Category Archives: Libertarian

Indiana voters supported Republican President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election with nearly 59% of the ballots with three-quarters of the vote counted. Here's how the state has voted in the past. Wochit

A record 3 million Hoosiers cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 election, according to turnout data released Tuesday by the Indiana secretary of state's office.

Sixty-five percent of the state's 4.7 million voters wanted a say in the top-of-the-ticket race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, higher than any presidential election since Bill Clinton unseated President George H.W. Bush in 1992. That year 74% of registered Hoosiers voted.

Although Biden won the presidential election nationwide with 306 electoral votes, Trump carried Indiana 57% to 41%.

We continue to see that candidates and issues drive turnout,Secretary of State Connie Lawson said in a prepared statement. Presidential elections tend to have higher turnout rates."

Here are the number of Hoosiers who voted in the past five presidentialelections:

Hamilton County and Wells County had the highest turnout at 75%.Greene, Hancock and Whitley counties followed at 74 percent.

A Congressional race played a pivotal role in the high turnout in Hamilton County.Republican Victoria Spartz defeated Democrat Christina Hale for an open seat that drew national attention and millions of dollars in spending.

Elsewhere in the area, Boone and Hendricks counties were at 72%, Johnson at 70% and Marion at 59%.

An unprecedented 61% of registered Hoosier voters 1.9 million cast their ballots absentee amid the coronavirus pandemic. In the June primary, 51% of registered voters, or552,779 people, voted absentee.

In the last presidential election, 33% voted absentee. In 2012, 22% voted absentee.

Locally, Boone County had 84% vote absentee, Hancock had 82%, Johnson had 79%, Hamilton had 73%, Hendricks had 68% and Marion had 55%.

Gov. Eric Holcomb easily was reelected with 56.5% of the vote. Democratic challenger Woody Myers had 32.1% and Libertarian Donald Rainwater had 11.4%, the highest that party has ever received in a gubernatorial runin Indiana.

Libertarians typically receive3% to 4% in that race.

Rainwater wasn't quite the most successful Libertarian ever to run in Indiana. That record goes toSteve Osborn, who collected 12.6% of the votein the 2006 U.S. Senate race against Richard Lugar when no Democrat ran.

In a more typical three-way race, Andrew Horning has the Indianarecord for a Libertarian candidate inthe 2012 U.S. Senate race. He had 5.6% that year.

Call IndyStar reporter Chris Sikich at 317-444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisSikich.

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A record 3 million Hoosiers voted in the 2020 election - IndyStar

Abdul Hakim-Shabazz Submitted photo

The 2020 election is over, for the most part.

Absent some bogus rantings regarding voter fraud, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will run the country as president and vice president. Control of the Senate is basically down to two seats that will be decided in January, and Democrats keep control (barely) of the U.S. House.

Here in Indiana, Gov. Eric Holcomb, despite the rantings over masks, won easily. Republicans expanded their supermajority in the House and Democrats won a couple of seats in the Indianapolis area. And Todd Rokita happened to catch the attorney generals seat and the coronavirus in the same week.

So here are my thoughts on each one.

Lets face it, Biden won the election fair and square. Now Im not saying that there arent some minor issues or discrepancies. In a universe of at least 145 million voters, youre going to have an issue or two. But allegations of this wholesale fraud are outrageous and just straight-up ridiculous. The Donald Trump campaign has provided no evidence of widespread fraud and judges in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada have already dismissed lawsuits. And think about this: Some of the places where the Trump camp is alleging fraud are run by Republicans and the GOP also won Senate seats. So if Democrats are going to cheat, they needed to do a better job.

I have to give a major shout out to Gov. Eric Holcomb on a major victory; heck 57% of the vote aint bad. Dr. Woody Myers, the Democrat, grossly underperformed and Libertarian Don Rainwater did about what I expected him to do get about 11% of the vote. Whats interesting here is that if Libertarians play their cards right, they can grow their status as a political party in Indiana. If Libertarians can keep their 11% in the next 2022 election, where secretary of state is on the ballot, they can get major party status, giving them automatic ballot access. And the fact that Rainwater actually came in second in about three dozen counties should give them hope.

In the Fifth Congressional District, Republican Victoria Spartz beat Democrat Christina Hale, once again cementing the districts GOP credentials. Although Hale won the Marion County portion of the district, Spartz won Hamilton County 53%-42%. So that margin, along with the rest of the district, put her over the top. It was also a rebuke of the Democratic suburban strategy, which we saw take place across the country.

Lets be honest here, Democrats got their clocks cleaned. With the exception of Fady Qaddoura who beat John Ruckelshaus in Senate District 30 and Mitch Gore who beat Cindy Kirchoffer in House District 89 in Marion County, Republicans won big. In addition to failing efforts to replace Speaker Todd Huston and Reps. Jerry Torr and Donna Schaibley, Democrats Terry Goodin, Melanie Wright and Chris Chyung also lost, giving Republicans at least a 71-seat majority. That hurts. And Democrats have some major soul searching to do if they want to come back into power in the next decade.

So what does it all mean? Well despite Joe Bidens win (sorry Republicans, but he won it), Republicans are alive and well here in Indiana. Of course, the trick is to govern smartly so you can keep your gains. If youre Democrats, you need to come up with some candidates and good ideas that Hoosiers will accept if you want to come back. And if youre Libertarians, you just need a repeat performance in 2022.

Good luck guys and gals.

Abdul Hakim-Shabazz is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPoltics.Org. He is also a frequent contributor to numerous Indiana media outlets. He can be reached at abdul@indypolitics.org. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.

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Final thoughts on the election - The Republic

Were going to run a series of articles looking at Cobb County and the 2020 General Election in some detail. The numbers in the article are from the current state of the election on the countys results page. There is a recount in progress, but it is not expected to significantly shift the numbers.

This is part one of that series.

This first installment is just an overview of the bigger picture by comparing the results in the presidential race with one of the U.S. Senate races.

In later articles well dig into the county commission district and precinct levels for various races.

During the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton received the largest number of votes within Cobb, there was some speculation that those results were nothing more than dislike of Donald Trump among some suburban Republicans, and that the county was still solidly Republican.

The 2020 election dispelled that notion, and shows that Cobb is an increasingly majority Democratic county.

Democrats swept all the countywide seats, in addition to giving President-elect Biden and Democratic senatorial candidate Jon Ossoff the majority of votes from Cobb in their two races.

Lets compare two maps from the results website. They will give a clear idea also of where Democrats are strong, and where Republicans are strong.

The first is the map of the presidential race, a screenshot from the Cobb County election results web page. If you want to zoom in, find your own precinct, and see more information you can visit the interactive version of this map by following this link.

In the map above, the precincts voting for Joe Biden are in green, and the votes for Donald Trump are in dark blue.

As you can see from the map, Bidens strength was in South Cobb (including Mableton and Austell) and Powder Springs, Smyrna, Marietta, the City of Acworth and the City of Kennesaw.

Trumps votes were concentrated in the northwest and northeast corners of the county.

The total votes cast for president was 393,746. Biden received 221,846 or 56.34 percent of the vote, Trump received 165,459 votes or 42.02 percent, and Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgenson received 6,441 or 1.64 percent of the total.

A good test of the effect of Donald Trumps unpopularity with a segment of Republican voters is to compare the map above with the U.S. Senate race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue.

The Ossoff-Perdue map above shows that the general trends are similar, but Perdue outperformed his fellow Republican Trump at the edges of northeast Cobb, and in one of the Vinings precincts.

So there is probably at least some percentage of Cobb residents who are Republican voters, but did not vote for Trump, and they seem concentrated in the more affluent parts of the county.

Below are two tables. The first shows the precincts won by Trump. The second the precincts won by Biden. To see a list of precincts with the addresses of their voting sites follow this link.

