Dear LNC: I recently sought advice from Jim Lark in his role as chair of the Employment Policy and Compensation Committee, and he indicated that I should bring this matter to the attention of the LNC. At the April 15-16, 2017 LNC meeting in Pittsburgh, a company, Paladin Strategies was considered for hire. From the draft LNC minutes, there was a motion "to allow the Chair to initiate a contract with Paladin Strategies to create a general messaging strategy for up to 6 months." That motion failed 4-10. In any case, before the vote, when various LNC members asked the body who the firm was or who were some of their other clients or projects, the responses were along the lines of "we don't know or we can't disclose due to non-disclosure agreements". I was surprised that no one spoke up and mentioned that Paladin Strategies was a firm working on the "Omaha Un-Convention". The excerpt from an email received below discloses that fact. Perhaps others mentioned in the email below are bound by non-disclosure agreements or did not notice the connection, but I am not bound by any on-disclosure agreement with Paladin Strategies or the "Omaha Un-Convention" event. Therefore, I feel obligated to disclose the situation. I am not familiar with Paladin Strategies beyond what has been in emails about the Nebraska event and what occurred at the LNC meeting as far as I recall. They very well may be a fine organization. As a former management consultant myself, I'm acutely aware it's not uncommon for staff members to be uncomfortable about bringing in outside consultants for services. Here I am on the other side of that equation. Before the LNC meeting, I did inform the chair that I was not particularly in favor of the LNC hiring consultants for messaging for various reasons and the chair suggested it was not a good idea for me to bring that up in the LNC meeting. I agreed with the chair that it was not a good idea for me to bring up my opposition to hiring the consultants at the LNC meeting. I'll also mention that recently one of my staff members told me they were recently offered to provide training at the Nebraska event as well as to have expenses paid for that staff and staff members' family to travel to attend the Omaha Un-Convention. In bringing this matter to the LNC, I wish to emphasize that I am not alleging any untoward behavior. As a matter of proper procedure I believe it would have been appropriate for those LNC members with knowledge of Paladin Strategies and its association with the proposed Nebraska event to provide this information to the LNC during the discussion.
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RE: Omaha Un-Convention Proposed Logo Copyright Question Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2017 11:23:07 -0500 From: David Demarest <dpdemarest@centurylink.net> To: 'Wes Benedict' <wes.benedict@lp.org> CC: 'Nicholas Sarwark' <chair@lp.org>, 'Robert Kraus' <robert.kraus@lp.org>, 'Brett Bittner' <brett.bittner@lp.org>, 'Vohra Vohra' <vicechair@lp.org>
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Joe Hedlund, our Publicity Committee Chair, is about to launch an aggressive and carefully targeted publicity and branding campaign that leverages the services of Paladin Strategies, the political messaging strategy firm built on skills of John Engle and Mike Fishbein. Paladin is the same pollical consulting firm that Larry, Trent and I have selected and will present for LNC approval in Pittsburgh to proceed with the targeted messaging technique strategy goal of the EFC committee. John and Mike will have a significant role in our event at multiple levels, including workshops, seminars and publicity messaging strategies. While Paladin is a for-profit firm, Mike and John and their liberty-conscious pricing approach continue to impress me as dedicated Libertarians that share my primary Libertarian motivation - freedom, nothing more, nothing less.
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Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict@lp.org facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership