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John Inks, an elected Libertarian on the Mountain View (California) City Council whose 2012 re-election campaign was promoted by the LNCC, offers this advice to Libertarians running for local office:

Advice to Libertarians who wish to run for City Council:

You may or may not follow my path.  It’s a change of life and a lot of work.

Find a leadership area in your community that’s of interest to you.  Seek a volunteer or appointed position in a community organization such as PTA, charity, local committee, city board or commission.  Attend City Council and commission meetings regularly.  Know the agenda topics. Write and speak to the City Council. Write letters to the editor.  Establish name recognition.

After you have a community resume and some name recognition, start a city council campaign 6-12 months before the election.  Know approximately how many votes it takes to be elected and focus on getting those votes.  Votes are all that matter.

Form an organizing committee.  Recruit campaign committee members to coordinate volunteers, manage a bank account, file state forms, and prepare your printed material (brochure/door hanger, signs, newspaper ads, campaign mailer).  You the candidate must do fund raising (about $15,000 for my successful re-election campaign for the Nov 2012 election).  You also must develop your campaign priorities and platform to reach voters, answer questionnaires, attend press interviews, attend candidate forums and walk precincts to meet voters.

Those are the essentials.  As an elected official you do not need to preach everything that is contained in the Libertarian Party Platform. There are enough bad policies and squandered taxpayer dollars to reasonably argue against.   You must have complete command of the facts involving a wide range of Council agenda topics and just use common sense in policy making.