793: This Guy Just Made Libertarian Electoral History - Here's How

Brian Nichols  0:22  
When libertarians run on the issues their voters care about, guess what? They can win need proof? Well, how about we go ahead and interview a libertarian who actually won their local office? Yeah, let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Hey there, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on our course on another unfilled episode. I am as always your humble host joining you live from our cardio miracle studios. You're in lovely, lovely Eastern Indiana. You have boundless energy and a healthy heart along the way. Well, then cardio miracle is the answer. Increase your nitric oxide levels to help strengthen circulation and improve your blood flow, feel renewed vigor and plus new heart Protection Order cardio miracle today at the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash heart or links right below here in the show notes and video description. Use code TB and S for 15%. off your order join the 10s of 1000s of other folks who've already started their brand new heart health journey today. Your heart will thank you. All right. We talk about libertarians running for office. Often here on the show. We've been doing this show ces 2018. And I must confess one of the most just disheartening things being the host of this program is having all these great candidates on only to have them get third place, you know, 4% of the vote 2% of the vote. It's disheartening to say the least. And yet we keep trying all as libertarians we keep fighting. But I think part of the problem we've seen is that too many libertarians run on the issues they think their voters care about or should care about versus the issues their voters actually care about. So today, I thought it'd be good to I don't know, maybe talk to a libertarian who actually won his election. So to help do that today, Clayton solt he has won his local election here in Indiana. Welcome back, or welcome here to The Brian Nichols Show.

Clayton Soultz  2:28  
Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Nichols  2:30  
Great to have you on Clayton looking forward to discussing all things libertarian victories. Wow, that's fun to say. But first, do us a favor, introduce yourself here to The Brian Nichols Show audience and why you decided to run for local office as a libertarian.

Clayton Soultz  2:44  
Yeah, I'm Clayton salts and live here in Jonesboro, Indiana. I just got elected to Jonesborough. City Council District Three, I'll be sworn in on January 1. And why I wanted to run I'm a fifth generation Grand County resident, my son will be the sixth generation here we have a family tradition of being engaged publicly. My grandpa was the town manager back with John rose to a town and he was very involved in when he died five or six years ago. I was I had the thought as funeral like man who's going to take care of Jonesborough who's going to like step up and lead. It's almost like a voice in my head was like, hey, it's us stupid. You know, like, so now I live on his house with where my dad on the property where my dad grew up, and I'm, you know, on the city council with the city that he you know, helped give his life to so I really want to make the place better for my family and everything.

Brian Nichols  3:34  
I love it, man. Well, it's one thing to say, You know what, I'm gonna take care of my community. It's another thing to say I'm gonna do that as a big L libertarian, which by the way, we're both in Indiana, it is no secret Indiana is a deep red state. And yet the Democratic Party it seems to just kind of exist here in Indiana and libertarians are actually quite a large third alternative option, not just an alternative option, but starting to turn to a winning option. Clayton, so what was it that you decided, You know what, I'm gonna run as a big L libertarian to make the most change and impact my my local community?

Clayton Soultz  4:10  
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm, uh, I'm just that I'm a true believer, I guess. And, you know, I've seen these swings. I'm pretty young. I'm only 28. But I've already seen these personality swings, you know, someone gets excited about Ron Paul. And then he doesn't win, and that goes somewhere, and then all those people then vote for Bernie Sanders, and then he doesn't win, and it goes nowhere. And so I we have like big names at the top who are spreading ideas and convincing people but if there aren't on the ground winds and infrastructure to plug people into, then that goes nowhere, where it's like, have the personality person at the top talking about ending the Fed and ending the wars and stuff, grab the person. And then they look up libertarians near me and they'll see my name or that I'm the secretary for the state party or something like that. Then we can get them coming to our meetings, voting for people running for office and then they stay libertarian. And rather than just going with whoever happens to be, you know, selling them the best ideas at the national level. So

Brian Nichols  5:06  
Clayton, it's, it's obvious to all the listeners out there that running as a libertarian more often than not comes with some baggage and disadvantages. And yet you are able to win your local office for for city council. And that's, that's a huge, huge step for libertarians to look at and learn. So what did you learn? And I know, you want to focus more on what you're going to help accomplish there. But what did you learn in terms of actually running for office that helps you connect more with voters?

