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BOISE A rift in the Idaho Libertarian Party has cost the party its best-known Idaho candidate, 1st Congressional District hopeful Joe Evans, who withdrew in late August and has now been replaced by a first-time candidate from Post Falls.

Evans was the partys top vote-getter in the 2020 election, receiving 16,453 votes, or 3.6%, in a three-way race for the same post, which was won by current GOP Congressman Russ Fulcher. Evans actually got more votes in Idaho that year than the Libertarian Partys presidential nominee, Jo Jorgensen, who received 16,404 votes or 1.9%.

The Libertarian Party counts 11,081 registered Libertarians in Idaho, according to August figures from the Idaho Secretary of States office; thats 1.1% of Idahos registered voters.

There was an ideological break between the previous board of the Libertarian Party of Idaho and the one thats currently in charge, Evans told the Idaho Press. And unfortunately, because of the size of the Libertarian Party in Idaho, a break between a significant candidate and the board is simply unsustainable.

He said he didnt want to campaign while they were coming in behind me and telling everybody that libertarianism stood for something else. So it wasnt worth my time to spend the next 60 days fighting over the issue.

Though the Idaho Libertarian Party held a convention and elected new officers in April, the election of a single precinct committeeman in Bannock County in the May primary with just five votes made that person, Todd Corsetti, the only official member of the state Central Committee, with the ability to appoint other members, according to the Idaho Secretary of States office. As the party was thrown into confusion, it tried to revert to its previous officers, a move the national Libertarian Party rejected.

They have a hard time getting precinct committeemen elected at all, said Jason Hancock, deputy Idaho secretary of state, because Idaho law requires at least five votes to elect someone to that position. Most Idaho precincts dont even have five registered Libertarians. In the May primary, seven candidates ran across the state; Corsetti was the only one to receive five votes.

Hancock said the election made Corsetti a county chair, and he appointed his wife as state precinct committeewoman for the county.

The state central committee of each political party consists of all of the county central committee chairs and all the state committeemen and women, he said. That was those two people at that point.

My understanding is that when the national Libertarian Party got involved, they ended up landing on the side of this elected group, I guess youd say, since they had kind of propagated themselves through the electoral process and state statute, Hancock said, as opposed to kind of the legacy group that had been in charge.

Corsetti then successfully petitioned the party to expel its previous chair and the newly elected chair, Jennifer and Robert Imhoff, and Jayson Sorensen, who had lost narrowly to Robert Imhoff for the party chairman post in April, was appointed as the new chairman.

Sorensen said, Theres a caucus called the Mises Caucus that basically ran the table in Reno and is a majority of the party now. Reno was where the partys national convention was held in May. This is kind of just the backlash to people that have been in power for a long time now losing that power, would be my take on it, Sorensen said.

The rift echoes similar splits that have happened in a half-dozen other states, as the Mises Caucus took over the national party, cementing its victory at this years national convention.

Corsetti is a member of the Mises Caucus, which is variously described as the paleo-libertarian or Ron Paul wing of the Libertarian Party, or by Paul himself in 2021 as the libertarian wing of the Libertarian Party. Formed in 2017, it opposed the more pragmatic positions taken by 2018 Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson, and opposes moves toward progressivism.

Theyre social conservatives, Evans said, though others in the party dispute that label. Some of the other members were very much part of the pro-life portion of the party, and they very much cheered the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They believe strongly in the state being able to enforce anti-abortion restrictions. Evans, who supports abortion rights, said that was the dividing line for him as a Libertarian.

The national Libertarian Partys platform included a plank advocating leaving decisions about abortion up to the individual until this year; it was removed at the party convention in May, leaving the platform silent on the issue.

Sorensen said he was sorry to lose Evans from the partys slate of candidates. He was a good candidate, he said. We were hoping that after the split, we would be able to work with everybody other than the two individuals who were removed, and it just didnt work out that way.

Sorensen, 32, a farmer from southeastern Idaho, said Corsettis election as a precinct committeeman in May was a first for the Idaho party.

I think were definitely going to grow, he said. My personal opinion is that the Libertarian Party of Idaho has been somewhat of a social club for a lot of years. My hope is that we grow and we continue to recruit members and work with other organizations in Idaho to build coalitions and grow the party.

On the day of the deadline to name a new candidate, the party named Darian Drake of Post Falls to replace Evans on the ballot for the 1st Congressional District seat.

Drake, 49, said hes a member of the Mises Caucus and he defines it as a pushback against progressivism, in the sense that its pushing back against collectivism and identity politics.

A resident of Idaho for five and a half years, Drake said his top issue is individual rights.

At an August meeting of the Libertarian National Committee, the committee voted 13-0 to uphold the April convention results from the Idaho party, and recognize officers elected then, and their successors, including Jayson Sorensen as interim chair, are the legitimate officers of the Libertarian Party of Idaho.

The Idaho Secretary of States office agreed. In a Sept. 6 letter to Sorensen, Secretary of State Lawerence Denney wrote, After consulting legal counsel, the office of the Idaho Secretary of State recognizes Jayson Sorensen as chair of the Libertarian Party of Idaho. As such, any appointments to fill federal or state vacancies will only be accepted from this individual.

Then, the office accepted the appointment of Drake to replace Evans on the ballot. He was in under the wire on that, said Hancock, who said Drake will appear on the November ballot.

Evans, 53, who ran as a Libertarian for the state Legislature in 2018 before his first run for Congress in 2020, said, The board was pretty much split in April. Then Todd Corsetti used his position to remove certain members giving the Mises Caucus dominance on the party.

Evans, a U.S. Army veteran, data engineer and web designer from Meridian, said he hopes to focus for now on ballot initiatives, including a 2024 medical marijuana proposal, rather than running for office. Im still pursuing libertarian goals, just not doing it as part of the party, he said.

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Idaho Libertarian congressional candidate withdraws, amid party upheaval - bigcountrynewsconnection.com