Online-organised caucus forms within the Libertarian Party and later wins its leadership.
The Mises Caucus began as a Facebook group in 2017, created by Michael Heise in response to what he saw as a national party that had drifted from its ideological roots — an account given to the Deseret News by a Mises PAC board member rather than drawn from any record. Reason dates the caucus’s launch to Heise’s disapproval of William Weld, Gary Johnson’s 2016 running mate, and Reason’s oral history dates the caucus’s challenge to party leadership from 2017, describing it as “a place within the L.P. for disciples of Ron Paul” contesting what it saw as milquetoast messaging. The critique sharpened over the national party’s response to COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates. The caucus’s advisory board, on its own roster, includes the podcasters Dave Smith and Tom Woods.
It organised through state affiliates and convention delegates. At the party’s national convention in Reno in May 2022, the caucus’s candidate for national chair, Angela McArdle, won on the first ballot with 692 votes — more than 69 percent of voting delegates — and every Libertarian National Committee leadership position was filled by caucus-endorsed candidates. Reason’s oral history records a former LNC vice chair describing the method as going state by state to control delegate selection and out-organizing the opposition.
The description of the caucus’s aims here is its own; the account of the party dispute follows Reason’s and the Deseret News’s reporting, and critics of the caucus are represented in both.
Date precision is year-only: the caucus’s founding year is documented, the month is not.
What Is Not Established Here
An earlier version of this entry attributed the caucus’s founding, its objection to then-chairman Nicholas Sarwark and to the Gary Johnson campaigns, and the support of Tom Woods and Dave Smith, to Reason’s oral history. A full-text search of that article returns zero occurrences of “Heise”, “Sarwark”, “Woods” or “Dave Smith”. Those claims have been re-sourced here where a source exists.
Nicholas Sarwark is no longer named, because no source fetched for this entry connects the caucus’s formation to his chairmanship. The Weld and Johnson objections are Reason’s and the Deseret News’s, and are stated as theirs.