One precinct, Bells Ferry 02, was an exact tie between Biden and Trump at 1127 each, with 51 votes for Libertarian Jo Jorgenson.

In future articles well look at more specific numbers at the precinct level, and get a firmer grip on voting preferences across the county.

The second in the series will look at Cobb Board of Commissioners races.

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Cobb County and the 2020 General Election: Part 1 - Cobb County Courier

Over the past 50-plus years, Charles Koch grew his family business, Koch Industries, into one of the largest privately held companies in America. At the same time, he played a leading role in creating or supporting the modern libertarian movement and some of its major institutions. Among them: The Cato Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Mercatus Center, and the Charles Koch Foundation, a nonprofit that supports many organizations, including Reason Foundation, which is the publisher of Reason magazine. Along with his brother David, a longtime trustee of the Reason Foundation who passed away last year at the age of 79, the 85-year-old billionaire became not only one of the most successful businessmen in the country but also one of the most controversial, with leftists blaming "the Koch brothers" for many of our contemporary problems.

Koch has just published Believe in People, a book that seeks to "offer a paradigm shift [that] calls for all of us to move away from the top-down approach to solving the really big problems" by instead "empowering people from the bottom up to act on their unique gifts and contribute to the lives of others."

In a conversation with Koch and his co-author, Brian Hooks, who is the chairman and CEO of Stand Together and the president of the Charles Koch Foundation, Reason's Nick Gillespie discusses the 2020 election, the successes and failures of the libertarian movement, and what Koch and Hooks see as the defining challenges and opportunities in the coming decade.

For a video version of this interview, go here.

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Charles Koch and Brian Hooks: Believe in People - Reason

Local communities of Brookhaven, Buckhead, Dunwoody and Sandy Springs were Biden country in the presidential election, joining other metro Atlanta suburbs in flipping Georgia blue for the first time since 1992.

Democrat Joe Biden earned about 61.1% of the total votes in those four communities, while Republican incumbent Donald Trump won only about 37.5%, according to official precinct-by-precinct results mapped and analyzed by the Reporter in the interactive map shown above. (At press time, a recount requested by Trump was pending, but was not expected to significantly change the results following a previous review that combined aspects of an audit and a recount. That previous review did not alter any local results.)

The map shows how strongly precincts in local communities leaned toward either major-party presidential candidate. The darker the blue, the higher the vote for Democrat Joe Biden, and the dark the red, the higher the vote for Republican Donald Trump. Scroll over the map to see the results for individual precincts.

Biden handily won each of the communities as well, with the following approximate percentages:

Brookhaven

Biden 64.5%, Trump 34%

Buckhead

Biden 60.7%, Trump 38.1%

Dunwoody

Biden 59%, Trump 39.6%

Sandy Springs

Biden 60.8%, Trump 37.5%

As the Reporters map shows, Trump lost every precinct in Brookhaven and polled no higher than the 50% range in Dunwoody. (Numbers for Brookhaven are approximate because precinct lines capture some voters outside of the southern city limits.) Sandy Springs had only two precincts that leaned Trump: one in the eastern panhandle above Dunwoody and another in southern High Point around Windsor Parkway.

Buckhead won the distinction of both the bluest and the reddest voting precincts among local communities. Biden took 93.1% of the vote in 06Q, a precinct in the Armour and southern Lindbergh neighborhoods. Trumps best performance 58.2% came in the Kingswood and Randall Mill neighborhoods in western Buckhead.

Trump also prevailed in some precincts in North Buckhead and in neighborhoods along West Paces Ferry Road. Among those was Tuxedo Park, whose residents include Gov. Brian Kemp and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the Republican who faces Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock in one of Georgias two nationally spotlighted runoff elections for U.S. Senate seats coming Jan. 5.

In a handful of local precincts, neither Biden nor Trump won a majority of the votes, including some areas in northern Dunwoody, southern and western Sandy Springs, and Buckheads Paces neighborhood.

