Everyone has their preferred issues for Libertarian advocacy and when people criticize the party, Libertarian candidates, or specific messaging, they often criticize the choice of issues. We often hear that we should instead be focusing on <insert favored issues> and sometimes people tell us why. Here is your chance to be heard before the messaging begins during the 2020 election cycle in Maryland. We have set up a Facebook group to discuss Maryland Libertarian issue selection and messaging in 2020. What issues do you think we should focus on in 2020 and why? While we can’t guaranty that our candidates will necessarily agree with the group’s conclusions, we’ll produce a report that is given to all the candidates and it will be used by our volunteers in messaging for the party in 2020.

Issue selection and the tenor/type of messaging used in politics is often contextual. Some messaging is strategic, some tactical, and others align with polling data about what voters deem important. Some issues are better raised by candidates, others by the party, and others in the context of legislative advocacy before the Maryland General Assembly. Some issues are germane primarily to Federal, Maryland or local politics. Some messages are ideological, some practical, and others primarily educational.

We’ll spend August and September discussing input from anyone who wishes to join the group. We will then poll the group on those issues and for those that are favored by at least 40% of the members voting, we will spend October gathering data to support the arguments on issues, gather polling data, identify target audience(s), work on creating “Libertarian Solutions” style messaging in support of the issues, and if we have time, a few other tasks to help “sell” the idea to the intended target audience(s).

In November we’ll develop an issue “one-sheet” with bullet point Libertarian arguments in support of those issues and develop any issue-specific strategic and tactical recommendations.

Finally, in December we’ll put together a report that can be used in 2020 by our candidates and party messengers.

We aren’t asking everyone who joins the group to do all this “work”, but they can help as much as they would like. What we need from everyone is their opinions on the issues, their preferred presentation, and the background information they reply upon in support of the advocacy. Libertarians are pretty good at offering opinions on issues, so we hope this group will include everyone who has an interest in impacting our messaging in 2020. We are in for a tough election in this next cycle because the partisanship of the duopoly and their supporters will be through the roof. But liberty is worth fighting for, so let’s do our best to get our issues before the voters in 2020 in as convincing and effective manner as possible.

If you wish to join the Facebook group, send a message to the Libertarian Party of Maryland on its Facebook page. Alternatively, you can send an email to request being added to the group. Most of the communications will be via Facebook, but you can also send emails. We will eventually hold a few Zoom video conference calls to address the ‘work’ items described above. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this effort, join the group and share your ideas, or send us an email. For any of the email options above, send them to email hidden; JavaScript is required