It is Free Talk Live, and we are extra live right now in person at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas at the Paris Hotel.

Do you happen to know, Mark, which year of Freedom Fest that we're at?

I don't.

This thing's been going on for a while.

A long time.

We've got a special guest here with us.

Boomer Shannon, is it?

Yeah. Boomer, welcome. We were literally just setting up the booth here. It's actually in the morning, West Coast time, as we are setting up. Yeah, what passes for morning out here in Pacific. This thing up. So it's like, it's almost 10 a.m. They haven't even actually started the event yet. This is kind of like the setup time. but you walked in, you, you recognized Free Talk Live,

probably one of the few people who will recognize us here this weekend, but you said you've had

a real success story. You're from Los Angeles, or at least that's where you live. So the story

starts on a low note. Well, yeah, I can't help that. So you're from Los Angeles, but you're a libertarian activist? Yeah, no, I've been a libertarian since before I could even vote. So I got excited by Ron Paul in 2006. I saw a video of him speaking at Columbia University, and there's been no going back from you since then. Really? All right. Well, that's cool. And so you got active with the Libertarian Party specifically? Yeah, I got active with them in about 2005. Okay. And were you living in L.A. at that time? The L.A. area. I was in San Bernardino County, which is next door. So you got involved in local elections at some point, and you got somebody elected.

Yeah, so, well, my background is that I worked a lot of a, I started on the No On 8 campaign, which was the pro-gay marriage issue in California in 2008.

Then I worked on a campaign called TRC 2010, which was the tax and regulated cannabis issue, which we lost with

less than a margin of air. I ran probably about a dozen or a dozen and a half local ordinances

trying to remove moratoriums on marijuana in different cities around Southern California.

I ran a gentleman named Steve Collette for a couple of congressional races, but by far my biggest

achievement so far has been electing Supervisor Jeff Hewitt to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. So Riverside, I know I've heard the name. Is it near L.A.? Yeah, Riverside is a bedroom community for L.A. in Orange County. It's a population of about 2.5 million people. It's a big bedroom. That's a very big bedroom. The operating capital for that particular county is about $6.6 billion a year.

Okay. 2.5 million people. That's a big bedroom. That's a very big bedroom. The operating capital for that

particular county is about $6.6 billion a year. A lot of that's just state and federal pass through.

Sure. But it's a very, very influential position. Now, is this position a position in which,

you know, the party name is on the ballot or is it like, you know, one of those typical kind of county positions where you don't see the party name? Well, that's kind of the cool thing about this race is that it is a nonpartisan position. So by California election law, when it's nonpartisan, you can't advertise party. But what's really nice is that, you know, when the media reaches out to us or other people are talking to us about the race. And we had a lot of really cool media attention.

We were on the front page of the LA Times and a bunch of other really neat things that happened. But every single one of them go out and call us libertarian. So I don't have to spend any money printing the word libertarian on our flyers because everybody else is doing it for us. Wow. So what would you say is the key? I mean, because libertarians are not used to winning anything anywhere.

...