Biden and Trump werent the only presidential candidates on the ballot. Libertarian Jo Jorgensen drew small numbers of votes in local precincts. The local Libertarian hotspot? Brookhavens Cross Keys High precinct, where Jorgensen won about 2.5% of the vote.

John Ruch with mapping and analysis by Maggie Lee / maggielee.net

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By the Numbers: Local communities were Biden country in Nov. 3 election - Reporter Newspapers

LAS CRUCES I was originally not going to include Libertarian candidate Bob Walsh in the U.S. Senate election interviews we conducted recently on community radio, but my co-host, Peter Goodman, argued that if Walsh was on the ballot he needed to be invited.

Im glad he did, as Walsh provided my favorite moment of all the campaign interviews this year.

I asked him about the governments role in healthcare, and put it in the most basic terms I could think of.

I have no money. I have no insurance. I get in a car crash. What should happen?

Well, youre going to be broke, he said.

Im already broke. My question is, should they send an ambulance and take me to the hospital or should they let me bleed to death in the streets?

After a long pause, he replied, For one thing, youve been totally irresponsible for not having money and not having insurance.

There was no second thing. That was it. Maybe some good-hearted person will stop and help. Maybe not. I suspect the government would at least be allowed to drag me to the side of the road, so as to avoid a traffic hazard.

Of all the answers given by all the candidates this year in both the primary and general elections, that one might have been the most honest. Walsh could afford to be honest, given the impossibility of his potential victory.

Republicans cant afford to be that honest. And, to be clear, I dont believe they share Walshs view that emergency services should be reserved for those who can afford them. But on the issue of healthcare, they dont have a better answer than he does.

For the past 10 years, the GOP has been united in its opposition to the Affordable Care Act, but divided on what should replace it. Thats why former Sen. John McCain famously turned his thumb down on the final attempt by Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare. He knew, just like we all knew, that there was no replacement.

The ACA was passed with no Republican votes. Thats been a bitter pill that still hasnt been swallowed. They will keep chipping at it and fighting against it forever.

Its time for something new, using many of the principles of the ACA. Even Republicans now agree that those with pre-existing conditions should not be charged more for their health insurance. Their problem is how to pay for it.

Thats always been their problem. How does the free-market system provide basic human services for those without money?

I dont have the answer to that question. But Im certain the next healthcare plan that gets passed will be more inclusive, providing more services to more people, than the one that is in place now. And thats a good thing.

Republican leaders need to understand thats the goal, and figure out how they can contribute to getting there.

Walter Rubel is the former opinion page editor of the Las Cruces Sun-News. He lives in Las Cruces, and can be reached at:

[emailprotected] gmail.com

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Opinion: Please don't let me bleed to death in the street - easternnewmexiconews.com

Johnsons relatively strong showing in 2016 bespoke significant right-leaning dissatisfaction with Trump. The defeated ranks of the Never Trump crowd might easily have defected to the Libertarian Party in 2017, carrying a significant portfolio of media and donor assets out of the Republican tent along with them. Indeed, most of that cohort fit a socially liberal, fiscally conservative profile that would have required little ideological accommodation on either side. Instead, this faction gravitated toward novel enterprises like the Lincoln Project and formed a de facto armistice with Democrats in an effort to deny Trump reelection.

Rather than consolidating a newly aggrieved legion of supporters, movement libertarianism has spent the last few years in a state of reflective evolution. Prominent commentators like economist Tyler Cowen have observed the birth of a state capacity libertarianism, embodied in new groups like the Niskanen Center, that is more agnostic about the scope of government than traditional organizations like the Cato Institute. Meanwhile, activists and commentators have cast about for new identifying labels, some discarding libertarian for the more nebulous concept of classical liberalism.

Above all else, the chief obstacle to a growing Libertarian Partyone that actually wins office from time to time, or at least regularly claims a vote share in the high single digitsis simply the architecture of the American electoral system, which tends to sideline minor parties. Independent and third-party bids have, at times, broken through, as with Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, George Wallace in 1968, and Ross Perot in 1992. But those men were nationally known figures, each offering a true ideological alternative to what the Democrats and Republicans were serving up.

