When former Minnesota state Rep. Erik Mortensen took office in 2021, he walked into the Capitol ready to get started on the promises he made to his constituents. The first piece of advice he was given? Erase the campaign that got him elected.
“When I first got elected, I was told by Capitol employees in St. Paul, ‘The first thing you need to do is go back to your social media pages and delete all of your campaign promises so that they cannot be held against you in the future,’” Mortensen said.
Mortensen, now the senior legislative advisor for Liberty Action, said he was approached by another representative in his first caucus meeting just three days after his election with another piece of advice.
“‘I've been here for 10 years, the best advice I can give you as a new legislator is to do nothing for the next two years. Just sit back and learn the process,’” Mortensen recalled. “These are a couple of the tactics that the establishment uses to abuse the ignorance of new legislators who are oftentimes overwhelmed…they use your ignorance and your newness against you to co-opt new legislators to quickly become very bad legislators.”
This isn’t unique to Minnesota. South Carolina state Rep. April Cromer sees the same issue in Columbia.
“As soon as you go through those chamber doors, people's personalities and their voting platform changes,” she said. “It becomes more of voting for the system instead of the people.”
Most first-term legislators genuinely believe in the principles they campaigned on. Unfortunately, veteran legislators and staff immediately begin teaching them on how to “fit in.”
“Once they get into office and their new legislative colleagues who are solely concerned about staying in power get their arms around these new legislative members, they quickly try to push them down the path of ‘Be homogeneous, be a team player, forget your campaign promises,’” Mortensen said.
The question then becomes how to stop this process before it starts.
Liberty Action created the Hazlitt Coalition to address that problem. Rather than simply recruiting legislators, the coalition prepares them for what happens after Election Day and equips them to stand by the principles they campaigned on—even when colleagues pressure them to conform.
For Mortensen, seeing liberty-minded candidates elected to office is only half the battle. Keeping them grounded once they're sworn in is just as important.
The vast majority of new Hazlitt members are freshmen. These candidates go through a thorough vetting process that begins with an intense seven-page survey.
“I can tell you, as a former candidate, it was absolutely the most intense survey I ever completed,” Mortensen said. “Typically, organization surveys are yes or no, very cut and dry, very simple, very black and white, whereas the Liberty Action survey is almost more essay style.”
Candidates complete a seven-page survey, undergo a background review, and participate in a one-hour interview before beginning an onboarding course designed to prepare them for the realities of governing as an effective part of the Hazlitt Coalition.
“The second video of the course is about a 55-minute video that gets a little intense, but it is a ‘real nature of politics’ video where I walk through, ‘How does politics actually work?’” Mortensen said. “The type of intelligence that most politicians absolutely do not want people to know, but we want Hazlitt members to know the truth and have eyes wide open from day one.”
The onboarding concludes with an introduction to the coalition's tools and a short quiz reinforcing the program's key lessons.
“We use the quiz as a way to reinforce the key takeaways from all the videos and to set the table for simple things like, ‘You understand this is a privilege, and if you abandon the liberty movement, we will remove you from the Hazlitt Coalition,’” Mortensen explained. “While we want to be a support network for the principled few, we will hold them accountable if they lose their way.”
The onboarding is designed to help freshmen legislators avoid the naïveté that often makes them vulnerable to pressure once they're in office.
“I want eyes wide open on who they plan on collaborating with and what we're trying to do; we’re all the average of the five people we spend the most time with,” Mortensen said. “We don't keep any secrets on that. And we want them to understand our tactics and how we know politicians, the vast majority of the time, ultimately only care about staying in office.”
Mortensen said the biggest mistake first-term legislators make is caring more about what politicians think of them. He and others at Liberty Action remind them that the opinion that matters most is that of their constituents.
“When they start to say, ‘My colleagues aren't going to like it if I do this thing,’ we can remind them, ‘Why do you suddenly care what the most dishonest profession in the world cares about you?’”
Mortensen hopes that mindset becomes the norm among Hazlitt members rather than the exception. Unfortunately, many legislators forget they’re elected to serve the people, not party leadership.
Ohio state Rep. Ron Ferguson has seen the same pressure firsthand.
“People have more fear of the Speaker of the House than they do the voters in their district,” Ferguson said.
Mortensen believes that preparing new legislators before session begins gives them a better chance of keeping the promises that got them elected.
“There's a yearning for principled people who not only campaign on a popular, liberty-oriented message, but while serving in office they follow through with their campaign promises,” Mortensen said. “People are tired of being hoodwinked throughout an entire campaign season just to watch their elected officials betray them with how they actually vote in the legislature.”
The Hazlitt Coalition has been growing rapidly, recently adding 27 new members to its roster of 356. As more first-time legislators are elected across the country, Mortensen expects the coalition to continue expanding.
“Liberty is still a winning message,” Mortensen said. “I think the Hazlitt Coalition's at a fantastic point, and I think it'll only continue to grow as more and more people get fed up with being lied to, and they're looking for real, sincere, honest liberty leaders in their states.”
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