By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
The criminal case against Libertarian firebrand Jeremy Kauffman is no more, much like Kauffman’s affiliation with the National Libertarian Party.
The Manchester City Solicitor’s Office this week dropped the misdemeanor criminal charges against Kauffman, 41, stemming from an allegedly racist incident at a Market Basket. City Solicitor Emily Gray Rice declined to comment on the case when reached this week.
Kauffman was arrested in April and charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing government administration after he made a racist spectacle of himself, according to police reports.
Kauffman got into a fender bender in the grocery store parking lot and allegedly responded by trying to fight several people while hurling racist insults, according to Manchester Police reports.
Police were called to the Elm Street Market Basket parking lot around 2 p.m. on April 4 to deal with reports that a man hit another car in the parking lot with his car, fought with several people, and then went inside the store and continued yelling. One witness told police the suspect, later identified as Kauffman, immediately started making racist statements after the fender bender, and tried to fight people. When a bystander, who is Black and from Jamaica, walked by the incident, Kauffman reportedly directed his ire toward that man.
“[He] told him to ‘go back to Africa’ and began spouting racist slang and terms at him,” police report.
Kauffman reportedly continued to scream racist insults at people in the parking lot, according to police. Witnesses told police that Kauffman’s two young sons finally pulled their father away and dragged him inside the store.
Police soon encountered Kauffman inside the store, where he refused to give his name, and tried to pull away from officers when they attempted to detain him, according to the report.
Kauffman doubled down when contacted about the incident, blaming police and minorities.
“Free Staters want to end qualified immunity so that police who perform illegitimare [sic] kidnappings suffer criminal consequences,” Kauffman said via text message … “Low IQ schizophrenic Africans who scream at kids in parking lots should be deported from New Hampshire. We shouldn’t punish decent men who stand up to them.”
Police reports state that the children’s mother was called to the grocery store parking lot to take the boys home. She was also informed that the Division for Children, Youth & Families would be sent a report about the incident.
Kauffman had big plans this year and campaigned for national chair of the Libertarian National Committee during the May party convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His platform was to dissolve the Libertarian National Committee, which he said is a failure run by losers.
“You are so congenitally anti-everything, that when you see someone with something, who can do anything, you melt down. And I am here to cleanse the party of you losers,” Kauffman said during his convention speech. “I go to the mat every day, all of the time, for what’s right and what’s true. And you guys, you freaks, see someone who can do things that you can’t, and it makes you so angry and so bitter, you are loser apes who can’t stand to see someone with abilities that you don’t have.”
This was not a winning pitch to Libertarian Party members. Not only did Kauffman lose his bid for chair, but the new National Committee members voted to disaffiliate Kauffman’s New Hampshire Libertarian Party from the national organization.
Kauffman’s social media content, a swamp of racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia, gave the National Committee reason to disaffiliate. It includes a tweet blaming Jewish people for the 9/11 terror attacks and denigrating Libertarian Presidential candidate Chase Oliver with homophobic slurs. Kauffman also threw the NHLP’s support behind President Donald Trump during the 2024 election, another strike against Kauffman’s Libertarian bonafides.
It’s a somewhat familiar trajectory for Kauffman. He was booted out of the Free State Project in 2023 after he refused to stop posting racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ content on the FSP social media accounts.