The Internal Coup To Wrongfully Remove The Chair of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire Over a Twitter Account.
They staged a coup and then lied to the membership about it.
The Red Pill Diaries are my unvarnished, sometimes offensive, slightly narcissistic observations on my red pill journey.
If you’re looking for my unwoke content, head over to the Actively Unwoke Substack.
I joined the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire as part of the Mises Caucus in 2021, and one of the first people I met at my very first meet-up was Conrad Nelson.
Conrad is one of the most upstanding, reliable, diplomatic, even-tempered people I’ve ever met. He and his wife Ashleigh have devoted countless hours to helping and supporting both the LPNH and the MC over the past few years, culminating in Conrad being elected Chair of the LPNH at the state convention in January 2023 by an almost unanimous vote.
Just a few months later, they no longer consider themselves a part of either of those organizations.
What has happened in New Hampshire is truly disgusting, the betrayal of someone many called a friend to his face while they plotted behind his back and overthrew the will of the party delegates from the state convention.
And it was all over a shitposting Twitter account.
I’ve previously documented the destruction of the Mises Caucus in New Hampshire, an entirely self-inflicted womb by the MC National Organizer Jeff Douglas because they wanted control over the LPNH Twitter. I won’t rehash that again in this piece.
Instead, I want to tell you the story of how the people running the LPNH Twitter account got the Executive Committee of the LPNH to stage an internal coup against Conrad when he took away the keys to the Twitter account because he was tired of the Communications Committee disregarding his specific instructions to take principled Libertarian positions.
You read that correctly. Conrad told them he wanted principled Libertarian positions, and the people running the LPNH Twitter account refused.
They were also openly supporting people attacking Porcfest - one of the premiere liberty events in New Hampshire - encouraging people not to attend over a single person saying they were going to host a drag queen at their campsite on a 116-acre campground.
The last I checked, hating drag queens for existing was a ring-wing conservative position, not a Libertarian one. And certainly, siding with people attacking Porcfest from the official party Twitter account is a big no-go.
They did so after many warnings from the Chair that he would suspend the Twitter if they didn’t follow his instructions to take principled Libertarian stances.
The Chair’s requests were not unreasonable, and he had the power to make such requests per the party bylaws. Asking the official state party Twitter account - and the most followed state affiliate account in the entire Libertarian Party - to stick to posts that support Libertarian positions instead of conservative ones is not unreasonable, especially in a state with many socially liberal Libertarians that do not care about drag queens.
Yet the people running the LPNH Twitter repeatedly refused to follow it, believing they were entitled to indiscriminately shitpost whatever they like. Their desire to clout chase with talking points targeting right-wing reactionary audiences on the platform outweighed their desire to support the state party.
When it finally came to a head, Conrad changed the password to the account to regain decorum.
When he did, the Executive Committee suspended him from the role he was elected to just a few months ago.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up.
Conrad Was Elected Chair of the LPNH In January 2023
It’s important to note that literally no one else wanted to lead to the LPNH except for Conrad.
Even though he ran for the position unopposed and was basically guaranteed to win, he still developed a plan for his tenure: He wanted to build membership in the party and run local candidates.
Here’s the speech he gave outlining his plans:
Sadly he never got a chance to do any of what he wanted to do because by March - less than two months after he was elected - the Executive Committee had already staged its first internal coup against Conrad.
And, of course, it was over the Twitter account.
The LPNH Twitted this:
Some might frown upon a political party saying that they will never win, and Conrad certainly did.
He proceeded to lock the Twitter account, reset the password, and take away access to the people running it. This set off an internal shitstorm that resulted in the entire Executive Committee revolting against Conrad, forcing him into a corner where he almost resigned over it.
It all happened because Reed Coverdale and Erik Sawyer - two of the primary people running the Twitter - are addicted to the platform.
A lot of people think that Jeremy Kauffman is behind all of the LPNH Twitter drama, and he certainly is sometimes. But Jeremy is a principled Libertarian and even if you don’t like what he has to say, everything he tweets is a principled position.
The reality is that most of the problems with the LPNH Twitter don’t come from Jeremy. They come from Erik and Reed.
