SPRINGFIELD, MO — Libertarian Party committee veteran Carl Denman, 63, launched into an unprompted, impassioned tirade during Tuesday’s affiliate meeting about the party’s decades-long failure to achieve statewide ballot access — a problem that has persisted throughout his entire tenure with no measurable progress — before ultimately blaming a guy named Derek who’s attended three meetings and brought donuts once.
“We’ve been blocked, stonewalled, lied to, and backstabbed by the duopoly,” Denman shouted to a room of eight people, five of whom were texting. “And now we’ve got this guy posting memes with lowercase letters like it’s a joke. This is why we’re not taken seriously.”
Derek Mills, 27, a new attendee who showed up hoping to get involved with outreach, was visibly stunned. “I thought we were gonna talk about petitions or events,” he said. “Then suddenly this dude is yelling about 1998 and saying my T-shirt is the reason liberty is dead.”
Denman, who has served on the Ballot Access Committee since the Clinton administration and refers to the local Secretary of State as “my white whale,” insisted that internal image issues — not 25 years of dysfunction, lack of funding, or failure to adapt to election law changes — are to blame for the party’s stagnation.
“If we had just presented a united front in 2003 instead of letting that anarchist wear cargo shorts to the state fair booth, we’d be in the legislature by now,” he added, to no reaction.
Witnesses say Denman later cornered Derek by the snack table to ask whether he’d be willing to appear in a “rebranding video” wearing a blazer and standing near a courthouse.
At press time, Derek had quietly left the meeting, texting a friend, “I think I’m actually an independent.”
