Libertarian Party Of Queens County And Queens Libertarians Unite
After years of having two parties identifying themselves as the Libertarian Party of Queens, NY, both entities decided to become one.
“We formed LPQC after the LP got ballot access in NYS and we had an organizational meeting at [Former LPQC Chair] Mike Arcati’s house in early 2019,” said Mark Weinblatt.” It has been a challenge since then to gain strength by reaching out to those in Queens who had registered as Libertarians. Without reaching out, we struggle to raise money, and without money, we can’t afford to reach out. It’s a Catch-22. The pandemic restrictions made things even more difficult. Now that we have a regular meeting time and place and will take on more ‘official’ party business, my hope is that we can find ways of both reaching out to like-minded Queens residents and also raising money to help extend that outreach to the ‘libertarian-curious’ who would be open to our ideas and values. We welcome any help that we can get from anywhere else in the state or National.”
At the same time, John Clifton’s QL has been very active getting
people together whether voters, party partisans or simply persons who
share libertarian ideas or a good story from a guest speaker.
As with most good stories, everything happened by chance. John
Clifton, who had been running QL for several years, approached Mark Weinblatt (LPQC) with the idea of merging the Queens entities after Mark attended a meeting of the QL and let him know that LPQC did not have a chair at the moment. A short time later, after years of having two parties that broke resources in almost half and getting nowhere, the two groups finally merged in early March 2023 with John Clifton from QL as Chair, Francisco Olvera from LPQC as Vice Chair and Mark Weinblatt from LPQC as Treasurer.
Now it is time for LPQC to focus on promoting the party, its philosophy and its brand. As with other county affiliates, educating voters and anyone who can influence other voters is the biggest challenge.
Clifton has brought many ideas on how to teach young adults at a college level, but we still need to promote the party at high school
level. Needless to say, this is an up-hill battle given the GOP/DNC duopoly in the United States.
We would merge the data sources into a common database that can be used by LPQC and possibly the LPNY if we can get all the proper datasets.
originally posted at https://lpny.org/2023/04/13/libertarian-party-of-queens-county-and-queens-libertarians-unite/
this year. The unification planned would basically be a “true merge” of both their practices, by means of the existing members of QL being absorbed into LP Queens, and LP Queens adopting QL’s current format of holding monthly physical meetings (at OBA). Members of the two groups will make up the officer positions, under one administration.
QL President John Clifton is expected to be the new Chair of LPQC after the adoption of the merge agreement. Additional details about the unified LPQC will be announced in the coming days, and discussed at the March 11 QL meeting. “Queens Libertarians” (the brand, and the site) is also expected to continue as a promotional arm of the county committee. It appears a new day is starting for libertarian activism and advocacy in Queens, under one umbrella!