When Conrad took the keys to the party account away in March, both Erik and Reed resigned from the Communications Committee over it.
They noted that the LPNH Twitter is the only successful thing in the LPNH and in the entire Libertarian Party:
Conrad was completely within his rights to do what he did. This is from the party by-laws:
And that’s why an internal coup was necessary to get conrol away from him - they are all so obsessed with the Twitter that they couldn’t go a few days without having access to it and instead decided to try to overthrow the newly elected chair of the party to get it back.
It got to the point where the Chair of the party called for a new convention to potentially elect a new chair:
I had previously removed myself from all of the party Signal groups because I had been really burned by things that Erik Sawyer had done during 2022 (more on that in a moment) in regard to the Twitter account, and I decided to focus all of my energy on things I wanted to do to encourage the separation of government and education instead of continue to waste time with the LPNH.
The only reason I even stayed in the party was because I had privately spoken to Conrad about his desire to use the Twitter account more strategically as Chair.
So, when Conrad made this announcement of the special convention, I was shocked. How is it POSSIBLE that they could turn on Conrad in under two months?
It made no sense…until you understand that they are all addicted to Twitter.
I began asking around and was immediately attacked by Erik in one of the Signal groups for doing so. When I responded to his attack on me, they removed me from the group.
I immediately posted this message in the LPNH Facebook group:
And I got attacked for that too, predictably.
I was also told by members of the Executive Committee who led the internal coup that I just didn’t understand all the facts, that the Chair of the party had gone mad! How dare he take away their Twitter!!!
I’m going to have to respectfully disagree that I didn’t have all the facts, because I’ve talked to no less than a dozen people outside of the Executive Committee about all this, and all of them said the same thing.
Eventually, a compromise was reached…a compromise that would mean Conrad would voluntarily give up his control over the Communications Committee, and the Executive Committee who staged the internal coup against him would be able to control everything. In return, he would get to serve out his term as Chair and not be forced to resign…but he wouldn’t really be able to accomplish anything or make any decisions because now the entire party strategy would be based around the Twitter.
I knew this was a mistake at the time and that it would be used against Conrad later, but Conrad wanted to keep the peace and try to move forward productively, hoping that if he compromised they would allow him to try to implement some of his agenda.
It’s important to note here that this change - taking away control of the Comms Committee from their Chair - was not reflected in any by-laws on policy documents at this point. It was simply a gentleman’s agreement.
Erik and Reed were also voted back onto the Communications Committee they resigned from by the rest of the Executive Committee, and nothing changed.
They got their precious Twitter back, and that’s all that matters.
What Happened To Make Me Distrust Erik
I have one more note of clarity to add here, because it will become very important in proving the open and blatant hypocrisy of the people staging the internal coup against Conrad.
In my Facebook post, I noted that I had wanted Erik removed from the Comms Committee for a while.
It’s a bit of a long story, but now is the time to tell it, and I want to make sure you understand the full context.
I started to mistrust Erik Sawyer in 2022 when I was the official LPNH Endorsed Candidate for Governor.
This was never a real campaign - I only agreed to do it if I was just a name on a piece of paper and didn’t need to do anything. I never even fundraised. It was literally just to have a candidate in the role and we were all focusing on Jeremy Kauffman’s Senate Campaign. As such, I really didn’t think this would be a big deal, and I thought that it would give me a chance to talk about the issue I care about the most - the schools - and maybe tweet some spicy things here and there.
It turned out to be one of the worst mistakes of my life.
It unleashed a group of mentally unwell lunatics who are obsessed with me into the replies of the LPNH Twitter almost every single day, spreading lies about me, doxing my friends, and doing everything they could to harass me into silencing myself.
None of these people perpetrating the smear campaign lived in New Hampshire, and none of them were Libertarians. In fact, they openly stated they hated Libertarians.
Of course, Erik could not be held responsible for the actions of these people…but he was responsible for allowing them to do it in the replies of the official party account.
I begged the people running the Twitter to block them. They never did. They allowed me to get beat up every day, with these people spreading the worst lies about me using the official party Twitter account to elevate them.
