Bill Kauffman (born November 15, 1959) is an American political writer generally aligned with the localist movement. He was born in Batavia, New York, and currently resides in Elba, New York, with his wife and daughter. A devout Roman Catholic, Kauffman was also an intimate correspondent of the late Gore Vidal, with whom he shares many ideological similarities. Education and career After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester, he went to work as an aide to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (which he would later describe as an "anarchist-making experience") in 1981. After leaving Moynihan's employ, Kauffman worked as Washington, D.C., editor for Reason before quitting and returning to Batavia. He has written frequently for The American Conservative, The American Enterprise, The Wall Street Journal, and CounterPunch. He wrote the screenplay to the independent film Copperhead, which was directed by Ron Maxwell, a friend of Kauffman's. The film came out in June 2013 to mixed reviews. Political beliefs Kauffman's politics remain difficult to categorize. He holds strong libertarian leanings with culturally conservative and isolationist inclinations. He is a critic of development, frequently writes approvingly of distributism and agrarianism, and is strongly anti-corporate. Kauffman has described his politics as "a blend of Catholic Worker, Old Right libertarian, Yorker transcendentalist, and delirious localist." He has also described himself as an "Independent. A Jeffersonian. An anarchist. A (cheerful!) enemy of the state, a reactionary Friend of the Library, a peace-loving football fan." Although he remains a registered Democrat, he rarely supports their candidates or their party platform and has frequently voted Green since the collapse of the Reform Party in 2000. Other positions adopted by Kauffman that are considered controversial to both the Left and the Right include his support for the Second Vermont Republic secessionist movement, his admiration for 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, his argument that Catholic Worker activist Dorothy Day had much in common with elements of the Right, and his contention that Philip Roth's book The Plot Against America is "the novel that a neoconservative would write, if a neoconservative could write a novel." He made the argument in his book Ain't My America that a true conservative would object to an interventionist foreign policy. He voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan in 2000. In 2004 and 2008, he voted for Ralph Nader for President of the United States "because I