The newly elected leader of Colorado’s Libertarian Party, Keith Laube, says the Liberty Pledge signed by several Republicans in close races last year as a way to prevent potential Libertarian spoilers, “goes against party principles,” which include fielding a candidate in every race. As for Congressman Gabe Evans (R-CO08) and the several incumbent state legislators who currently have signed LPCO pledges in place, Laube says those will be discussed at an upcoming board meeting.
The leadership change came from a growing schism within the LPCO, Colorado’s largest minor political party which currently has around 37,000 registered voters in the state. The saga began over a year ago and involved lawsuits and different factions of the party vying for control, and included an attempt from prior leadership to put then-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot over their national party’s own candidate.
Keith Laube was elected as the LPCO’s president by a comfortable margin over James Wiley, who served as executive director under the party’s previous chair Hannah Goodman. The two were both members of the Mises Caucus, a far-right movement within the Libertarian Party that rose to power in Colorado in 2021, a year prior to the movement’s takeover of the national party board as well.
Both Goodman and Wiley have since hinted publicly that they intend to try to retake the party during its next leadership election in April. The day after losing the leadership election, Wiley posted on Facebook that he is “looking forward to my sabbatical from the party.” When a commenter asked him who is now in charge, Wiley replied, “some people are gonna manage things for a few months for me.” Goodman made headlines by announcing she’s joining the Democratic Party, but in an interview with Libertarian activist Brandon Wark last Friday, Goodman mused about a “comeback.” Wark asked her what she thought of the party’s transition from her leadership to Laube’s.
“We laid the groundwork, right? I think that they’re just going to go back to their irrelevancy,” said Goodman. “If this is the path that they want to go down, their usual status quo, well, their usual status quo got them absolutely nothing except ignored and none of their ideas got pushed into the mainstream. So I personally think that would be the direction they go. Now we have till April. April will be a six board person change-up and that could change. So there’s always a comeback play, but I’m just not satisfied with doing the same old thing over and over. These people seem to be, and that’s fine.”
Reached this week for comment, Goodman now says she does not have plans to rejoin the Libertarian Party, but noted that there are still many active members who can influence the party’s direction.
“It’s my understand that a majority of the current [Libertarian] party board is against the strategy of the Liberty Pledge, but, at the end of the day, it’s not really up to them. It’s our delegates that get a final say in who we nominate and if we nominate a candidate. So come April 18, which is the day I’ve heard is the next convention, our delegates can choose the way they want to move forward. We’ve already had a few pledges signed by candidates.”
With America’s two-party political system, smaller parties often reflect distinct ideologies, but rarely succeed in elections outside of the local level. In order to increase their political sway, the LPCO’s previous leadership pushed to ally themselves with the Republican party, not only by introducing the pledge, but also attempting to put RFK Jr. up on the ballot.
The move to back RFK Jr was particularly divisive, with some members going to court to oppose it. A dispute over proper state convention notification protocol resulted in further legal action, eventually leading to Goodman suing Laube and other Libertarians immediately prior to the October meeting.
“Since two [prior] conventions got canceled, some delegates showed up during the second [planned convention] showed up and decided, ‘Well, we’re going to have a convention and schedule another date to elect officers,” Laube explained. “They weren’t sure that the October 18th convention was going to happen. So, the day before the convention, myself and a few others ended up in court. Both parties, the existing board and the new board really wanted to have a convention that was fair and where the members were here in good numbers.”
Laube first joined the Libertarian Party in 2007 when he lived in Weld County and became involved in the National Libertarian Convention in Denver back in 2008. A few years later, he moved to Iowa where he would serve two terms as Libertarian Party State Chair.
“When I came back in 2017, I kept track of the party and the members and in the past couple of years, really, the [state] party’s taken a different course,” Laube told CTR. “We lost membership, so Doug [Jones] and I want to grow the party again and get back to the number of registered Libertarians we had a few years ago.”
Doug Jones was elected as the Colorado Libertarian Party’s Vice Chair on October 18, as well. Laube said that party membership has dropped in recent years, it is currently a little over 37,000 registered voters, in 2021 it was around 51,000.
“It happened probably about a year ago, I think that some of the members of the board at that time wanted to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot for the presidential nominee rather than Chase Oliver,” Laube said. “That triggered a lot of people to leave the party because they really wanted Chase Oliver and at the end of the day, Chase Oliver was on the ballot in Colorado as the Libertarian Candidate.”
Additionally, Laube says he would like to see more women join the party, and for it to “get back to more Libertarian principles and general professionalism.” He said he feels the party has strayed from its “hold on individual rights,” particularly in the LGBT community.
Laube told the convention he thought the way the party had been conducting itself on social media was pushing people away from the party. The Colorado Libertarian Party has been plagued with social media scandals, from Goodman sending homophobic slurs to a critic on Facebook to former Secretary James Wiley’s posting of antisemitic conspiracy theories relating to the death of Charlie Kirk.
During the leadership nomination process at the convention, some supporters of Wiley at the convention contended that other candidates were “running on a DEI platform.”
CTR asked Wiley if he indeed plans to run for party leadership again, if he believes Laube ran on a “DEI platform,” and if he will continue to endorse and support Republicans via his political action committee, the Chainsaw Caucus, which he still runs. He declined to comment beyond writing “you are fake news.”
Another point of contention within the Libertarian caucus was the “Liberty Pledge,” which Goodman and her allies launched over a year prior to the 2024 election. The pledge was a set of commitments that it expected Republican candidates to sign in order to prevent a Libertarian from entering the race.
Created as a means to have greater influence on Colorado politics, several Republicans in tight races signed that pledge — including Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) and State Reps. Ryan Gonzalez and Rebecca Keltie all of whom won tight races in 2024. Keltie did not respond to a request for comment, this article will be updated if and when she does.
When asked if he plans to continue that strategy, Laube said he didn’t think it worked for everybody in the party.
“We’re going to look at that Liberty Pledge in detail and see how that was implemented. It started in 2024, so it really just had one election cycle, but a lot of members were turned off by that because it showed that we’re supporting candidates from other political parties… Ideally, we want candidates in every race. So that’s one of the first goals we have is to get out there and find people interested in running for office.”
“I think it really goes against our party principles,” Laube said. “We’re Libertarians, we have our ideals. We might have some things in common with the Republicans, we have some things in common with the Democrat party, but overall, we are pretty principled. We want to stick to what we believe in.
The LPCO Board will discuss the Liberty Pledge at future board meetings. Included in those board discussions will be what to do with pledge signers who are not members of the Libertarian Party.”
Laube did say that the party’s bylaws state that the LPCO and its elected directors “shall only endorse” Libertarian Party nominees for political office.
Not all of the Republicans who signed the 2024 pledge were facing competitive races. Rep. Ken DeGraaf (R-Colorado Springs), says he signed because he and his wife went to dinner at a brewery restaurant where the El Paso County Libertarians were holding their monthly meeting, and upon reviewing a copy of the pledge, he realized he supported all of its policy positions.
“For me, there were values I was already supporting anyway, so that’s why I made it easy, said DeGRaaf. “I didn’t have to change direction.”
Last week he shared his thoughts about the pledge in a post on X.
“The shared value statement of the original Liberty pledge was a great idea. It increased the L relevance and worked against the Statist takeover, R or D … A value is only a value until you trade it for something you value more. If you’re willing to risk a values-based Liberty candidate to run an L, then running an L is the value, not Liberty”
Expanding on those thoughts, DeGraaf told CTR he’s disappointed in the party’s apparent decision to do away with the pledge.
“It’s unfortunate because it was a good relationship, and it still could be. I think in general, Libertarians, — when they stick to the values — and the Republican Party, align quite nicely. If they’re promoting liberty, then the purpose of the Republican party is, of course, to support, promote, project the values of our republic, which if the Libertarians are doing the same thing, then okay, you call yourself whatever you want, but that’s what we’re doing.
“We’ve existed without the Liberty Pledge,” said DeGraaf. “I just think the Liberty Pledge helped make them more of a relevant force. So instead of just being a noisy little brother in the back seat, it’s like you’re actually progressing, you’re wanting to move the needle towards liberty.”
Erik Maulbetsch contributed to this article.
