James Maynard, a New Hampshire native, always felt his ideologies matched with Libertarian politics. Unfortunately, living in a small New Hampshire city of Keene limited his activism to maintaining Libertarian blogs and twice running for City Council. But with the creation of the Free State Project, Maynard may have a shot at creating a nationally known Libertarian movement.

The Free State Project is a nonprofit corporation attempting to gather 20,000 like-minded people and move to various parts of New Hampshire and become pro-liberty activists there. The group seeks to aid its members’ transition by doing everything from helping people integrate into New Hampshire culture to assisting Free State members buy real estate and find jobs.

This grassroots movement was not founded by a national libertarian leader or political organization, but by University at Buffalo professor Jason Sorens. In his spare time from lecturing, the professor manages to chair the organization and spread the word through mass media about its mission.

Sorens describes the project as “an effort to get 20,000 libertarian activists to move to New Hampshire and work for positive change there.” He hopes to accomplish this by creating private alternatives to government programs. The ultimate goal is to restrict the scope of the federal government’s power by strengthening the power of the state.

Sorens, who grew up in what he considers an “urban, single parent, low-income household” in Houston, Texas, claims he was interested in politics as far back as his memory scans and jokes that he was a “hard right conservative” at 13, although reading and life experiences turned him into a libertarian. This love of politics is perhaps what drove him to attend Washington and Lee University where he received a BA in philosophy and economics. He then earned a PhD in political science from Yale, where he taught for two years.

He is now a lecturer at UB. The idea for the Free State Project hit Sorens around 2001, when he was upset with libertarians’ lack of policies and representation in the electorate. He had also studied several autonomous movements around the world and noticed a trend towards increased power delegated to the regional and state level.

“The 20,000 people are free to do essentially whatever they want; we’re not targeting a particular area of the state, nor are they required to join any political party or other organization. We don’t tell them how to vote. Our hope is they will get active in whatever areas are important to them,” said Sorens, who hopes to continue teaching and conducting research when he moves.

Sorens describes the large majority of members as younger people under age 40, with older members seeming more active. Also, a survey found that more than half were college educated and about a third had incomes greater than $60,000 a year. Furthermore, the project is well known in the political arena, where even some notable personalities have signed up as friends of the campaign. New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson has aligned himself with the group, as well as Comedy Central star Doug Stanhope and talk show radio host Neil Bortz.

After the first 5,000 people signed up for the Free State Project in August 2004, the members conducted a ten state vote to decide where to live. In October of the same year, New Hampshire was announced as the winner. While New Hampshire may seem like an odd choice because of its frigid weather, Sorens has his reasons.

“New Hampshire is attractive because it has no state, income, or sales tax, it has a large citizen legislature where representatives make only $100 a year,” said Sorens.

The group has already managed to target specific areas where they want to limit the government’s role.

“Different participants have different priorities, but I would say there a few major areas of interest,” said Sorens. Specifically, Free Staters want to privatize education so parents have a choice of where to send their children, limit abuses of such governmental powers as eminent domain (when a governmental body seizes private property for public use), and asset forfeiture (when government can seize personal goods for law enforcement without major proof of wrongdoing). Also, members will work to stress civil liberties, such as the right to privacy and ending drug prohibition.

Although the project’s principles seem to be in line with the Libertarian party, Sorens insists that they are not affiliated with any political party or candidates.

“I would say it’s libertarian with a small ‘l,’” said Sorens. “Its philsophy is libertarian in the sense that our philosophy is based on individual rights and limited government.”

Of course, one factor to be considered is the federal government’s response to this drastic migration of activists. Some of the actions of the Free State Project will make federal laws ineffective.

“I think on many of the issues we’re interested in, the federal government has little or no role,” Sorens said in an interview on theatlasphere.com. “It’s clear we would try to get more autonomy from federal policies and restore a truly federal balance of powers. It’s difficult to tell how Congress and the Supreme Court would respond to those demands.”

A common misconception that people hold is that the Free State Project consists of secessionists bent on breaking away from the nation. Rather, Sorens insists that only a minority is even interested in that concept and the main overall focus is to get back to the Constitution, specifically the tenth amendment separating federal powers from strictly state and local matters such as education and housing.

UB political science professor Claude Welch sees hope for the Free State Project in that it is bringing a big stock of people to a small state. He notes that Democrats have not been able to effectively change the political atmosphere in the South because they are arriving in such small numbers. However, he noticed one very important flaw: if the Free Staters bring a massive amount of people to New Hampshire to lobby for their cause, other organizations may do the same and counterbalance any political effects.

From one of four children in a low-income house in Houston to a Yale-educated leader, Professor Jason Sorens has come a long way to gain the influence he has today. Although no one is sure how the Free State Project will fare, no one can deny the passion and courage that Sorens has brought to the political arena.

“I hope that New Hampshire will always be known as ‘the free state’ and many of new things we try there are adopted by other states,” said Sorens.