Happy 90th Birthday, Ed Clark

David BoazEd Clark, the 1980 Libertarian Party presidential nominee, turns 90  years old on May 4. Now that Rep. Justin Amash has thrown his hat into the ring for the 2020 nomination, I thought I’d offer some reminiscences about the earlier campaign.In my misguided youth I  was a teenage Young Democrat, a College Republican, and a young adult Libertarian Party activist, before I gave up politics for ideas and policy. In 1978, a few years out of college, I left my conservative job to become co‐​manager of Ed Clark’s campaign for Governor of California on t he Libertarian ticket. (He was actually on the ballot as an independent because it was much easier to get ballot status that way.)As I  wrotein the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, Clark was a  corporate attorney in New York and Los Angeles. He opposed the Vietnam War while remaining a Republican, but when President Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls in 1971, he joined the Libertarian Party and quickly became a member of its national committee and California State Chair. As one of the most successful and articulate professionals in the fledgling party, he was persuaded to run for governor in 1978.A political campaign with co ‐​managers sounds like a recipe for disaster. It wasn’t, for two reasons: because libertarian impresario Ed Crane hovered over the campaign as Chairman and guiding light, and because the two managers had entirely different skills. I was the words‐​and‐​polic...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs