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The 1970s were good years for libertarianism. Funded by billionaire oil tycoon Charles Koch, a libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, set up shop in San Francisco in fancy offices near Fisherman's Wharf. It published a monthly magazine, Inquiry, and coordinated a college campus organizing group, Students for a Libertarian Society, or SLS.
Garris and Raimondo, then both in their 20s, met at the San Francisco Libertarian Party headquarters in 1976 and soon began working together for SLS. They also met Hunter, a young Stanford graduate, who, unlike them, had a life outside the Libertarian Party that included running his own computer software firm. The three formed a clique that one friend describes as "almost like a little cult."
The Libertarian Party had, until that point, attracted people whose chief concerns were legalizing marijuana and getting out of going to Vietnam. But the three friends were desperate to have libertarianism – and themselves – taken seriously. Together, they formed a faction called the Libertarian Radical Caucus and started writing their version of a platform. They called themselves radical because their ideas at the time were radical. Whereas some libertarians thought war might be justified in some cases, the Radical Caucus came out unequivocally against all war. "They were like the conscience of the Libertarian Party," says Burt Blumert, president of the Center for Libertarian Studies, a Burlingame-based nonprofit educational center.
There were some minor victories in the 1970s, notably Libertarian Party candidate Ed Clark winning 5 percent of the vote in his run for California governor in 1978. But in the 1980s, the Libertarian Party waned.
"People drop off of every movement unless there's a payoff, and being a libertarian, you get nothing," says Blumert. "We'd get six-tenths of 1 percent [in an election], and we'd celebrate! It's a hopeless kind of cause."
But for the "little cult," libertarianism was an obsession that just wouldn't die. In the late 1980s, Garris, Raimondo, and Hunter left the party altogether to join the Republicans.
"We thought, 'Well, let's go to one of the major parties, and fight for someone who might win!'" says Hunter.
They formed the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee, or LROC – a faction within the Republican Party – and made Hunter its president. But even this minor attempt at organizing was a lost cause. Blumert remembers writing Garris and Raimondo a check to help them start a magazine for LROC and getting a phone call later that afternoon. Somebody walking down Mission Street had found the check on the sidewalk, where Garris or Raimondo had accidentally dropped it.
"It was so typical of them," says Blumert. "They were just not cut out for business."
At the 1988 Republican Convention, LROC was barred from the convention floor, and Garris had to fib his way into two press passes, which the core members of LROC ferried back and forth to one another the entire day. Nobody paid any attention to the painstakingly written pamphlet they handed out, which prophetically predicted the fall of communism.
"That was a low point for us," Garris admits.
Still, they stuck with it. After an antique doll business went under in the ground floor of an old Victorian on Market Street, they leased the location and started a libertarian bookstore. And in 1991, Pat Buchanan decided to run for president, and the members of LROC – especially Raimondo – nearly went crazy with glee.
"It was amazing," says Raimondo. "He's talking about this anti-war stuff, and sounding more like a libertarian than a conservative – the usual conservative – at least on foreign policy stuff."
Raimondo and a friend flew out to New Hampshire to watch Buchanan campaign in the primaries in the dead of winter, staying in Econo Lodges all the way.
"We followed Pat everywhere he went – like groupies!" says Raimondo. But after making waves by winning that much-watched primary, Buchanan lost the Republican nomination. Once again, Raimondo and Garris' hopes were dashed.
"Electoral politics is really maddening," says Garris, bitterly.
"It's BORING," says Raimondo.
"It seems like it should be interesting," says Garris. " But it's not."
Unable to keep up with the demands of bookkeeping, they sold their bookstore to some other libertarians. It was recently obliterated to make way for a new gay, bisexual, and transgendered community center.
Three times a week, a personal trainer comes to work out with Garris, Hunter, and Hunter's longtime partner, Alexia Gilmore, in the gym at the back of the property where they all live. Inside are shiny new Nautilus machines. And outside, there is a large pool surrounded by manicured lawns and topiary bushes being trained in the shape of horses.
While Garris and Raimondo were throwing all their energies into things like LROC, Hunter was busy getting rich. In 2000, Hunter's microprocessor start-up, Transmeta, went public to the tune of $273 million. He bought a Menlo Park nouveau Tudor mansion with an elevator, 11 bathrooms, and a two-story guesthouse at the back, where Garris now lives, rent-free.
"We have this enormous house, so it's kinda lonely when there's not a lot of people around," says Hunter, a brusque, gray-haired 52-year-old with wire-rimmed spectacles and a plain, button-down cotton shirt. "That's one of the reasons why Eric's over in the guesthouse. It's fun. It's kind of like a dorm."
Although the whole "family" is involved in Antiwar.com – Gilmore, the executive director of the site, helps find interns and fund-raises, and Hunter sometimes reads material before it's posted – only Garris and Raimondo work at it full time. Hunter pays their small salaries, and until the donations they're getting over the Internet make up the slack, he is paying for the rest of the site, too, including the phone bill, the ISP, and the salary of the part-time office manager who works downstairs from Garris. The total cost of the site works out to be $5,000 a month. The arrangement, which might seem uncomfortably paternalistic, doesn't bother Garris.
