Scott Horton reports at The Libertarian Institute that Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party's 2004 presidential candidate, died overnight.
I was proud to work on his presidential campaign, and flattered just to know him. He was a good and kind man.
How good and kind? One time -- in the middle of his presidential nomination campaign, when I was working for one of his opponents and when he was campaign-broke enough that he was using the money he raised at one state convention to get to the next state convention -- he donated all the cash he had on hand to a fund to bail my dumb ass out of jail. I got him paid back before he had to roll on out of town, but he couldn't have known for sure that would be the case.
He was also the hardest-working candidate I ever saw.
Example: He came to get arrested in St. Louis for crossing the police line at the Bush/Kerry debate to try to serve the Presidential Debate Commission with a lawsuit. He bailed out of jail that evening, got on a small plane, flew to Kansas City to give a speech the next morning, got back on the small plane, flew to Carbondale, Illinois to give a speech that evening, then Tamara and the kids and I picked him up in our van and drove him back to St. Louis. He did two radio interviews from the van, then hopped out and ran for his hotel room to be sitting down in time for a third, and flew out early the next morning to God knows where.
He worked like that for, basically, two years including his time seeking the nomination. Between the nomination and the election, he took a grand total of one day -- his birthday -- off. IIRC, he used that day to go skydiving with his girlfriend.
Oh, and as for Scott Horton, I met him (and Angela Keaton) for the first time at Badnarik's election night party in Austin. So thanks for that, too, Michael.
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