It got so bad that I became clinically depressed and was suicidal for about a month. Don’t worry, I’m much better now, and a lot has changed since then. But it did get very bad.
That might seem silly, but they were attacking every part of my life and the people I loved, trying to destroy all of my work, and they were doing it every single day for months. It was a living, breathing hell. No party candidate should ever have to endure what I did without the support of the people in their own party.
But there was one more thing Erik was responsible for.
Not only did they refuse to block the people attacking me, but someone from the Communications Committee (and I believe it was Erik Sawyer because I don’t know anyone else it could be) leaked private information from the internal Comms chat about me to the people harassing me that they later used against me publicly. The information they received could not have come from anywhere but the Comms Committee chat.
Today, Erik and Reed interact openly with the people who were (and still are) harassing me. They don’t even try to hide it anymore.
This was all the proof I needed that they were facilitating my harassment. To this day, I don’t know what I did to deserve this.
If you have any questions of if being an outspoken woman will get you harassed to within an inch of your sanity in the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, question it no more. I would never recommend any woman join the party unless you want to relegate yourself to the role of a silent housewife making sandwiches for all of the men.
But that’s not all that happened.
Not only did they support people harassing me.
Not only did they leak private information to the people harassing me.
But Erik also refused to post anything I gave them regarding my platform.
Even though I was a paper candidate, I thought we could still use the opportunity to speak to issues, and I provided them with more than enough material to do so.
And this is where we get back to what happened to Conrad.
I had made a whole bunch of clips of my main stage appearance at Porcfest that year, talking about separating government and education, and I asked them to post them to the Twitter account. I literally wrote the tweets for them, all they had to do was cut and paste.
This was principled Libertarian messaging, about a topic that I am one of the few people in the country really pushing hard for, and it was from the main stage of one of the most prominent events in New Hampshire…and they refused to post it.
Allow me to be crystal clear: Erik Sawyer (who is now the defacto leader of the LPNH) refused to post principled Libertarian messaging from the endorsed party candidate for Governor because he considered her to be a woman that just had a bit too much to say.
Here is an excerpt that I had with Nolan, who was the Chair of the party when this was all happening:
The reason I selected this portion of the conversation is that last part of Nolan’s response:
“At the end of the day, Comms is an ad hoc and will answer to me.”
When Nolan Pelletier was the Chair of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire directly before Conrad, it was understood and enforced that, as an ad hoc committee, the Communications Committee reported directly to him.
It even said so on the Party website. This screenshot was taken via archive.org from an archive of the website at the time Nolan was Chair prior to Conrad’s election.
“Our Comms Committee serves at the pleasure of the Chair”
This is going to become very important in our story, as the overt hypocrisy is one of the pieces of evidence that this was, indeed, an internal coup.
You see, in their second internal coup (which will get to shortly), the main argument from the Executive Committee is that they simply had to remove Conrad because he was being a tyrant authoritarian who was ignoring official party policy!
They claimed it had ALWAYS been that the Comms Committee reported to the Executive Committee, not the chair.
They even accused Conrad of editing the language on the website to cover up for his misdeeds. I had this exchange with EC member Ben Weir:
Ben tried to say that the reason the website said the Comms Committee served at the pleasure of the Chair was edited by Conrad. Because they are trying to paint the narrative that Conrad is a tyrant.
Except that, as we’ve already established, the website said exactly the same thing when Nolan was Chair of the party:
So, the Executive Committee is lying to members to try to cover up their actions. They are also twisting party policy documents (that do not take precedence over party by-laws) to make is seem as though the Comms Committee reported to the EC rather than to the Chair of the party, even though under the previous Chair it was known and accepted that the Comms Committee reported directly to the chair.
All over a Twitter account.
The 2nd Internal Coup
After the first internal coup, the Executive Committee appointed Steve Nass to form a special committee to lay out guidelines and standards for the people running the Twitter account regarding what was and was not acceptable.
They promised that everything would be solved once we had policy documents!
I’ve been involved with the LPNH since April 2021, and was on the Comms Committee for a portion of that time, and I can tell you that this is something the Comms Committee has claimed to want to do for over two years.