Clayton Soultz  5:37  
Right, well, so open secret, I actually ran unopposed, which is crazy. And so there's a downside to that. And there's, you know, I'd be tempted not to tell you that so you lose your credibility. But I don't think that's an accident. I started talking about running a year and a half ago, and I talked to the incumbent, I went to city council meetings, I talked to the incumbent and convinced him, you know, bought him lunch convinced them that we cared about similar things. He's actually a Democrat. But party affiliations don't mean as much at the local level. And my biggest advice is, it's like asking your girlfriend to marry you. Like, for some of these, don't ask until you're convinced you can win. There are times and places to enter races, you don't think you can win, those are marketing campaigns, those are to get your ideas out there. But then it's another type of thing is like, hey, I really think you know, I'm either the only candidate or there are really weak candidates, you know, in these smaller towns have less than 5000 people. If you have a six person city council, it is hard to find people every two years to fill all those slots. And people often don't like to do it. So start soon enough, be likable, build relationships, convince the incumbent that it will be good for them that you take their job, and then take it from them.

Brian Nichols  6:47  
That's a good strategy, tell them why they need to step down and then to why I'm better. That's a good it's a good plan of attack. No, it obviously works, right? Because you're in office, you're going to be taking over here in January. That's exciting. Because now it's it's one thing to say like here's why our libertarian ideas would be a good idea. Now, it's another thing to be like, Hey, I'm in office, we're gonna get this stuff into policy to help him improve not just our locality, but maybe serve as kind of a blueprint for some other localities to to look at and say, Hmm, this may be works. So let's I'm

Clayton Soultz  7:19  
sorry, of course. Of course, this strategy wouldn't work in a city of 100,000 people someone's going to run. But so strategies aren't the same. And I feel like you need to have, you know, for that city of 100,000, to take a libertarian seriously, they need to have five surrounding towns with libertarian mayors or councils like this is a slow march through the institution's. There's no shortcut. And the way you win, the way you build up is in the small races. And I'm 28 I intend to be in politics for the next 60 years. At least voting so I've got the time. Let's do it so that it works instead of throwing stuff against the wall that we know doesn't work. Yes.

Brian Nichols  7:56  
Well, and I love that. Yeah, I know, most libertarians hate this word. But you're being pragmatic Clayton, you're looking at the reality of the situation and saying, How can we be most effective, right? It's not a matter of saying pragmatic on your principles. But pragmatic on the the actual practice, right to get into office. So let's talk about that. Because you're bringing these new ideas to a voting base that maybe these are a little, I would say revolutionary, but in some cases, maybe they are maybe these are things that, you know, Beverly, the 80 year old voter who she's never experienced anything really different than red team, Blue Team. And now all of a sudden, she has a 28 year old libertarian City Council guy, what the heck, like, what what is she going to see happen? And what are the implications? So I know Clayton, you are running on an idea of nullification for a lot of these these local laws. Talk to us about that.

Clayton Soultz  8:49  
Yeah, so a lot of people, I think, make the mistake of trying to, okay, what's an issue in my city? And I'll run on that. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't super interested in that, yes, it's good to be on principle and get rid of the, you know, extra $20, garbage tax or something like that. I mean, there are things you can do there. But the things that people care about are usually overreach by the federal and state government. And you would be shocked at how much red tape in spending, you know, the hundreds of 1000s of dollars, your city has to pay for its own audit that the state requires and all the hoops that they'd have to jump through. And I'm not saying you shut all of it down tomorrow? Of course not. But at the edges, you know, people have this idea, especially older people that if it's written down on paper that we just have no choice, you know, and COVID was a great example. You know, the people in Indianapolis said, we have to shut our playgrounds down. So they put yellow tape around our playground in a little city of 1000 people where nobody had COVID and it doesn't affect kids and it's well to 2021. And we know that someone from Indianapolis didn't come put that tape up. It was our local government that put that up, even though they didn't like it. And it's like, no, there's this is our playground that we paid For that we manage and we're the leaders of the city, if you want to say in the state police to put it up, that's fine, but we're not going to put it up for you. Just little things like that can make a huge difference in your community.

Brian Nichols  10:11  
I lived in Philadelphia for seven years, Philadelphia, PA, and the one of the main, the main genesis of me, leaving Pennsylvania and coming to Indiana was COVID. And seeing the response of my local government, in this case, a city of a couple million people in Philadelphia being just completely authoritarian, completely out to lunch. And then coming here to Indiana and seeing the impacts, you know, when I was visiting, some friends have a truly localized plan of attack, it gave me a breath of fresh air. So I decided to come out here and have not just more of an impact in my local community now, but also to help you serve as an alternative to help bring some new ideas to the table. And I don't want to see a situation where I have a city like Philadelphia be able to arbitrarily turn on and off your business because you're deemed non essential by some random bureaucrat or elected official. So when you're looking at these these localities, Clayton, this might not just be for your town, but as we go beyond you towards other libertarian offices that are running, you know, what would you say would be kind of like the best plan of attack, to start to get libertarian changes into action in terms of policy, right? Without pushing it too far. And here's my context, right? We know that like when, when I dug up some history, I just started helping the company redo their entire tech stack for their their sales and marketing campaigns. And I have a huge list of things I'm going to be doing, but it's not going to be taking place in a week, a month, it's gonna be a year process. Why? Because it takes time to get things switched over properly, if I switched everything all at once. I mean, there might be things that get broken things that were connected that get unconnected, you have to take your time to make sure you're not causing any unintentional harm in bringing the new good thing to the table. So what would that process look like? What is that process going to look like for you? And how would you maybe recommend that to other libertarians as they go into local office, so they're not disrupting the applecart to the point that they piss off the voting base, and then come two years later in the run for re election, they get kicked out kicked out of office?

Clayton Soultz  12:24  
Right. I mean, I think it's like anything else, it's at the margin. You just need to make tyranny hard. You know, if you're one vote on a five person, Council, can you stop a vote no. But under Robert's Rules, you can talk about it and make it annoying for the other people to try to pass it. And then if they try to pass 20 tyrannical bills, you might stop one of them just because they're like, oh, my gosh, we'll never hear the end of it from Clayton, because he's always talking about the citizens rights, then the citizens will see that or state power. Yeah, the state police can come in and do whatever they want in our community, we can make your heart and they have limited time and resources. And then and then and then when you get to the point, if there's 50, small communities, making it difficult, the Feds or the state might just say this policy is not worth it anymore, or they just simply won't enforce look at speed limits. Everyone goes 10 over this, everyone knows that whatever the sign says on an interstate, the actual limit that they'll enforce is 10 over that. And that's because everyone has decided that that's what they care about. And they don't have resources sufficient to stop everybody going 72 miles an hour on the interstate. It's not worth it to them. So yeah, if I'm the only person in all of Indiana standing up to tyranny, then yeah, they're going to stop me, especially if I go too far. But if I can encourage other people, and then there's 50 100 and 150, small communities making it difficult to be tyrannical, maybe it will start making it making an impact.

Brian Nichols  13:45  
Clayton, I look at folks who are running for libertarian office. How do I say this delicately. Far too often. The candidates maybe are well intentioned. But they themselves are not the best advocates the best torchbearers for the message. People don't buy the specific message. But more often than not, they buy the messenger. So what would you maybe say to other libertarians? I know you ran unopposed. So it's a little bit different of a situation but to actually connect with your voters, right? What what are some of the things you would say help resonate with the voting base resonate with the constituents that isn't so libertarian, like libertarian speak libertarian talk and actually connects with the average person?

Clayton Soultz  14:39  
Well, I mean, I'll tell you what I did. I mean, when, when your city or your county votes on things, they have public comment times during their meetings. And so I just went to the meetings and provided public comment when I thought I had something relevant to say, then people started recognizing me and yeah, you know, a lot of you wouldn't go to the city council's in a lot of people aren't involved in that. But those are the people that don't care about local politics and won't hear what you have to say anyway. You know, people think, Oh, we have to convince 51% of the population, you know, that is a losing game, you know, 51% of the population are not super politically engaged. They're just living their lives. What you need to do is convinced the five people, the 5% of people who are leaders, who are thought leaders, who are talking to their friends who are going to the cafe and saying, This is what's going on, who's writing the newspaper articles? Like, I think it's, you know, you're, you're never going to sway everyone. At the same time, when all these institutions, the public schools, and the news and everything are telling them one thing, and then you're just one guy on a podium telling them another those people are going to do it. No, you have to start small, you have to make the people who are watching notice, be likable, and then try to go from there.

Brian Nichols  15:50  
I like to be likable. But let's go back to something you just raised up there, the people who are actually paying attention, the people who are watching, in my experience, those folks tend to be usually more often than not politically savvy folks, many folks who are a little bit more aware of what's happening. And more often than not, they pick political sides, left team, right team, you know, Republican, Democrat, whoever it may be. They in my again, it is my personal experience, very anecdotal. They are weary of the disruption of the applecart, they are much more apt, they're much more on board with status quo solutions. So when I mean, beyond being likable, beyond our ideas, helping make them make sense. How do we earn trust with those people who are watching that are already skeptical of libertarian ideas?