There might have been such a man for the moment this year: Justin Amash. The Michigan Republican, who won national headlines for breaking with his party and voting to impeach Donald Trump, explored the possibility of running for the Libertarian Party nomination about six weeks into the coronavirus lockdown, a notion that seemed to cause much more anxiety among establishment Democrats than the Trump camp. Amash, however, withdrew his short-lived campaign for the Libertarian Party nomination later in the spring. It seems quite likely in retrospect that he might have been blazing a brighter electoral path than Jorgensen is at the moment, but well never know. Its difficult, and perhaps impossible, to bring capable, ambitious leaders to moribund parties.

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The Libertarian Moment That Never Comes - The New Republic

Given the party's track record, any Libertarian running for a state-level office would have to be full of almost nutty hubris to expect to win. But next year Marshall Burt will become the only sitting Libertarian state legislator, in Wyoming, and one of only five persons to ever win such a seat solely as a Libertarian. And he says he entered his race certain that he not only could but would win it.

"Being a Marine, I don't have a notion of failure, right? I didn't have the notion of failing or I wouldn't have started," Burt said in a phone interview yesterday. There were other ways he could have spent $10,000 and months of his time than on a failing political campaign, and he thinks anything less than running to win is just useless "lip service" to the cause.

Burt believed in the plausibility of the party's "Frontier Project" model. Libertarian political operative Apollo Pazell saw that chances for actual victory likely involved races where a very small number of total votes was required to win, and where only one major party opponent was on the ballot. Pazell pushed hard this year in a handful of Wyoming races with those qualities, and Burt pushed over the topwith a 276-vote edge over incumbent Democrat Stan Blake, and a total of 1,696 votes.

It's a model that may not be not widely transferable elsewhere. Given Wyoming's Trumpian tilt (the president got 70 percent of the vote there), it is no coincidence that the only Wyoming race the Libertarian Party actually won is Burt's, since he was the only one up against a Democrat and not a Republican. The GOP overwhelmingly won seats both contested and uncontested for Wyoming's state House. Despite having very high expectations for returning candidate Bethany Baldes in District 55, who lost a race in 2018 by only 53 ballots, she lost again this year, against a Republican, by 32 votes.

Burt spent nine years in the Marine Corps and currently works as a track inspector for Union Pacific railroads. Pazell recruited Burt off a party membership roll, then found his civic activism over such issues as an effort to save a local American Legion Hall in Burt's hometown of Green River made him a good pick.

A thorough ground gameincluding up to eight door knocks per voter, including some uncoordinated outside help from Young Americans for Liberty canvasserswon Burt his slim victory.

Burt's ideological backstory is not unusual for a Libertarian. He found himself "fed up with the government" for its "overreach" into Americans' lives and fortunes, a set of intrusions he says is becoming "astronomically out of hand." Being the kind of guy who "votes andcomplains," he decided to do something about it by running for office. He saw neither major party respecting citizens' rights sufficiently, so he went Libertarian.

Burt did, however, have to go through a couple of rounds of convincing from Pazell before Burt stopped "blowing him off" and agreed to runafter getting his wife to sign off on the idea. Burt went through meetings with other area and national Libertarian politicos to see how it could all work out before finally committing.

Burt's local activism, on behalf of local Marines and vets and with the fire department, likely gave him a head start with local voters, since many already had some reason to know and trust him. Burt ran a largely Republican-friendly campaign that emphasized the Second Amendment, new ideas in education, and making the state more attractive to diversified industries without relying on taxes and regulations. He was especially against any attempts to pass "red flag" laws that might allow unelected officials to "come in and confiscate guns, and put the burden on the [citizen] to prove they meet legal requirements to get their guns back."

