L. Neil Smith - Politics

Politics

Smith joined the Libertarian Party in 1972 (just after its beginnings in 1971). He served on the Platform Committee 1977 and 1979, and in 1978 ran for state legislature in Colorado (winning 15% of the vote with a total expenditure of forty-four dollars).

In 1999, Smith announced that he would run for President in 2000 as an independent if his supporters would gather 1,000,000 online petition signatures asking him to run. After failing to achieve even 1,500 signatures, his independent campaign quietly died. He next tried an abortive run for the Libertarian Party nomination, which ended almost as quickly when, in the California primary, Harry Browne overwhelmingly defeated him, 71% to 9%.

However, Smith did appear as the Libertarian Party candidate for President on the Arizona ballot in 2000, although Browne was chosen by the party's national convention, due to a dispute between the Libertarian Party's national organization and their Arizona affiliate. He and running mate Vin Suprynowicz received 5,775 votes in the national election, less than .01% of the vote. Shortly thereafter, Smith's supporters announced a new 1,000,000-signature petition drive; however, in late 2003, with the new drive once again failing to achieve even a small fraction of that total, Smith announced that he would not pursue another political office.

Smith and the "Ad Hoc Conspiracy to Draft L. Neil Smith" helped influence the 2004 Libertarian Party selection of Michael Badnarik for President. Badnarik was influenced by Hope, a novel written by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman (founder and Executive Director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership). Smith endorsed the Free State Project and Badnarik's campaign for President in 2004.

Smith is the founder of, and regularly contributes essays to The Libertarian Enterprise, an influential anarcho-capitalist and paleolibertarian journal, and he claims that his most influential essay is Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?.