Good Morning,

It looks like Mr. Obama is our next president. Vote numbers from cnn.com places, the Libertarian Party candidate, Bob Barr’s vote total at around 480,000 votes. Although Bob’s numbers were not great it seems that third parties as a whole did not fare very well this year. Independent candidate Ralph Nader received a total of about 640,000 votes which was well off of his year 2000 totals. Ron Paul, who was on the ballot in Louisiana and Montana received about 19,300 votes. The Constitution Party candidate, Chuck Baldwin took in about 172,000 votes.

Here in the State of Tennessee, according to the State website, Mr Barr recieved 8,472 votes. Bob beat Chuck Baldwin’s total of 8,160 votes and McKinney’s vote total of 2,488, but lost out to Ralph Nader and his total of 11,837 votes.

In the State Senate race it looks like that Mr. Alexander’s vote for the Bailout was pretty much a non-factor to most Tennesseans as he coasted to victory. Libertarians will not forget though and we will be there to remind fiscally conservative republicans of his actions whenever needed. The Libertarian Senate candidate, our own Daniel Lewis, received 9,285 votes in his race against Mr. Alexander. While only amounting to less than one-half a percent of the vote, Daniel ran an efficient campaign and spent the money he raised very wisely. His campaign was an opportunity to reach out to new voters and spread the Libertarian message. Daniel accomplished this through keeping an up-to-date website, distributing yard signs, creating several youtube videos, and marketing his campaign to the Ron Paul coalition.

Tennessee House district 58 candidate Lisa Leeds received approximately 18% of the vote in her race against the entrenched incumbent M. Pruitt. Lisa received 2,692 votes of a total of 17,494 votes cast.  Again, with only limited funding, the Leeds campaign made use of the opportunities that came her way and found measurable success.

The LPTN would like to take a moment to thank all those Libertarians and friends of the Libertarian Party that worked on these candidate’s campaigns. From the top of the ticket with Mr. Barr down ticket to state and local offices, it is the grassroots work from volunteers like you that make it happen. The Libertarian Party must accept that we are smaller than the two major parties and need to work harder and be wiser than those guys with more manpower and money.  The LPTN would also like to take a moment to thank both Daniel and Lisa for being willing to run campaigns and seek office on the Libertarian ticket. In the end, it is my belief, that in order for the Libertarian ideology to be discovered and accepted by the voters we must be willing to step forward ourselves and lead by example. Setting an example will begin at the State and Local levels.