David F. Nolan, a former Coloradan whose fierce belief in limited government, personal freedom and the free-market economy led him to band with a handful of like-minded friends to found the national Libertarian Party in 1971, has died. He was 66.
According to Mark Hinkle, chairman of the party’s national committee, Nolan apparently had a stroke or heart attack while driving in Tucson and was pronounced dead early Sunday.
The Libertarian Party has often been called the Party of Principle for its strict adherence to its ideals, even at the risk of alienating voters. It has advocated for limiting government in every sense, and its positions have included legalizing prostitution and drugs, removing restrictions on abortion and gay marriage, and ending U.S. involvement in foreign wars.
“The government’s job is to protect you,” Nolan told an interviewer in 2006. “Beyond that, it’s up to you.”
No candidate has ever won national office under the Libertarian Party banner, but Nolan said he saw the party less as a major vote-getter than as a way to inject libertarian ideas into the national political discussion.
Although some libertarian philosophies have been relegated to the fringes, others — such as cutting taxes and slashing government spending — have become cornerstone ideas for Republican and, in the recent midterm elections, Tea Party candidates.
The impetus for the new party was a national address by President Richard Nixon on Aug. 15, 1971, in which Nixon said U.S. currency would no longer be pegged to the gold standard and that the federal government would institute new wage and price controls to curb inflation.
Nolan, who had campaigned to repeal the federal income tax, considered himself a Republican until he watched Nixon’s speech from his home in Westminster surrounded by a group of friends. They saw the president’s moves as an unconstitutional overreach of power.
“We looked at each other and said, . . . ‘If there was ever any doubt as to whether we need a party that stands for real limited government and individual freedom, then this should settle it for us,’ ” he said.
Less than four months later, Nolan and seven others voted to form the national Libertarian Party.
David Fraser Nolan was born in Washington on Nov. 23, 1943.
He grew up in suburban Maryland, where he was influenced by Ayn Rand’s novels and the hyper-individualist science fiction of Robert Heinlein, and first waded into the political arena in 1960 by making and sporting a “Heinlein for President” button.
Nolan was studying political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., ran for president in 1964 on a platform of limited government. Enamored, Nolan founded MIT Students for Goldwater before graduating in 1965.
He continued building a network of like-minded citizens as a member of the Liberty Amendment Committee, whose mission included limiting government activity to duties expressly authorized by the U.S. Constitution.
After living in Colorado for about two decades, he relocated in the 1980s to Orange County, Calif., where he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2000.
He moved to Tucson several years later and, in 2006, mounted another congressional campaign. Most recently, he ran for U.S. Senate in this year’s midterm election against Republican incumbent John McCain, receiving 4.7 percent of the vote.