Clayton Soultz  16:45  
Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't have much of a better answer other than mean it when I say be likable, I mean, like, I'm a Christian. So love them, like, and that's the first thing. And, you know, the you go door to door, I mean, that's part of it. I know I was, I mean, I, I put in data for door walking, and I've gone door to door in my community, and people recognize me, you'd be surprised at how much you know if people don't like it, and they will tell you to leave and leave. But a lot of people just like to be asked, and a lot of people, if you just ask, Hey, what do you want me to do? What do you care about, even if they completely disagree with you, they'll just tell you what they want. And they'll leave a good impression, because they got to tell you their concerns, and you listen to them. Even if you didn't have no intention of changing your position, even if they're a staunch socialist, you know, they'll probably leave thinking better of you because they had a pleasant conversation. And we're allowed to talk and tell them tell you how they feel. And you're right. If you have super likable people on your city, and it's running super well, you're probably not going to be able to win as a third party. Thankfully, very few places are in that position. Someone on your council is unlikable, or there's some issue rd or whatever, that enough people don't like that you can get that issue you can leverage that. Archimedes said, I can move the world if you just give me a place to stand, find the one issue that you can run on that isn't party, be likable, be consistent, talk to people about it, and then go from there. Lord,

Brian Nichols  18:17  
I want to go, No, you're gonna hear this right. Local

Clayton Soultz  18:22  
thing here is water. Every little town, every little town that deals with water regulations, boards, checks, audits, money, money, money, money, money, and everyone is sick of it. And everyone thinks they pay too much for water, you know, find the thing, the bill that passed two years ago regarding water, because I know there was one in your city and ask people what they think of it, they probably don't like it, and then figure out a 10% better solution. Or even better about nullification find the thing that the state is doing, which can be related to water, but COVID provided an opportunity to say yeah, I wouldn't shut our city council down, you know, our city council buildings, you would still be able to come in and pay your bill in person. Even though the state says oh, you're supposed to go online. It's like, well, they can come stop us. And if they can stop us, we will but I'm not doing that. I'm not doing their job for them.

Brian Nichols  19:15  
Clayton, I want to as we go towards our final thoughts today and I'll kick things off you. You mentioned the importance of asking people what they care about. And and that is so key because we go into the world of sales and I do a lot of sales coaching and training. And there's a lot of different sales methodologies. There's there's banned fancy medic Sandler, I am personally a big fan of we call it CCS, customer centric selling and customer centric selling when you incorporate what we call Socratic selling, which is asking open ended questions that elicit a story in response and keeping it in That CCS model of customer centric, where you're, you're putting the onus on the customer, to tell you what is wrong, what matters to them. And this goes back to why it fits so well into the meet people where they're at on the issues they care about approach that I have implemented here at The Brian Nichols Show, is because we see the problems. And this is just the reality of being a big L libertarian, or smaller libertarian is that the fact that we are identifying ourselves in that way means that we probably have done some more digging, and are probably more aware of what's happening. And when that we have the issues that we know are like, these are main drivers of how we got to where we are today. But we can't push those issues on an electorate that isn't even aware of what's happening. Right? It's, it's one thing to be like the inflation that you're experiencing today is a direct result of the Federal Reserve, arbitrarily printing trillions of dollars into the economy over the past, you know how many decades? Sure, like that's true. But there is such a disconnect from hearing that to the direct, like impact that that has on your average person. So we have to do a better job of just talking to people believe it or not like their normal people, asking them what's wrong, and then letting them tell us and instead of telling them, okay, great, here's how libertarians can help solve your problem XYZ. Just be empathetic. Let them speak. And then maybe, just maybe, after you let them speak, you can earn that trust to then turn that into asking for the vote. But they don't want just don't want to hear you say yes, I can help solve your problem. They want to know for sure that you can solve your problem and being able to show that you genuinely understand what it is that's bothering them will help them feel more confident that you can, in fact, only bring a solution to the table that will make this a better issue going forward. Clayton, that's my final thoughts for today. What do you have on your end?