In canvassing, Burt says he never encountered voters for whom the "Libertarian" label was a dealbreaker, and was often able to explain the party's beliefs about freedom and less government in ways that appealed to Republican voters. The "elevator pitch" version of the message, he says, was "basically, limited government, balanced budget, do what you want in your life without being infringed upon by anyone else"; he could then "expand from that thought process" to specific issues voters might be worried about.

Burt is sure the heavy ground game was important to his victory, though he jokes that some voters may have started to feel inclined not to vote for him because they heard from him so often that it became a near nuisance. He made his home number available to voters, and he fielded many personal calls. Burt was surprised how many voters had never met his incumbent opponent or even knew who he was.

As one man without any party comrades in a 60-person legislature, Burt knows he's unlikely to become an immediate law-passing powerhouse. But he says he'd like to try to work for a balanced budget while lessening the tax and regulatory burdens on Wyoming's "families and children." He says he's already had a "cordial" discussion with the GOP majority leader but he's not yet sure how caucusing will work as the body's sole Libertarian.

Burt has told the Casper Star-Tribune that "I think it's irresponsible to come out and say, 'This is what I'm going to do in my first hundred days' because, in reality, the Libertarian Party does not have a majority, so we do have to see how things fall in place and work with what we have available."

Pazell says he's learned over the years that it's good to start with freshly recruited and trained candidates, not ones who might be stuck in old patterns. He also thinks the Libertarian Party needs more trained campaign managers to take the pressure off of him. He believes that various manpower and money problems caused by COVID-19 cost the party some likely wins, and so he hopes his strategy will bear more fruit in a pandemic-free future election. The state operation was not extraordinarily expensive, with various forcesfrom the national and state party to individual candidates to outside supportcontributing around $200,000, all told.

Wyoming allows same-day voter registration, so Pazell thinks the early surveying that led him to think Baldes could win were likely skewed by hundreds of new GOP voters coming in on Election Day to vote the party linevoters the canvassers never had a chance to persuade.

The Frontier Project's goal, Pazell says, is to "guide candidates from activist to election then reelection" and help them to craft intelligent policy positions. Pazell's strategic vision has earned the Libertarian Party a very rare state-level victory, and he predicts the party will "continue to grow and adapt" to new possibilities as they arise.

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Meet Marshall Burt, Who's About To Become the Libertarian Party's Only Sitting State Legislator - Reason

Shannon Bray only spent $400 on his campaign, but he came away with 3% of the vote in the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. His name is Shannon Bray. His campaign staff was one person, just him. He only spent $400 on his run but he came away with roughly 168,000 votes.

There's only a difference of 97,000 votes between Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democrat Cal Cunningham.

"None of us really come in expecting to win," said Shannon Bray, the libertarian candidate who ran to represent North Carolinians in the U.S. Senate.

Bray didn't win. It wasn't even close. However, he's happy with his small, but notable performance in the race.

"I was ecstatic," said Bray.

Currently, roughly 96,707 votes separate Sen. Tillis and Cunningham. Bray raked in 167,968 votes that some say could've made an impact on the overall race, and contributed to nobody being declared a winner yet, although Tillis has already claimed victory.

"Maybe I did take some republican votes, and maybe I did take some democratic votes, it's almost impossible to tell without me in the race, who would have gotten those," Bray said.

Bray believes half of the people who voted for him did so because they were fed up with their options on the red and blue ticket.

The number of people who voted for Bray is also far greater than the 46,363 voters who have registered libertarians in the state, as of Election Day. Mecklenburg County is home to 5,790 of them.

"We want the right to make our own choices in our homes and we don't want government interference," Bray said.

Bray said he has received calls from those blaming him for the race still in limbo, but he said, it's important those with his views are represented as well.

"The people of North Carolina chose to vote for me because the message must be resonating," he said.

Bray said his run was all an experiment, a litmus test, to see how he could do.

He admitted he never saw himself getting so much support and he now plans to run again for U.S. Senate in 2022.

