Rehberg, a year older than Scott, is better than just a "good" Republican. According to the Washington POST's tally of his votes, Rehberg voted the GOP party line on every bill before this congress except for two times: Once, on the Immigration Law Enforcement Act of 2006, he didn't vote. And once, this term, he actually bucked the party and bravely voted for the Pension Protection Act of 2005. Duncan Scott originally took a different path.
Scott came back to Montana and went to law school. In 1982, during his last year, he jumped into ballot initiative politics. He was in on the ground floor on a ballot measure, working on the language, working on the petition drive, working as the state coordinator for the bill with the Libertarian Party.
According to the Montana Legislative Research Service:
Petition#: I-94
Title: Licensing - beer and wine
Sponsor: Libertarian Free Trade Commission/Duncan Scott
Reviewed by: Harrington
Status: on ballot
Vote: 121,078/For 182,724/Against
Passed: REJECTED
Or 39.85% of the vote.
Duncan Scott moved to Alaska, where he continued to work for the Libertarian Party.
It was now the pivotal year in LP history, 1983. In 1980, Ed Crane had run the Clark for President campaign, garnering the largest percentage that the LP ever got. Mike Arno and Rick Arnold had been the Libertarian Party's ace petitioners in drives to get the LP on the ballot across the country. Originally partners, they had separated to each found companies that specialized in petition drives that you might recognize from this year:
National Voter Outreach, and Arno and Associates [See Part II ], who handled several states for the old Clark for President machine. 1980 had been the year that David Koch bought his way onto the Clark ticket by promising to spend $500,000 of his own money as the Vice Presidential candidate, and Howie Rich, Eric O'Keefe and the rest, under the supervision of Ed Crane of the CATO Institute ran the campaign.
The LP was not happy with the Craniacs by 1982.
The Crane operatives were accused to spending too much money, and finally, Ed Clark himself retired the campaign debt out of his own pocket.
Alicia Clark, Ed Clark's wife, and an accomplished businesswoman in her own right, had been elected National LP Chair, and Eric O'Keefe was the salaried National Director of the Libertarian Party -- whose National office was then in Washington DC. And then came the donnybrook in Bozeman, Montana.
The late economist Murray Rothbard*, a founding member of the Cato Institute, takes up the tale in the July 1982 Libertarian Forum:
[* Howard Rich's wife Andrea has an interesting connection to Rothbard. From "The History of Laissez Faire Books And the People Behind It"
Andrea read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead in college and later attended her lectures at Nathaniel Branden Institute for several years. She was also very involved with the Libertarian Party, both nationally and in New York, from 1972 to 1983. During that period, she spent much time getting radicalized in Murray Rothbard's living room.]
July 1982 issue of the LIBERTARIAN FORUM, Murray Rothbard:
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