They still haven’t done it. So far as I can tell, nothing was ever accomplished by Steve Nass’s special committee.
In fact, evidence will come out in the future showing the Executive Committee didn’t even understand the need for policy documents.
But the other reason the policy was never developed is because the Comms Committee (and specifically Erik and Reed) does not want there to be a policy dictating the standards for the Twitter account because that would prevent them from shitposting to their heart’s content. They have sabotaged every single effort to create a policy, or slowed it down to a crawl until it was just forgotten about.
Erik Sawyer has been the Chair of the Communications Committee for over two years now. If he wanted to draft a Twitter policy, he would already have done it. There is no policy because Erik doesn’t want there to be a policy.
Still, Conrad tried to get things back on track and focused on his priorities, including making sure there was an LPNH site for Porcfest to recruit new members.
One might think that a site at Porcfest would be a no-brainer for the LPNH.
But no - no one except for Conrad saw that as a priority. The rest of the Executive Committee and the Comms Committee were instead creating a “Free State Based” Caucus site that was actively excluding the participation of people who they deemed undesirable.
So, Conrad was trying to make sure there was an LPNH presence at this event separate from the FSB tent, and was planning on staffing the site himself.
Sadly, by this time, most of the Executive Committee became driven by conspiracy theory and paranoia, accusing Conrad of colluding with Jeff Douglas of the Mises Caucus to steal the party from them (he wasn’t). They refused to work with him and became very disruptive during meetings, even leaving them altogether or not attending. They would later use this against Conrad in the 2nd Coup but blame their lack of cooperation on him.
Evidence will come out to prove what happened when the case of Conrad’s suspension is held in the Judicial Committee, but we will have to wait until after they make their decision to see them.
In the meantime, the shitposting continued.
Of course, we exist in a time when the conservative moral panic about drag queens is in full swing. And there are a lot of conservatives pretending to be libertarians who can’t fathom the idea of just ignoring the men in dresses that you don’t like and moving on with your day, including Erik Sawyer and Reed Coverdale.
Conrad specifically told them he did not want them tweeting about drag queens and general culture war issues unless they were associating it with a specific Libertarian policy or position. Sounds like a pretty reasonable request.
Well, they kept ignoring it.
Conrad kept asking them, repeatedly, to associate any culture war tweets with a Libertarian policy if they were going to tweet about them.
He also warned them that he was going to take the keys away again if they didn’t.
Remember, we’ve already covered that the party by-laws give Conrad the ability to do this:
And we’ve already covered that the previous chair of the party interpreted the by-laws as meaning the Comms Committee reported to him:
At the beginning of May, a Free Stater on Twitter wrote that she was going to host a Drag Queen Story Hour on her campsite at Porcfest.
This set off a firestorm of conservatives pretending to be libertarians sending virtue signal after virtue signal on Twitter, declaring that they would NEVER go to Porcfest because they just couldn’t stand to be on the same 116-acre campground as a man wearing a dress!
They were directly attacking one of the premiere liberty events in New Hampshire, and a major recruiting opportunity for both the Free State Project and the LPNH.
And Erik Sawyer started liking tweets of the people doing it from the official party account.
Likes are public.
Anyone could see them.
When Conrad found out, he took the Twitter away and posted a message on the account saying it was suspended. They’ve since deleted that tweet.
After Conrad took away their Twitter, Erik acted with his usual decorum and called Conrad a faggot in the official Comms chat. This screenshot was later posted to another LPNH signal group and then someone in that group sent it to me.
Erik (again) acted with his usual decorum in responding to the tweet that Conrad posted to the LPNH account:
Reed also joined in with his typical level of discourse:
The following day, the Executive Committee staged their second internal coup and voted to suspend Conrad.
The reason they gave is that Conrad was a tyrant who was ignoring their Democratic vote.
Perhaps they should take advice from their own Twitter account regarding Democracy:
They claimed the bylaws said that the Executive Committee had control over the Comms Committee all along and that Conrad was openly violating the by-laws in suspending the Twitter!
The problem is that’s not true either.
