even.taken office yet. 111 ten you more about thatsuccess later. . .

Igot to know Bruce through his managingof the 1994 campaign of WalkerChandler as theLibertarian candidate for GeorgiaLt. Governor.As a candidate himself, Bruce had plenty ofattributes. He uses his accounting degree and 15years of management experience as Director ofInformation Systems for a large Atlanta-basedfurniture rental company. His family has lived inAtlanta for three generations. Hiswife Maurie isa noted architectural historian, who writescolumns on historical preservation for the

Washington Post and Home Magazine. Their four-year-old son, Knox, really likes the city swim-ming pool, and specializes in parent manipulation.

On a personallevel, Bruce is friendly,outgoing, photogenic, and had demonstratedwillingness to spend significant amounts of timeand money on Libertarian activities. He was atthe top of my list of party members to recruit tobe a candidate. Bruce was non-committal when Ifirst approached him about running, and it tooksome of his neighbors' encouragement to gethim to take the plunge. Ioffered to manageBruce's campaign when he made the commit-ment to knock on every door in the city, and torun to win.

While Bruce had a lot of positives as acandidate, he also had one of the biggest nega-tives you can have - no history of communityinvolvement. In fact, Bruce's only identificationin the community was as "that Libertarian guy,"not only from managing the Lt. Governorcampaign, but from sending invitations to mostof the city to several Libertarian outreach eventsat his home.

Having lived in Avondale for five years,Bruce was considered a newcomer in this tight-knit community. The other four candidates hadlived there from 12 years to all their lives. Brucewas, in fact, attacked late in the campaign bothfor short-term residence and lack of previousinvolvement in city affairs.

Avondale Estates is a unique city ofabout 1,200 homes in Atlanta's eastern suburbs.The city was founded in 1927 as Georgia's first"planned community." Its features include an

EnglishTudor village-style downtown area,distinctive architecture throughout the city, andcoordinated landscaping. The City is on theNational Register of Historic Places, and has thesecond highest median income of any municipal-ity in the state. This isn't because of greatwealth, but simply because there are no poor'residents - with the possible exception of onesmall apartment complex of about 25 units. It'sreally a beautiful place.

Although most of the areas around the cityare low-income, high-crime districts, Avondalehas a very low crime rate. One of the first thingsyou learn as a young driver in the Atlanta areais don't speed through Avondale Estates becausethe police are parked over there behind thebushes and they'll get you. The city doesn't havemuch of a business tax base, and has one of thehighest property tax rates in the state. The city

,government had been in some turmoil for acouple of years prior to the election, withmismanaqement allegations 'and a series ofresignations by city commission members.

. Avondale Estates has' exceptionally high,-rates of voter registration and voter turnout:1 57% turned out in this off-year election with: only two questions on the ballot. This raceelected two' city 'commissioriers in a citywiderace --.:.the top 'two vote getters were thewinners. The onlyother 'questions on the ballotwere anincrease in the county sales tax, and anuncontested race for Mayor. "

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My main duty as campaign manager was'to be a real pest and to constantly push Brucefor us to do more than he originally planned. Heinitially felt that walking the city and producingone piece of literature would be enough to win,and.that anything more might be "too much."Since I've never heard of a campaign losing bydoing too much (unless its too much of thewrong thing), I worked subtly at changingBruce'smind about how much activity we shouldgenerate. I also set a goal of organizing thecampaign well enough that Bruce would have noduties other than to walk and talk to his con-stituents.

The core of our campaign strategy was the

door-to-door walk. Wewould not have wonwithout it, and it is certainly the factor thatovercame Bruce's lack of previous 'communityinvolvement. His personal contact with thevoters probably got us the first 350 votes, but ittook everything else we did to get us the last 80votes we needed to win.

I convinced Bruce we should use a pre-walkcard. Thiswas a simple postcard with Bruce'spicture and a short note simply saying "I'm yourneighbor BruceVallBuren, I'm running for citycommissioner, and I'll be coming by soon to talkto you about our city." Weincluded a drawing ofpart of the TudorVillage property. The cardswere hand-addressed and mailed first class. Wemailed the cards out in batches of 125 to 200per week so that Bruce would be knocking onthe voter's doors just a few days after theyreceived the card. A pre-walk card serves as bothan icebreaker and a time saver for the candidate.It also is a big help to the campaign managersince it commits the candidate to visiting acertain number of homes every week. It alsobuilds credibility for the candidate by showinghe will do what he says. "Hey, this guy sent mea card saying he was coming by, and then a fewdays later he actually showed up,"

Westarted the campaign much later thanwe should have - only about three monthsbefore the election. So we used Bruce's first'walks as our research phase.

. , Weprinted a small batch of handout cardsfor Bruce to distribute as he walked, expectingto change it considerably after we got a betterfeel for the issues on the minds of the voters.We chose five simple issues for the card, prob-ably two too many.

• No tax increase - and we phrased itwith those words to voice objection both to theproposed county sales tax increase, and to anyincrease in city taxes, which we knew at least.some of our opposition would be favoring.

• Revitalize Avondale Estates Businessareas.

• Preserve the historic TudorVillageProperty.

• Quality Schools for Our Children.• Get Tough on Violent Criminals.

It turned out that the only significantchange was to drop "get tough on violentcriminals" from the card. Avondale's low crimerate meant that crime just wasn't an issue, eventhough it is issue #1 for most of the Atlantaarea. The back of the card featured a familyphoto, brief biographies of Bruce and Maurie,and a one-paragraph personal statement.

As Bruce walked, he kept notes on thefolks he talked to, including things like theirdog's leg was broken, they had a Liberty Bellreplica, or were wearing a "legalize pot" T-shirt.

So, with the pre-walk card, the hand-out,and the upcoming letter piece that Brucewas

..initially planning to send out, we were up tothree pieces of literature ..so far without Bruceeven noticing.

Only two real issues emerged during thecampaign, how to restore the. historic TudorVillage property, and, at the very end of thecampaign, that Bruce was a Libertarian.

The Tudor Village property in question wasone of the original buildings of the city. Oncevery beautiful and housing a lovely old theater,the property had been declining for a number ofyears. The tenant base was so low-rent andtransient that the twenty five thousand squarefoot property was only generating $1,500 peryear in property taxes .

..The Mayor and the then-current citycouncil favored the: city-buying the property andrenovating it. Estimates ranged from $2 to $3million for the project. Essentially, the Mayor,the city commission, and the two candidatesbacked by the current regime wanted to spendthree million taxpayer dollars so that theywould have a tablecloth restaurant and a puppetshow within walking distance of their houses.

One of Bruce's opponents, HowardOsofsky,made this project the centerpiece of his cam-paign. In his campaign literature, Osofskyusedphrases like "Wemust take control" and "thecity must seize control," with the word controlalways in bold for emphasis - pretty scarywords to a Libertarian.

In fact, when questioned at the candidatesforum on how to provide adequate parking for

his proposals, Osofsky said "the city mustcondemn every conceivable piece of property."In literature, Bruce's opponent proposed either a"special assessment" (tax increase) or municipalbonds (read: tax increase) as the only means forfinancing the Tudor Village restoration. WithoutBruce entering the race, there is no questionthis program would have gone through with thefull backing of the city commission.

Wehad been working since the beginningto identify Bruce as the anti-tax candidate, toprovide that contrast between Bruce and theopponents. He was the only candidate to comeout against the county sales tax increase, andthe only one opposing taxes to restore the TudorVillage.

Prior to sending out our main "issues"letter, we did polling -:- both to determinewhere Bruce stood, and to determine which partof our message had the most resonance with thevoters ..Wefound that Bruce's position on thecounty sales tax was not at all important to thevoters, so we dropped that. Wealso found thathis position on the TudorVillage, when accu-rately phrased as a choice between pursuingprivate investors or enduring more taxes, was a10-to-l favorite with the voters, so we quitenaturally made that the focus of the letter.

Wemade note of similar government-runprojects that have failed, emphasized that taxdollars for such a project is an immoral misuse ofgovernment power; and pointed out the cityitself was initially built as' a private, profitablecorporation. Wealso made sure to specificallyask for a vote in the opening and closing para-graphs of the letter. Wehand-addressed andmailed the letter first class to hit about a weekand a half before the election.

The last piece of literature we had plannedto mail was an oversize postcard. Weused alarge family photo on one side, re-emphasizedBruce's position on taxes and the village restora-tion, and pointed out that Bruce would be thelast name on the ballot. Weasked for a vote oneach side of the card. Wemailed the card firstclass to arrive the Saturday before the Tuesdayelection.

lash reaction to the pieces, offering statementsof support. Wehad the letter formatted by 11am, printed at Kinko's by 3 o'clock, and by 6 pmon Monday, election eve, volunteers and a fewpaid kids had distributed the piece to aU 1,177homes in the city.

Election Day itself was fairly calm. Wegot a number of calls thanking us for sendingout the endorsement letter. Weeven got a callfrom Martha Randolph Hunt apologizing for thehit piece she had sent.

While in many races, Election Dayactivityis critical to final success, Georgia election law

- and circumstances prevented us from engaging"inany meaningful campaigning on Election Day.State law prohibits campaigning within 150 feetof the outside edge of the polling place. In mostprecincts, this eliminates any effective campaignactivity. Also, a list of who has voted is notposted until the end of the day in Georgia. Inmany areas the list of who has voted is postedin the afternoon, so known supporters who havenot voted can be targeted for a last-minute get-out-the-vote phone call.

While I had made plans to serve as a poll-watcher all day, it turned out that one of our

"identified supporters was the pollmanager, andhis wife, another supporter, was a poll worker.So with little to worry about regarding fraud, Istayed for a few hours in the morning, and cameback to watch the poll workers do their verifyingcounts and shut down the polling machines.

The Avondale precincts ended up beingsome of the last ones counted by the countyelection board that night, and we didn't get theresults until about 9:30 pm. When the final votewas in, Bruce had placed first with 432 out of932 total votes cast. Our opponent Osofsky,theunlimited government candidate, had also beenelected with a second place showing of 409votes. The next candidate was the other statusquo opponent, who had been endorsed by theMayor.He lost with 389 votes.

Mayor John Lawson, when told that webeaten his hand-picked boys, said simply, "Well,111be damned."

I told you at the beginning that ourvictory had already had an effect on policy andhad already saved the taxpayers money - eventhough Bruce does not take office until January.

Bruce's election has also forced Osofsky,themayor, and the rest of the council to drop anyhopes they had of the city buying the TudorVillagewith tax dollars or bonds, and they havecompletely given up on the idea. They realizethat we woke up the electorate to exactly whattheir proposals really meant.

Osofskyis now doing exactly what wewould like for him to be doing - going out andhustling like a dynamo for private investors forthe restoration project. What we did saved eachhousehold in the city around $3,000.

And at the first commission meeting afterthe election, they started to talk about how toprivatize Avondale's trash pick-up.

[By Ron CrickenbergerJ