Unlimited Terms of Endearment Part XXIV: The Secret Life of Duncan Scott (ii.)

(part the second) North to Alaska

"Serving the Sun Valley, Idaho resort communities," The Idaho Mountain Express -- "Idaho's largest twice weekly newspaper" -- published this story today:

Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Idaho initiative receives nationwide funding
Libertarian foundations support Proposition 2

By GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writer

... This House Is MY Home has received $110,000 from America At Its Best, which, according to the financial disclosure report, is based in Kalispell, Mont. However, This House Is MY Home Chairman Laird Maxwell said he chairs that organization as well. Various media stories have named [Howard] Rich as a primary funding source for America At Its Best. Maxwell said Rich had provided seed money to the organization, but he said he was uncertain whether he was still a contributor....

That Kalispell, Montana address of "America At Its Best" is the law office of Duncan Scott, who also sent $870,000 to Nebraska (at last count) for a pair of initiatives, neither of which were "Eminent Domain/Takings" initiatives.

It's all rather complicated. So we'll just keep following Duncan Scott, pausing only to note that Laird Maxwell's "seed money" from Howard Rich came to something on the order of, well ... here's the latest figures hot off the Idaho Secretary of State's office website:

America At It's Best (sic)
PO Box 1678 Kalispell MT 59903
4/17/2006
$50,000.00

America At It's Best (sic)
PO Box 1678 Kalispell MT 59903
4/17/2006
$50,000.00

Fund for Democracy*
73 Spring St Ste 406
New York NY 10012
3/21/2006
$80,000.00

[*The San Francisco Chronicle, Oct 5, 2006:

(California) Donations included ... $1.5 million from (Howard) Rich's Fund for Democracy, which he describes simply as "a trust." The organization is not incorporated and has no publicly stated aim. ]

Fund for Democracy
73 Spring St Ste 406
New York NY 10012
4/12/2006
$25,000.00

Fund for Democracy
73 Spring St Ste 406
New York NY 10012
4/13/2006
$50,000.00

Fund for Democracy
73 Spring St Ste 406
New York NY 10012
4/25/2006
$55,000.00

Fund for Democracy
73 Spring St Ste 406
New York NY 10012
5/5/2006
$22,000.00

Fund for Democracy
73 Spring St Ste 406
New York NY 10012
6/2/2006
$5,000.00

Maxwell, Laird
702 W Hays Ste 16 Boise ID
3/21/2006
$50.00

And that's it. [I assume that the error of It's (it is) as opposed to "Its" (a possessive form of 'It') was the a clerical error in the SOS's office. Clearly it's not "America At It Is Best." It's nonsensical in its application, grammatically.] Onward:

When we strip away the masks, "America At It's Best" (sic) is Idaho's Laird Maxwell and Montana's Duncan Scott. (How it is that Montana AAIB contributes to Idaho's "This House is MY Home," when Idaho's Laird Maxwell is the chairman of AAIB is a mystery no one has quite yet made sense of).

The "Fund For Democracy" is Howie Rich. And Laird Maxwell even makes a $50 cameo as the crusty, homespun Idahoan fighting to empower the "people," as Rich's operatives in every state claim. Laird's wife Lori Maxwell (nee Klein) is quoted mouthing standard Richian rhetoric this week by the Center for Public Integrity:

Arizona's Million-Dollar Man
Pro-207 forces rake in more money from the Howard Rich machine

by jim morris
Published: October 11, 2006

... Lori Klein, the executive director of Arizona HOPE, says that there is nothing nefarious or surprising about the hefty out-of-state donations.

"Many businesspeople [in Arizona] were afraid to contribute to us, even though they believe in property rights, because of the draconian retaliation they would experience from the cities," Klein says. "Government is just so entrenched in the private affairs of the business on one level or another - through regulation or licensing or zoning - that the guys with money don't want to go up against the powers that be..."

We know that the relationship between Laird Maxwell and Lori Klein is now a marital relation. The exact nature of the relationship between Laird Maxwell, Howie Rich and Duncan Scott isn't known. What is known follows.

***

Dick Randolph had been, in Murray Rothbard's words in the 1982 Libertarian FORUM, "the jewel in the LP diadem ever since he won his seat in the State House from Fairbanks."

In 1982 -- as chronicled elsewhere -- Randolph ran for Governor of Alaska as a Libertarian and lost. Randolph's fellow Libertarian, a professional hunting guide named Ken Fanning, had been elected in 1980. In 1982, Fanning lost his bid for re-election, too. In 1984, Andre Marrou was elected, returning the LP to the Alaska statehouse in Juneau.

If Randolph had been the jewel, then Alaska was the crown. They'd been the most successful, had elected the largest number of Libertarians, and, they were making quite a lot of money fundraising.