Remember how I told you that, in the first internal coup in March, the Executive Committee never updated the official policy documents to reflect that they had taken oversight of the Comms Commitee away from the Chair?
They did that formally in the same meeting where they voted to suspend Conrad for changing the Twitter password. This was the amendment to the policy manual passed on May 4, 2023 to remove any authority the party Chair has over the Comms Committee to prevent their precious Twitter from ever being taken away again:
This was not added until the day after Conrad took the keys to the Twitter away.
That means that when Conrad suspended their use of the account, he was fully within his right to do so. They had to change the policy manual to use against him to get him out.
And when they did that, they also suspended him as Chair, making sure to come up with a made-up list of reasons (that they are completely incapable of providing evidence for) rather than saying what the real reason was: That the Chair took away their precious Twitter and they were pissed off.
After they removed Conrad and then lied to people about why, I posted on Twitter what really happened.
The LPNH account immediately blocked me. I’m still a dues-paying member.
Though this was not unexpected (weak men always have trouble with strong women) I did find it ironic. They refused to block people who openly hate Libertarians and weren’t from New Hampshire who were harassing me every day in their replies for months on end, but they’ll block dues-paying party members for telling the truth.
How very principled.
Reed then posted that the trash was being taken out of the party:
And then the Executive Committee sent out an email to the entire membership lying about what happened to cover their asses:
People are already canceling their memberships and reconsidering moving to New Hampshire over this:
That’s true, by the way. They’ll still be at Porcfest if anyone wants to ask them in person.
And then Zephan - who is also on the Comms Committee and was disparaging Conrad behind his back (yes I have receipts, but I’d rather not show them) crafted this letter to remove Conrad as chair, which also lies about the reason he was removed.
And thus, we got a full list of the names of the co-conspirators. And so far as I’m concerned, they are no better than Nick Sarwark and Joe Bishop-Henchman.
These are all people who prioritize a shit posting Twitter account that is driving members away over doing anything productive to build the LPNH.
A few people in the LPNH have tried to keep me quiet about what happened. They say “why don’t you just quit and leave quietly and professionally?”
And here’s my response to them, and everyone whose name is on that list:
I left quietly after I had to endure months of never-ending harassment, including people I trusted leaking information to the people harassing me, which sank me into a dangerously dark depression.
I never did anything but try to use my resources to help advance the party, and every single thing I did was completely unappreciated.
So, I turned to focus on my own community, which has its own paying membership that is more than ten times larger than the paying members in the LPNH, and on my mission of exposing the government schools for what they are to turn the public against them.
I had already left. I was even going to let my membership expire.
And then you went after Conrad.
You called him a tyrant and publically disparaged him because you couldn’t stand losing access to your Twitter account for a single day.
Conrad, who you used to call a friend.
Who was the only person to step up and offer to lead the party when it needed leadership.
Whose only crime was wanting principled Libertarian messaging from the party’s official Twitter account.
What you did is disgusting. It is unprincipled. It is unethical. And I will not stand by and watch a friend get stabbed in the back without standing up and telling the truth about what happened.
I know what it’s like to get stabbed in the back and to have no one stand up for you and say this is wrong.
You silenced me last year.
But you go after someone else - especially someone as good and decent as Conrad - and that’s where the silence ends.
You’ve played your hand. And regardless of the outcome of the JC meeting, you’ll probably “win” because I can’t imagine Conrad wants anything to do with the party after this.
And that will be your loss entirely.
Your “win” is a Twitter account that will accomplish nothing while you drive away anyone and everyone that was interested in making tangible change in the world.
There is no doubt in my mind that the LPNH goes nowhere from here, because there is not a single leader in the bunch who will step up and do the right thing.
Membership is bleeding and has been for a while.
I strongly doubt it will field any local candidates or even host any real events. Conrad was the person that was supposed to man their site at Porcfest. Who will do it now?
The party is nothing more than a shitposting Twitter account led by people who want nothing more than to appeal to the reactionary conservative right for social media clout that translates to nothing in the real world.
So grab some popcorn, sit back, and watch this trainwreck unfold. There is no possible way this ends in success, and every naysayer will eventually be proven right.