Hundreds of libertarians gathered in Concord over the weekend for the New Hampshire Liberty Forum. The event featured policy speeches, panel-discussions, candidate visits, dinner gatherings and after parties, and served as a quasi-political convention for the Free State Project, the now 25-year-old effort to get 20,000 people to move to New Hampshire to seek “liberty in our lifetime.”
While the project has so far fallen well short of hitting that target — project leaders peg the current number of Free State pilgrims at around 6,000 people — it seems beyond argument at this point that the Free State Project is a political success.
Its members are top leaders in the state Legislature, and policies championed by Republicans in Concord these days — from school choice, to gun rights, to cryptocurrency and nuclear power — all bear the imprint of the Free State Project. According to people familiar with libertarian efforts nationwide, the success in the Granite State has been resounding.
“This is the most robust experience in libertarian organizing that I've seen in my lifetime,” said Matt Kibbe, a prominent libertarian organizer who is credited with helping to launch the Tea Party Movement. In a speech Friday morning, Kibbe compared the culture of the Free State Project to the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert: “An anarchic society where there’s no laws, but plenty of rules.”
And there was a whiff of the counterculture to some of what went down at the Liberty Forum. There was the silent auction where items included “Woven Porcfest Bracelets,” a “Man Camp Blacksmithing Experience,” and a “Wildflower Walk” with Free State founder Jason Sorens. There was also the “Free State Party” event on Saturday night, that prompted protests at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center.
But aspects of the event had an almost corporate feel. Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded conservative group, kept a fully manned table all weekend long. Turning Point USA, the Charlie Kirk-founded group that organizes on high school and college campuses, set up shop a few tables away.
The blurring of the Free State Project with mainstream conservatism — and how to translate that into tangible political gains — was the core message of the speech delivered by the Free State Project’s most prominent elected official: House Majority Leader Jason Osborne.
In remarks he called “Rules for Reformed Radicals,” Osborne spoke of his own journey from a guy “shit-posting on the internet” to leading State House Republicans. He said he got there by honoring rules he shared with his audience. They included “Pick a team” and “Show up and keep on showing up.”
“Sometimes you have to go on the 6 o’clock news and have to say with a straight face something that you don’t actually believe,” Osborne said.
Another rule: “Your vote is just a tool.”
“A protest vote has never repealed a single law, or cut a tax,” Osbourne said. “A well-organized coalition voting for imperfect candidates — flawed candidates, candidates you may not even like at all — has achieved those things in New Hampshire in your lifetime."
Osborne’s call for pragmatism over ideological purity isn’t the norm at a Free State Project event. Other speakers favored a more slash-and-burn message. Bitcoin investor and former U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Fenton used his time at the podium to rail against ICE, Israel, and President Donald Trump.
“It wasn’t the brightest idea to back this grifter, but grifter he is,” Fenton said. “But I think the tide is turning.”
The acknowledgement that the Free State Project is a potential source of political power was a throughline at the Liberty Forum. U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown, a Republican who built his political career winning elections as a Massachusetts-GOP moderate, isn't a natural fit for this crowd. But there he was on Saturday, stressing that he and Free Staters can agree on plenty of things while respecting each other's differences.
“I love this shit,” Brown said at one point.
Free Staters jeered when Brown defended the need for certain government regulations. But that didn’t stop him from suggesting the group host a U.S. Senate debate.
“I don’t win without your support,” Brown told the crowd as he left the stage.
Democrats in New Hampshire are also centering the Free State Project politically these days. They often vilify GOP policies at the State House as having “Free State” origins, and when some Liberty Forum attendees took a State House tour last week, they were met with progressive protestors, some holding signs warning against the dangers of a “Free State Takeover.”
As Osborne told the crowd at the Liberty Forum, he used to run from the Free State label. But not anymore.
“It’s not a smear anymore. It’s a description of where the center of New Hampshire political thought is today,” Osborne said. “Take the win.”