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Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate puts a wedge in a race that is too close to call - WCNC.com

This past summer, third-years Audrey Unverferth and Evita Duffy founded the Chicago Thinker, a student newspaper publishing news and opinions from conservative and libertarian points of view. The papers purpose is to defend conservative and libertarian perspectives in a community that is increasingly intolerant of such voices, according to the Thinkers mission statement.

Unverferth, who serves as both editor-in-chief and publisher, and Duffy, the papers managing editor, hope that the Thinker provides a platform for conservative and libertarian students to express their ideas to the University of Chicago community. I think it's necessary to have a platform for conservatives and libertarians to thoughtfully speak, and then to hopefully engage with others, Unverferth said.

Part of our mission is to expose the student body to a different school of thought, to expose them to conservative and libertarian ideas that aren't usually seen in the campus community, Duffy said.

Duffy and Unverferth said the Thinkers founding was prompted by their perception that the campus community is unwilling to engage with conservative and libertarian ideas.

Last March, a post by the University of Chicagos Institute of Politics (IOP) featured Duffy holding a sign that read I vote because the coronavirus wont destroy America, but socialism will. The photo sparked widespread controversy, inspiring hundreds of posts on social media, some substantive and some aimed at Duffys personal character. The incident drew a response from IOP Director David Axelrod.

In May 2019, hundreds of students gathered to protest a bill that Brett Barbin, then a fourth-year College Council representative and head of the University of Chicago College Republicans, proposed to College Council that would have banned student life fees from being used to fund abortions.

The problem that we're currently facing on campus right now is that conservatives and libertarians are too afraid to speak because of the extraordinary social consequences that individuals like Evita and Brett Barbin have experienced, Unverferth said.

Nonetheless, Unverferth said the editors of the Thinker are open to publishing work that reflects other points of view. We happily consider work by those from across the political spectrum, she said. We love to communicate across the political aisle, and we disagree, behind closed doors, and also in our pages frequently, so we're not an echo chamber.

Most of the articles published so far by the Thinker address expressly political topics like qualified immunity and the 2020 elections, but Unverferth wants to publish other content in the future. I think it would be boring for our readers if we only focused on politics, she said. And so I would really like to expand to cover various arts events and sports games, et cetera.

Writers are going to focus on stories that they think are important to inform the student body [about] at UChicago, she said. They'll cover subjects on everything from what's happening on campus to what's happening abroad.

The Chicago Thinker is currently a digital-only publication, but Unverferth hopes to publish a physical edition in the future. Her plans, however, have been complicated given the ongoing pandemic. My goal is to go into print as soon as feasible, she said. I think life needs to resume a little bit more to normal, but I would really love to have a print edition by the end of the school year.

Unverferth confirmed that the Thinker received grant funding from Collegiate Network, a program that supports conservative and libertarian publications on college campuses. The organization is operated by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a nonprofit that supports conservative college students by hosting debates and lectures, providing networking opportunities, and funding conservative student organizations, publications, and fellowships.

They provided us with a grant to launch our newspaper, said Unverferth. They provide mentorship. And in the case of the Chicago Thinker, they provided the funding to build our website.

Publications supported by Collegiate Network include The Princeton Tory, The Dartmouth Review, and the recently launched Danforth Dispatch at Washington University in St. Louis. ISIs website lists Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who started The Federalist as an undergraduate at Columbia University, and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who started The Stanford Review as an undergraduate, among the organizations alumni.

Unverferth said that backing by the ISI will not influence editorial decisions at the Thinker. We choose how to spend our grant money, we choose what to publish, we chose our name, she said. They do not possess any editorial control whatsoever upon what we publish, but they have provided our primary source of funding.

Looking forward, Unverferth and Duffy hope to raise money to start printing physical copies of the paper. We're planning to create some form of fundraisers so that we can raise money in order to go into print, and more in conversations with various organizations and alumni and others to obtain funding, Unverferth said.

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Newly Launched Chicago Thinker Aims to Promote Conservative and Libertarian Views on Campus - The Chicago Maroon