The Libertarian Party of Indiana – Marion County has a new chairman, and his name is not Stephen Whitmer.
Meeting at Switchboard, a co-working space on South Shelby Street, county Libertarians voted Saturday afternoon to remove Whitmer as chairman, ending a six-week fight that began when the man running a political party said out loud that he hoped his own political party would lose.
The vote was 14-5, with two abstentions. Twenty-one members were present. Removal required a two-thirds majority, which meant 14 — exactly what the motion got.
The tally was initially recorded as 14-6 before Whitmer was ruled ineligible to vote on his own removal. That ruling decided the outcome. With his “no” counted, the motion needed 15 and would have failed.
Whitmer also could not preside over a meeting about himself, so vice chair Libby Glass gaveled it in at 2:03 p.m.
The case against him was read into the record word for word. In late June, Whitmer posted on Facebook: “At this point, I can’t wait for the libertarians to lose ballot access.” Ballot access is the thing Indiana Libertarians have spent decades of petition drives and litigation protecting. The member who moved for removal called it a breach of fiduciary duty — “advocating for losing ballot access is against the fiduciary responsibility of any county leader” — and added Whitmer’s support for the August 1 mass deportation rally and his reference to “third world anchor babies.”
Then came the video.
Over the presiding chair’s objection, the body voted to watch a recording of Whitmer describing an earlier party meeting. In it he calls dues-paying members who don’t attend “paper members,” tells an older member to “go drink your warm milk,” and says: “while everybody’s having their chance to speak, I’m kind of checking out, and I’m envisioning myself putting them against the wall and choking them, and then pounding their f—ing faces.”
One member argued that violated the non-aggression principle, the closest thing the Libertarian Party has to a creed. “I’ve been on sports teams. I’ve had rough coaches. I’ve had tough coaches,” he said. “I’ve never had a coach tell me they’re going to choke me out.”
Whitmer did not walk any of it back.
“I regret nothing of what I said on the video. Everything on there is truthful,” he told the room. He described the members about to remove him as “the behind-the-computer class, middle management,” said he had been the only person consistently showing up since 2023, and argued the party should be door-knocking for its candidates instead of holding a meeting about him.
He had defenders. One member noted the irony of the Libertarian Party removing someone over speech and compared the remarks to a coach chewing out a locker room. District 7 representative Corey Cohn split the difference — Whitmer provokes people and it damages the party’s reputation, Cohn said, but nobody complaining had volunteered to do the job. “If you want to get rid of Stephen and you don’t have any ideas what comes next, I think that’s irresponsible.”
Glass, presiding, said she would have preferred “more tutelage than cancel.”
The most damaging testimony came from Evan McMahon, the former Indiana chairman who now chairs the national Libertarian Party. McMahon said he had known Whitmer a couple of years and had reached a conclusion: “I don’t know that this is the right fit for him.” The July meeting that scheduled Saturday’s vote was an opening to change course, McMahon said. Instead: “It was double, triple, quadruple down.” He added that while the video played, Whitmer sat there smiling and laughing.
Because the motion was written to remove and replace in a single action, nominations opened immediately. Paul Copeland was elected chairman.
Members were careful to note that Whitmer isn’t being expelled from the party, only from the chairmanship. “We’re not kicking anyone out of the Libertarian Party,” one said. “It is simply a leadership role.”
He may not get to keep his other party job either. Whitmer is an elected Republican precinct committeeman in Wayne Township, WY057 — a detail IndyPolitics first reported in July — and the state Republican Party is now reviewing that status.
For a party whose entire brand is that people should be left alone, Marion County Libertarians proved willing to make one exception. The Republicans may be about to make a second.
