What I Learned in My First Year as Treasurer

By Josh Sexton

February 2020 I was attending our state convention and having a fantastic time talking with old friends and making new ones.  I had been active in the Nebraska Libertarian Party community for about 7 years and this was my third convention, it had that homecoming feeling, spending a weekend with likeminded friends.  Then came time for the election of Officers.

I had been talking with some of my friends who had stressed the need for people willing to do the work, to step up, put their shoulder into the plow and push.  I talked with Gene Siadek, a friend who was the current treasurer.  He was running for a district coordinator spot this go around but he told me about his long tenure as state treasurer.  “It isn’t the most glamorous job but it is one of the most important” he told me.  He laid out the state reports that needed to be filed and the regulations along with the balancing and bill paying.  He was right, it didn’t sound glamorous, but I decided to run for the office.  Doing some work behind the scenes and helping out the cause of liberty sounded worth it, plus it would be freeing up the talents of others like Gene to work to grow county affiliates and to run impressive races for senate (which Gene did in the 2020 general election later that year, pulling nearly 6% of the vote in his race which was more than a point increase over our 2018 senate race showing).

The moment arrived; I got up and gave a little speech.  It was kind of a blur, I’m sure it didn’t really make sense, but it (along with no one else wanting to grind out spreadsheets for Liberty) put me over the top and POOF I was a treasurer.

Over the coming months Gene and I would meet for lunch and go over the books and between that and long phone call conversations I was off to the races.  Right away I realized that it wouldn’t be as simple as balancing a checking account.  We had multiple streams of potential donations and they all needed to be reconciled.  Along with that, the state requires 6 separate reports be filed on specific dates during an election year. It was a lot to take in right out of the gate but that is when I learned my first lesson as treasurer, the people in this party will help you!

The people willing to work hard for a state office, especially one with, as little prestige as “Libertarian state party official in Nebraska”, are people who believe in what they are doing.  They are people who are willing to sacrifice nights and weekends to fight a game of inches because it is important to them to build a stronger party.  And, as it turns out, that means they will take the time to talk you through your first state filing, they will help look over your first balance sheets, they will spend a whole night texting back and forth trying to get your Internet banking log in verified.  We have fantastic people in our state party.

At first glance the state of our finances was at first pretty disheartening.  We had a small “war chest”.  If you look at people like the GOP in our state which raised and spent about 4.5 million in the last election cycle and compare that to us, David had better odds facing Goliath.  I wasn’t surprised by that, but I was glad to see we had at least something to build on.  Then I dug into the reoccurring donations.  Turns out that a state with over 16,000 registered libertarians (at that time, we have grown fantastically since then), with multiple active county parties, with a state convention that got an impressive turn out we only had about 10 people donating regularly to the party.  Of that small group most of them where people who held office and were already doing the work the grow the party.

I won’t lie to you, the first couple of months I balanced and felt depressed for our state.  Then I learned something new, when people are driven, they can do a whole hell of a lot with only a little.  We hosted an event for Spike Coen using more sweat than cash, we planted new county affiliates across the state, and started a booster pack program to help drive up engagement.  Little by little I saw engagement growing and little by little my faith grew too. By then end of the year the number of people willing to invest in our state party had well more than doubled!

Think about that for a moment, these are people who work for their money, have families and bills, who are suffering through a pandemic unlike anything anyone alive has had to go through, and still these people see value in what the party is working for. They see so much value in fact, that they want to be a part of it. They will chip in their 5, 10, or 25 dollars a month to make sure it keeps growing. We are on the move! The last thing I learned this year was in the role that came along with my role as Treasurer was serving on the State Central committee.  I hadn’t given that part much thought when I ran.  I thought, “I’ll be treasurer, I’ll work in some spreadsheets and fill out some forms and that’s that”, but as an elected official I also serve on the Sate Central Committee.  Bi weekly committee meetings shed new insights into how dedicated and driven those people are who agreed to put their shoulder to the plow for liberty are.  Thousands of miles driven on their own dime to build the party and spread liberty.  Hours upon hours of project work, data analysis, networking and email correspondence.  With their dedication I learned that $100 in their hands can do more outreach than $1,000 in the GOPs.

In spite of our smaller party numbers, I learned that when our people step up, when YOU step up, there is no one I would rather stand beside.