But, in 1983, the Libertarian Party of Alaska decided to get serious, and hired an executive director, possibly the first hired by any state LP in the USA.

In a telephone interview with Andre Marrou, the 1992 LP presidential candidate recalled the political climate at the time:

Marrou remembered Randolph's gubernatorial run in 1982. Eric O'Keefe came up there. And he remembers meeting Ken Guida, confirming Rothbard's report in the Nov-Dec 1982 Libertarian Forum.

In early summer, Randolph, for some curious reason, turned his entire campaign over to the Crane Machine, lock, stock, and barrel -- and to Eastern preppie carpetbaggers at that. After offering the job to several others and having it
turned down, the Crane Machine sent Kent Guida -- fresh from his only political experience as third-place loser in a three-person race for national chair in 1981 -- to Alaska as campaign manager (?!) for Randolph. Other Craniacs poured up there, including Anita Anderson and Paul Beckner, and Ed Crane himself and the Riches were much in evidence. Crane and his hireling Chris Hocker were made co-finance directors of the Randolph campaign in the lower 48. And when Craniac Eric O'Keefe was kicked out of his job as National Director of the LP in August, he was immediately trundled up to Alaska to help run the show....

"It was the next year [1983] Dick Randolph called me up," Marrou says. Randolph said "We want to have a full time executive director for the [Alaska Libertarian] party."

"Randolph nominated Duncan Scott. I didn't know him." At the time, Marrou was the state LP officer in charge of elections. Duncan Scott was hired as the Alaskan LP state executive director, on salary. And there was plenty of money for that salary.

The LP had been quite successful in raffling off airplanes at $20 per ticket. If they sold all their raffle tickets, they would collect $60,000 for a $10,000 airplane, Marrou recalls. They also put pull-tabs in the bars. "But they didn't bring in as much as the airplanes."

He recalls Duncan Scott in 1983: "Very good executive director of the [Libertarian] party. [Alaska's LP] was the only party with paid employee. Duncan Scott was good at managing, good at fundraising, etc." Scott was, according to Marrou, "Fairly thin; he wasn't tall, about 5'10" Sharp, college graduate; he had a law degree. I respected him a lot."

In 1983 and 1984, Duncan Scott was also the director of something called "Alaskans for a Competitive Economy, Inc." which, Marrou explains, was the accounting mechanism for a petition drive and ballot measure from the Libertarian Party.

Unlike Scott's 1982 experience in Montana, the Alaskan initiative was successful. "We eliminated 52 pages of regulations, and abolished the Alaska Transportation Commission," Marrou says, adding, "I was one of the three who incorporated ['Alaskans for a Competitive Economy']."

During this period, "Duncan and Dick were palling around a lot together." Randolph, an experienced pilot, would fly Scott to Randolph's hunting lodge on Clark Lake. By contrast, Marrou says he was never invited to the hunting lodge.

But, in September of 1983, the National Convention was held in New York City....

***

We pick up our tale at the 1983 National Libertarian Party convention in New York City, where ten years earlier, Andrea Millen and Howard Rich had been elected the Chair and Vice Chair, respectively, at the founding of the New York Free Libertarian Party in 1973.

In 1976, the NY FLP suffered a schism, [ Libertarian Forum, April 1976 ]:

The big libertarian political news from New York is the defection from the Free Libertarian Party of nine of its leading members, including four of its former candidates for office, and two of its former chairmen. Of the nine, three have resigned from the FLP outright (Childs, Millen, and Rothbard), while the other six remain, in the words of the joint statement of the nine published below, alienated, but continuing to do what they can "for our cause ... on their own." All of them have "disengaged" from the FLP.

Walter Block
Andrea Millen [NOTE: later, Andrea Millen Rich]
Murray N. Rothbard
Roy Childs
Ralph Raico
Jerry Tuccille
Gary Greenberg
Howard Rich [NOTE: married Andrea Millen]
Fran Youngstein [emphasis added- HW]

After that, explains Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, a delegate to the 1983 National Convention, the Southern California Libertarian Party Chair and Los Angeles County Party Chair, "They all left the New York party," but the 'disengagers' remained involved at the national level.

It is well to keep that walkout in mind, along with the Bozeman, Montana walkout in the summer 1983: when Eric O'Keefe was fired, preceded by a massive parliamentary fireworks display.

The New York National LP Convention of 1983 was eagerly anticipated. The arc of the party was on the rise. (from the Libertarian Party's "history" webpage)

1972
First national convention held in June in Denver, Colorado. John Hospers, a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California, is nominated as presidential candidate. LP vice presidential candidate Tonie Nathan becomes the first woman in U.S. history to receive an electoral vote.

1978
Ed Clark receives 5% of the vote in his race for Governor of California.

Dick Randolph of Alaska becomes the first elected Libertarian state legislator.