Clayton Soultz  22:00  
Yeah, so I would say your strategy is different depending on what kind of race you're winning. And in this movement, there's roles for everything. So at a really big level and a national level. I'm a strong message person, don't equivocate? Don't be you know, milquetoast you're not going to win the presidency anyway, you know, talk about big ideas. If you're in a, if maybe a smaller race, try to build coalition, especially if it's one that you can make a presence but you don't think you can win, build coalitions, see what you can do about, like I said, make things hard, you know, say, hey, you know, I see you're gonna win, but I can get my people behind you on this, this thing you care about, if you twist it in this way that makes it friendly to libertarians, we can do. So. There's that politicking at that middle level. And then there's the low level of, you know, just look for winnable races that you can win on your charisma and being trusted and talking to making public comments. And that's, that's what a lot of the small towns are. And there's still a lot of people in America that live in small towns. And like I said, people don't do that, because they think there's nothing super tyrannical happening in your small town. But there is in your state, and there is in the Feds and your town could do something about it. Or they could at least put up a fight. Like a lot of times people it, I've had bosses that you know, something comes down from corporate that we hate, and they they roll over and the people aren't upset that the thing happened. They're upset that the Boston fight for them. You know, people just want someone to fight for them, speak up, go to the state meeting, if as a local representative, make it hard for the state and the feds to be tyrannical. And you can do that with just a smile and a wink and telling people the truth and listening to them in the small communities.

Brian Nichols  23:45  
love them or hate them. That's how Trump got to where he is he was he basically positioned himself as I am your voice. I am your voice. That's what Trump did. He positioned himself as the voters advocate. And if you are able to do that in a way that resonates with your voters and shows that you actually care Hey, maybe you'll be able to get into your local office as well just like Clinton did. Folks, thank you for joining us today and if you got some value from today's episode, you know the drill go ahead and give it a share when you do please tag yours truly at B Nichols liberty on Facebook as well as over on x.com Clayton where can folks go ahead? Follow you if they want continue the conversation?

Clayton Soultz  24:25  
Yeah, so I have a personal Twitter you can find me I'm not super engaged there politically because I'm, you know, still looking for jobs. And I don't want to get too spicy there yet. But I would point people to run as libertarian.com They're the people that help they promoted me. They endorsed me. They can connect you with winnable races. If you're like I want to help a race, I'm in a big city. What can I do? You can give money you can volunteer and we want to run people in 2425 26. We're connecting volunteers and fundraising from all over the United States to do this slow march to the institutions in the low levels so that 1020 years from now we can talk about governors senate president, but we can't do that without city councilman, and you can help run his libertarian.com and lpin.org. If you're in Indiana, and the Secretary, they're doing great things. We're doing great things. Donald rainwater of course, is the greatest person ever. Hopefully we'll run again and 24 we have reason to believe that so LPI n.org and oneness libertarian.com

Brian Nichols  25:20  
Love it. Yeah, run as a libertarian great entity organization over there. I've done some some stuff for them as well doing some like some some workshops and talks so great organization cannot agree more. And yes, Libertarian Party of Indiana. I will be speaking at the convention here in the new year. So if you are part of the Libertarian Party of Indiana or if you want to go hear me rant and rave about selling liberty, make sure you stop by the convention or if you're a libertarian in Indiana, you have not yet registered to the Libertarian Party of Indiana. What are you doing and get to it? Message Clayton, I'm sure he could hook you up or our good friend there. Evan, who is the chairman of the party here. Let me know and we'll go ahead and get you connected. But with that being said, yes. Thank you for joining us, folks. And if you want to go ahead and share today's episode with all your friends. Well, where can you do that on the video version of the show as well as the audio version we're over on for video, YouTube rumble we upload our whole episodes on x.com Plus, we upload our episodes over to Ben swans, sovereign s o v r e n, which by the way, if you are watching us over on Ben swans independent media entity Well congratulations. You're seeing today's episode before anybody else as your sovereign exclusive. And for the audio version of the show. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, wherever it is you get your podcast, just hit that subscribe button, and then also hit download all unplayed episodes. We have over 790 episodes here on The Brian Nichols Show. We go through talking with political candidates, we go through strategy, we go through all that and more. So please go ahead, check those episodes out. I guarantee at least a few of them will leave you educated, enlightened and informed Clayton any final words for the odds before we wrap things up today?

Clayton Soultz  26:58  
Nope. God bless you. Stay free. All

Brian Nichols  27:01  
right. With that being said thank you for joining us, folks. Brian Eno signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Clayton salts. We'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai