The bombast and smears reflect a power struggle between old-school libertarians and the party’s rising far-right wing, both within New Hampshire and nationally, as factions clash over what libertarianism should mean. On a scale never seen before, prominent Libertarian Party leaders are allying themselves with the MAGA movement this election season and actively supporting former President Donald J. Trump.

Although the presidential race in New Hampshire, where independents make up the state’s largest voting bloc, is closer than in any other New England state, political observers generally do not expect Libertarians to determine who wins the four Electoral College elections. of the state. votes.

In 2016, when Trump lost New Hampshire by 0.4 percentage points, the Libertarian ticket won 4.1 percent of the state’s presidential vote. But in 2020, when Trump lost New Hampshire by 7.3 points, the Libertarian ticket won just 1.6 percent. This year, most surveys show Harris leading Trump in the state by 4 points or more.

Still, the Libertarian dispute illustrates how political dynamics have continued to evolve amid Trump’s third bid for the White House.

Oliver said the state party’s online activity tarnishes the public image of an organization whose founding principles are peaceful.

“It’s a real shame that the New Hampshire Libertarian Party allows that to be their representative on social media, where so many people can perhaps get their first glimpse of libertarianism,” Oliver said. “It certainly turns people away.”

Oliver has already made a political name for himself in his home state of Georgia, a presidential battleground, where he garnered enough votes in the 2022 U.S. Senate race to spark a runoff between the Democratic and Republican candidates.

Oliver will appear on Tuesday’s ballot in all seven battleground states, where polls indicate Harris and Trump are locked in tight races.

Oliver, 39, who came out as fully gay when he was about 16, said he was first introduced to the Libertarian Party in 2010 at an LGBTQ Pride event in Atlanta, where John Monds, the party’s Georgia gubernatorial candidate , asked him what was most important to him as a voter.

Oliver told Monds how he had been a pacifist Democrat disappointed by President Barack Obama’s failure to deliver on his promises to end wars and close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and said Monds responded: “Welcome home”.

But these days, the message from some libertarians seems to be one of exclusion rather than inclusion.

While dismay over the New Hampshire party’s decision social media activity has been running for three years, the present chaos It is broader, as leaders of the Libertarian National Committee fight openly before the elections.

Angela E. McArdle, committee chair-elect, welcome Trump will speak at the group’s convention in May. He later endorsed Oliver’s candidacy while wearing a red clown nose and called on libertarians to back Oliver in blue states to “draw votes from the left” and help Trump deliver on libertarian priorities.

In June, the New Hampshire party rejected Oliver’s candidacy and said it would not offer him any formal support.

That’s not to say that libertarian support for Trump in New Hampshire is universal.

Nicholas J. Sarwark, 45, a lawyer who presided over the The Libertarian National Committee from 2014 to 2020 and now lives in Manchester, NH, called Trump “a unique and somewhat evil force” and said he is “cautiously optimistic” that Harris will defeat Trump at the polls. Sarwark said he plans to vote for Oliver, not Harris.

“I’m still a libertarian,” he said. “Just because a bunch of people who aren’t libertarians have taken over the party and call themselves libertarians doesn’t mean I change who I am.”

Sarwark said the roots of the Libertarian Party schism date back to at least 2017, when white supremacists who marched in the “Unite the Right” rally in CharlottesvilleVirginia, chanted “blood and earth”and other neo-Nazi slogans.

Sarwark and other leaders responded at that time for condemning racism and intolerance are in conflict with the principles of the Libertarian Party. They pushed back directly against a speech in which Jeff Deist – the then-president of the Mises Institute, an Alabama-based think tank that advocates “a radical change in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward an order of private property” – argued that “theblood and earth“The concept is compatible with libertarianism.

In the midst of the conflict that followed, Michael Heise of Pennsylvania formed the Libertarian Mises Caucuswho prefers a more radical approach than the one the party took in 2016, when former Republican governors Gary E. Johnson of New Mexico and William F. Weld of Massachusetts were the Libertarian candidates for president and vice president.

Mises Caucus Chairman Aaron Harris credited McArdle with leading a 2024 convention in which Libertarians scored several victories, including Trump’s pledges to name at least one Libertarian to his Cabinet and free Ross W. Ulbricht, creator of dark web site Silk Road, in prison.

Aaron Harris wrote to caucus members in June that the Libertarian Party was, for the first time in its history, “a real force in national politics, despite having an anonymous candidate who will likely do great damage to our brand.”

One of the loudest voices affiliated with the Mises Caucus in New Hampshire is that of Jeremy Kauffman, 40, whose social media activity has sparked anger. with caustic comments about career, genderand further.

Kauffman recently defended In Deist’s 2017 “blood and soil” speech, he said he will vote for Trump and called Oliver “a gay communist.”

Kauffman maintains that winning elections is not the purpose of the Libertarian Party. Rather, the party exists to control What does “libertarian” mean?he explained in X, calling on right-wing libertarians to stop left-wing libertarians from controlling public perception.

Kauffman has openly called for “less democracy” and encouraged those who share his views to adopt public policies and interpersonal practices that make New Hampshire an inhospitable place for democrats, leftistsfamilies with transgender childrenand others. He has called on libertarians to become “the ruling class”In New Hampshire.

“It is we, and only we, who are qualified to have any political or cultural authority in New Hampshire,” he wrote. “We are the moral ones, and those who disagree must change, conform or leave.”

Oliver said Kauffman’s promotion of inhospitality is “completely stupid.”

Sarwark, a former LNC president, called Kauffman’s ideas “quite fascist.”

Kauffman did not respond to requests for comment.

Ryan Bloodworth, acting chair of the LPNH executive committee, did not respond to questions about the party’s communications.

Justin F. O’Donnell, 35, who served as Kauffman’s 2022 campaign manager, said the Libertarian Party is in the midst of “an identity crisis.”

O’Donnell said he talked to everyday people while collecting signatures this summer to get Libertarian candidates on the ballot and realized how much resentment there is toward the New Hampshire Libertarian Party for its messaging.

O’Donnell, who plans to vote for Oliver, said libertarians should persuade people to join them, not drive out groups they don’t like.

“We are supposed to be the good neighbors showing that our policies work and can improve people’s lives, not make it so inconvenient that people run away,” he said.

Globe staff Amanda Gokee contributed to this report.

You can contact Steven Porter at [email protected]. follow him @reporteroportero.