1979
Presidential nominating convention held in Los Angeles. Ed Clark and David Koch named as presidential and vice presidential candidates.

Permanent ballot status achieved in California as more than 80,000 voters register Libertarian.

1980
Ed Clark appears on the ballot in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, and receives almost one million votes. His campaign runs extensive national television ads and offers many Americans their first look at what the LP has to offer. Many in the media recognize the LP for the first time as a serious political force.

Dick Randolph is re-elected to Alaska state legislature. Ken Fanning, also running as a Libertarian, is elected to Alaska legislature.

1982
Louisiana congressional candidate James Agnew receives 23% of the vote. Alaska gubernatorial candidate Dick Randolph receives 15% of the vote. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Sam Steiger receives 5% of the vote.

The 1983 Convention had started out looking like a glorious new day for the Party. They would nominate their 2004 Presidential ticket. And then bad things started to happen:

It was an odd week to begin with. The presidential "campaign" within the party had begun in early 1983.

Murray Rothbard writes in the February 1983 Libertarian Review:

I bring tidings of great joy: We have a presidential candidate.

His name is Gene Burns, of Orlando, Florida. At the last NatCom meeting at Orlando, on December 4-5, I first met Gene Burns by appearing on his radio talk show. I was impressed by the astuteness of his questions and his obvious sympathy with and knowledge of libertarianism. Then, at the banquet Saturday night, Gene delivered a magnificent, stem-winding speech that brought the entire audience to its feet.

Jocularly, without realizing how prophetic we were, some of us nudged each other and said, "Hey, what about him as a Presidential candidate?" And now, that dream has come true.

But in the week preceding the LP Convention Burns unexpectedly withdrew from the race.

It wasn't supposed to be an exciting convention. Since January, radio talk show host Gene Burns of Orlando, Florida had been campaigning hard for the Presidential nomination. No one was in the field to oppose him. The desperate Crane Machine, trying hard for a "big name" candidate, sought for months to induce Republican Representative Ron Paul to run against Burns, but without success....

Then Burns dropped the bombshell [LF, Sept/Oct 83, page 2.]:

The peaceful lull, and all hopes for a serene convention, ended abruptly on Thursday, August 25, when I and a few others received a lengthy mailgram from Gene Burns announcing his withdrawal from the race, this announcement coming a mere four days before the convention. Burns made the mailgram public that afternoon, declaring that not enough funds had been raised for his race. Following a pattern that he had established in early and mid-June, Burns, when faced with a financial problem, dropped out of the race without consulting any of his LP friends and supporters, then promptly made himself incommunicado for many days, going fishing, and answering no calls.

Political maneuvering began in earnest, with three factions arising within the LP: [p. 6]

[Floor leader for the successful nominee, Dave Bergland] Emil Franzi, in his typically perceptive way, has engaged in an incisive sociological class analysis of the composition of the Libertarian Party. "There are three groups in the Party," he points out, "the preppies, the rednecks and the hippies." The "preppies" or would-be aspiring preppies are the Crane Machine, the epitome of the three-piece suit Eastern Establishment; the "hippies" are the Radical Caucus, and the "rednecks" are the Alicia Clark supporters of 1981. There is not, of course, a 1-to-1 correlation here, but the broad breakdown provides a remarkably accurate fit of the three factions. The Crane Machine is the "respectable" preppie elite, the opportunistic seekers after power; the rednecks are the unpretentious populist voters, the people of the heartland of America....

For a time, Tonie Nathan, the 1972 Vice Presidential candidate (and a featured speaker at this year's 2006 National Libertarian Convention) was the "Defense Caucus" candidate. She withdrew early on, and supporters went to the Dave Bergland camp and the Earl Ravenal camp (the "Crane Machine" candidate).

[p. 9]

The Crane Machine had three aces up its sleeve at this convention ... The second, which appeared toward the end of the week, was the very visible and imposing appearance of multi-millionaire David Koch. Koch, moving around the delegations with Randolph and MacBride, laid it on the line: If Ravenal were nominated, he was prepared to give $300,000 to the Party for ballot drives. And what this "Unity" spokesman was asked, "if Bergland is nominated Would you, in the name of unity, then contribute an equal amount to ballot drives" "Certainly not," David Koch replied, "I only contribute to first-class candidates."

Koch had run in 1980 as the Vice Presidential candidate after pledging to spend $500,000 on the campaign. But this time the LP wasn't buying.

When, after a long series of tough floor battles, Bergland was nominated, the Crane Machine got up and walked out of the convention.

Tonie Nathan remembers that it was odd. "We were supposed to have a dinner that night." But none of those who walked out returned. Except for one, Nathan says. "Howie Rich came to the dinner."

