Angela McArdle Steps Down as Libertarian Party Chair Amid Embezzlement Scandal
New Leadership Takes Over as Party Faces Membership and Financial Downturn
Angela McCardle is out as the Libertarian Party’s LNC chair. She resigned on January 25, 2025, as an investigation began into accusations that she used Freedom Calls LLC to funnel funds from the Libertarian Party to her domestic partner, Austin Padgett, without proper disclosure. Late last night, Key West resident and former chair for the Libertarian Party of Florida, Steven Nekhaila, was elected as the new chair and Paul Darr as vice-chair.
As a profession, McArdle has been a paralegal and legal aide. Her political career began in California, where she served in various roles within the state’s Libertarian Party. From April 2018 to April 2019, she was the secretary of the Libertarian Party of California and became involved in the Libertarian Party’s Mises Caucus. She eventually became chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County.
McArdle ran as the Libertarian candidate in the special election for California's 34th Congressional District in 2017 and again in the 2018 primary, where she placed third.
With the help of the Mises Caucus, McArdle won the chair position with the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) in 2022 and was re-elected at last year’s national convention in Washington, D.C., during a very contentious election with just over 53% of the vote from delegates, defeating long-time Libertarian Mark Rutherford.
It was a notable convention as Donald Trump, an opponent to the LP’s presidential nominee spoke to the Libertarians. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was also at the convention to speak.
For all the bad things McArdle is blamed for, one shining moment we can all rejoice in is Donald Trump's pardon of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, which she was one cog of many to make this moment happen. The freeing of Ross Ulbricht has been a very important issue with Libertarians. Many feel Ross was railroaded into a life sentence + of 40 years by the federal government for running the Silk Road website.
Under McArdle’s tenure, the Libertarian Party has found itself in a precarious situation with membership numbers (down to around 237k members in December 2024, with less than 11,000 of them being sustained members) and donations decreasing sharply. For example, August 2024 saw the party raise $68,854, the lowest for the year and far less than before McArdle took office. This is a significant drop compared to previous election cycles, with August 2020 fundraising being more than twice as much at $182,456. Reports are that the party’s cash reserves are about half of what they were when McArdle took office. The damage to the party is palpable and we will see how quickly, if at all, the Libertarian Party is able to recover under Nekhaila’s leadership.
