After poking and prodding and rushing from the Mises Caucus members, we did ultimately decide to spend a relatively exorbitant amount of money hosting our convention. Money that was not recovered by the "Day of Liberty" event and only just by the dinner hosted afterwards. The convention business started off congenially enough. Even though a "heavyweight" in the local MC forgot to change his party registration from the Democrats, as was required at the time for credentialing, we all played well together and agreed to move up a planned agenda item to amend our membership requirements to allow members of the National LP residing in Delaware to qualify as members as well as registered party members. This change allowed him to be credentialed.
The State Party elections were also fairly uneventful. The Secretary position was uncontested due to the universal respect held for the incumbent Secretary who was just too nice to everyone to have prompted a contest. The Mises Caucus did put up their own candidate against the incumbent Treasurer, who had served for over 10 years without issues. He overwhelmingly lost because why would you turn over all of the Party's funds to a dangerously unhinged unknown when the Treasurer you have fulfilled all of her legal obligations as required. The Caucus also put up a candidate for Vice Chair who was better prepared and a smoother talker than her opponent, so they won that seat. The Chair race was also uncontested as a candidate announced after a more experienced but more controversial candidate dropped out, and this new candidate had at least been in the party for a few years and had a reputation for being levelheaded and uncontroversial. He turned out to have been a member of the Mises Caucus without telling anyone and even strongly suggesting that he was not, but more on that elsewhere.
Where the convention really went off the hinges was when the counties broke out to conduct their elections. Delaware has three counties. Sussex in the south of the state did not and does not have a Mises Caucus presence. Their elections were unremarkable. New Castle County in the north of the state was dominated by the Mises Caucus, in particular thanks to a unique membership requirement that voting members had to have attended at least two of the last five meetings to qualify. Less active members who might have resisted the Mises Caucus takeover of New Castle County were not permitted to vote. This requirement had not been enforced in the past, but when the New Castle Board decided to enforce it this time it was not questioned as no one on the Board was assumed to be in the Mises Caucus and it was assumed that this rule would break both ways.
The real mess was in Kent County in the middle. In a first for the Libertarian Party of Delaware, we had decided to allow for remote participation by credentialed members who joined the voice channels on our Discord server but were not present on location. Our favorite volunteer who had led the organization of the previous day's "Day of Liberty" event contested every election, but was incensed that two members of the Mises Caucus who were not present on Discord, but whom she assured us were texting her, were not permitted to vote. Another Mises Caucus member claimed to be a resident of Kent County, but his voter registration, driver's license, and every other form of documentation he could provide said he lived in New Castle County. He was not permitted to vote either.
Most of the elections broke against the Mises Caucus event organizer, though her three phantom votes could have swayed the outcome, until the last one that first resulted in a tie. According to the State Party rules, ties require a 10 minute recess to be taken and then a revote. During the recess, it was revealed that our Mises event organizer had blocked several members of the Kent Party and the tie flipped against her with a higher margin than the previous elections.
By now, the New Castle affiliate had completed its elections and heard the complaints of the New Castle resident claiming to live in Kent County. The previously mentioned unhinged Treasurer candidate barged into the Kent group demanding that his own vote should be counted and there was no basis for excluding party members based on county residency. A neutral parliamentarian from the NCLP opined that he was incorrect in this assessment. We reconvened.
Then the mess got worse. Our sore loser raised a confused motion/point of order to invalidate Kent's elections because she lost them claiming that members only she could talk to and residents of other counties should be allowed to participate in the vote. Our Chair, bless his heart, is not a forceful fellow so this dragged out through the time that had been allotted for additional guest speakers who chose to attend the convention rather than the independent (Mises) event the day before until our venue host finally warned us that our dinner was getting cold.
We took a recess and tried to get through some of the speakers who hadn't already left, and our regional representative gave a stirring speech about not being a sore loser, a truce was established, and the convention was adjourned.