Melinda Pillsbury-Foster remembers, "He[Duncan Scott]just went 'poof.' They all went 'poof.' They were all just GONE." The Craniacs had left the convention, but until the dinner that Saturday night, September 3, 1983, no one else in the LP realized it. And, for the most part, the "Craniacs" never returned again.

As has been noted in previous reports, the "Crane Machine" includes most of the major players in the "Howie Rich & Friends" group that have been the subject of this entire series. [see: "The Crane Machine Revealed"]

Add to that group that walked out of the LP Convention Duncan Scott. Tonie Nathan remembers that Scott was there, but can't recall if he was one of the group that walked out. Pillsbury-Foster is sure: "Yes, he was there, and yes, he was one of those who walked out." But he did not stand out, which Nathan confirms.

Duncan Scott returned to Alaska, still was running the ballot measure campaign for the Libertarian Party and the "Alaskans for a Competitive Economy, Inc." (ACE) And, still the Executive Director of the Alaskan LP, Duncan Scott led that 1984 campaign -- a successful year for the LP. Andre Marrou was elected to the Alaskan state house, and the ballot measure passed. Bergland's campaign didn't fare very well, as the Crane wing of the party sat out the presidential campaign.

[NOTE: according to one eyewitness, Howie Rich and his brother-in-law, Paul Jacob, worked in Connecticut under assumed names. Jacob, former Chair of the Arkansas Libertarian Party, had gone underground after his indictment on draft resistance charges on 23 September, 1982. Jacob was later arrested and tried, on July 1-2, 1985, offering the Libertarian defense the draft is a form of slavery and by resisting he remained free. He was found guilty, sentenced to five years -- the maximum -- with 4 ½ suspended. He spent the next several months as a guest of the U.S. Government -- HW]

But, even with the losses of 1982, Alaska remained the "jewel" in the LP diadem.

And then, one day in March of 1985, Andre Marrou called Dick Randolph. Marrou had a long-term plan for the Alaskan party -- part of which was for Randolph to move up to the Alaskan Senate, combined with a number of other moves, culminating in a Libertarian ticket for Governor and Lt. Governor. "Dick shot me down," saying that "the Libertarian party was dead, etc. etc." Marrou recounts.

And then, a short time later, with rumors flying about a Randolph Republican bid for governor, "I called Dick in March '85," to ask Randolph if the rumors were true. "Dick said, 'I'm not going to do that [jump to the GOP]. I'm a dedicated Libertarian'." But two weeks later, Dick Randolph announced that he was moving to the Republican party to run for governor.

"He went on statewide radio and announced that the Libertarian Party was dead." Marrou was incensed. "Dick broke his word to me. I asked specifically if he was going to do this. He said 'no'."

I located the secretary of the Randolph campaign in 1986 (she lists her involvement as from 1985 to 1986, so the campaign was just under way when Marrou called Randolph in March of '85.) Her name is Lillian Simmons, she was a legal secretary at the time and she is currently running for Texas House District 52 as the Libertarian candidate. She writes:

In 1985 I worked as a secretary at the campaign of Republican Dick Randolph for Governor of Alaska. Dick Randolph had served in the Alaska Legislature as a Libertarian previously, and he had sponsored and passed the Alaskan Dividend. This is the Alaskan reverse income tax. This governor's race was a primary race with thirteen Republican candidates. Dick Randolph ended up in third place. It was a high third place.

In a telephone interview last week, I asked Ms. Simmons whether she knew Duncan Scott during the Randolph for Governor campaign in 1985-6.

"Oh yes. He ran the campaign," she says. "He was a very nice man."

Foster-Pillsbury says that there has been a lot of speculation that Duncan Scott talked Dick Randolph into returning to the GOP. When told of this speculation Marrou said that he didn't know, but that it was "entirely possible," adding, "I never would have thought Duncan Scott or Dick Randolph would do it."

This caused Marrou quite a problem in his re-election campaign. Everywhere he went, he recalls, the local media asked him about Randolph's defection, and his announcement of the death of the LP. Marrou was not re-elected.

As for Randolph? "He was roundly defeated. That ended our unbroken string of victories. He made big mistake in running for governor. He only got 13% in primary. Last I ever heard from Dick, was in 1985, he was building a boat he was going to live on in the Chena River."

In 1998, Dick Randolph switched his party membership back from the GOP to the Libertarian Party.

Meantime -- now, by all appearances, a good Republican -- Duncan Scott moved to New Mexico, to take a job as Assistant Attorney General in the office of the new Republican Attorney General of New Mexico, Hal Stratton.

But Scheherazade perceived the coming of the dawn and fell silent.

NEXT: The CONCLUSION -- Howie and Duncan and Money, Oh My!

Courage.
.