South Dakos Breakthrough

The South Dakos Breakthrough is a term used in Belhavian politics to refer to the first successful election of a Senator of the Libertarian Party to the Imperial Senate in 1976 in the South Dakos province.

Introduction and Origins

The Libertarian Party of Belhavia was founded in mid-1972, and by the 1974 elections, they began to field local and provincial candidates in several provinces, including South Dakos. They made up the most ground in South Dakos, where they won 23 city council seats, one mayorship, and one seat in the provincial assembly.

For 1976, the party's national leadership plotted to contest several Imperial Senate seats held by both parties as well as expand their elected officeholder numbers at the local and provincial level across the Empire.

South Dakos

Open Seat

The Libertarians turned to Harold Zelisman, a self-made businessman, industrialist, and enthusiastic donor to the nascent political party, in early 1975. The incumbent, conservative Liberal Democratic Senator Eli Unger, decided to retire after his party made its leftward turn in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although the Lib Dems dominated the Imperial Senate at the time, the Conservatives, eager to pick away at the Lib Dem majority through slow attrition if need be, made moves to recruit a credible candidate to win the seat, and national Liberal Democrats in Provisa started to shop around for their own candidate who was both liberal and viable enough.

Zelisman, more comfortable running a business than attracting voters in a campaign, initially declined the Liberterians' requests to run, believing himself unable to overcome the then-prevalent two-party system in South Dakos. In July 1975, the Lib Dem left got provincial Governor Samuel Ginsberg as their man, who quickly cleared the party's primary field of any serious alternative candidates. In October of the same year, the corrupt and scandal-plagued mayor of Tel Dakosia, Tory Benjamin Harpaz (the most visible Tory elected in the province) announced his candidacy.

Damaged Mainstream Candidates

Harpaz and Ginsberg focused their attacks on each other, dragging up the other's political skeletons. By February 1976, both candidates had soured in the public's eye, and their negatives in public polling skyrocketed.

Sensing an opening, the Libertarians turned to Zelisman again, imploring him to reconsider. Able to self-fundraise, he needed little time to raise money for any campaign if he ran. He reluctantly agreed to conduct polling and field-test some speeches in public forums. Once his potential candidacy was quietly leaked, it sparked interested murmurs among the provincial political class.

His in-house polling found him within striking distance of the two major party candidates, and more voters - 61% - willing to consider voting for him over Harpaz and Ginsberg. For the next two weeks, Zelisman headlined several charity and civic organizations' dinners, giving non-partisan but inspirational talks. He received good feedback.

Intrigued, after his family signed on, he announced his campaign in March, hiring local and national political talent to staff his campaign. He immediately launched a 14-day, 24-city whistlestop tour and poured thousands of shekels into radio, television, print, and billboard advertisements.

Levine's "Collective Good" Speech

By August 1976, Zelisman had created a roughly three-way tie in polling, garnering 29% to Lib Dem Ginsberg's 37% and Tory Harpaz's 34%. On August 4th, 1976, Liberal Democratic Party presidential nominee and sitting Vice-President, Berel Levine, was campaigning through Provisa when he gave a speech decrying "the individual's petty greed and selfishness...we, as a nation, need a gallant and strong-willed 'collective good' to decide how to solve the greatest problems of our time."

The speech was poorly-regarded nationally, and Levine's Tory challenger, Governor Jacob Goldstein, pounced to slam the speech as "statist, leftist, un-Jewish, and un-Belhavian." Zelisman, himself a wealthy and self-made man, vigorously attacked the speech at every turn, personally affronted at what he perceived was Levine's personal sleight on people like him. This indignation seeped into his speeches, creating more genuine and confident messages.

Zelisman shot ahead of the other two by up to 5 points at various times, riding a wave of discontent with the Lib Dem presidential nominee's remarks from early August until late September, when the outrage over the remark subsided and crested. An October 1st, 1976, poll by the Zelisman campaign showed him holding steady at 33%, with Harpaz and Ginsberg tied at 26%.

End Stretch

As the election neared its culmination, the public began to shift towards Levine over Goldstein Empire-wide. Locally, Lib Dem Ginsberg began to be pulled upward by Levine's coattails, gaining and then overtaking Zelisman by October 15th. The business magnate and Libertarian Senate nominee responded by scheduling a 16-hour-day of campaign and public events at a wildfire-speed across the province, and dumping another $50,000 shekels into multiple ad spots in radio, TV, the newspapers, and other mediums.

On November 2^nd, 1976, Zelisman won in an upset, winning with 37.8% of the vote, with Ginsberg garnering 34.9% and Harpaz trailing at 27.3%.

93th Senate

When Zelisman was seated in the 93th Senate, he founded the Libertarian Party's official caucus in the chamber as its inaugural sitting Imperial Senator. Despite consciously seeking to establish the party's Senate caucus as an independent contingent dedicated to promoting its own interests and not simply join broader party coalitions, Zelisman mostly voted with the opposition Tories to oppose the litany of government-centric economic interventionist legislation coming through the Senate at the time.

Post-1976

With the Libertarians' breakthrough to win an Imperial Senate seat in South Dakos, the national party began to seed staff and political infrastructure across 8 more targeted provinces and territories to aid future candidates in being similarly competitive. In 1978, the party fielded candidates in every province where a Senate seat was up, though only four were considered to be at least somewhat viable.

In West Dakos, libertarian-leaning Tory Governor Isaac Goldman switched parties and became a Libertarian, running as their Senate candidate for the seat of incumbent Tory Senator Hank Weiss. After running a strong campaign, he won a plurality majority, garnering 39.7% to Weiss' 39.2% and Lib Dem nominee Asher Baruck's 21.1%.

In 1980, the Libertarians picked up two more seats. They had a caucus of 4 sitting Senators in 1981.