COLUMBIA, Mo. … The Missouri Libertarian Party wants to expel Martin Lindstedt.

Jim Givens, chairman, said the party's central committee will have a hearing here April 20.

Reached at his home at Granby, Lindstedt said he would attend. ``I never miss a confrontation,'' he said.

Lindstedt, who was an unsuccessful candidate for the gubernatorial nomination last year, called the expulsion motion ``a bill of attainder.'' He said that last week he expanded a lawsuit he filed last year against the party to allege that party functionaries, including 16 John and Jane Does, have conspired to violate his civil rights.

Givens said the Libertarian central committee adopted a bylaw Jan. 19 allowing expulsion for conduct detrimental to the party. On Feb. 16, a motion to proceed against Lindstedt was approved.

Givens said Lindstedt indiscriminately defamed public officials in Newton County and elsewhere, police officers, Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians. He said Lindstedt files frivolous lawsuits.

``We want everybody to know he is not part of us,'' said Mitch Moore, a Columbia lawyer. ``Let him find somebody else to vex.''

Moore, who was the party's nominee for attorney general in 1992 and for Congress in 1996, said the rift with Lindstedt was not about his beliefs. ``We are the biggest supporters of free speech in the world,'' he said, ``but he has vowed to destroy us. There is a constitutional right of free association, and we choose not to associate with him.''

Lindstedt said Missouri Supreme Court decisions early in the century held that a party may not unilaterally oust a party official, because he has a status in which he and the people who elected him have an interest. Lindstedt said he is chairman of the Newton County and 32nd Senatorial District committees.

Last summer Lindstedt, who maintains he is a pauper, sued the party and the state in a dispute over a $200 filing fee in the gubernatorial primary. Later, he sued Newton County officials who would not let him run for sheriff as a Libertarian in November. He said that suit is still pending in a federal court. He currently is a candidate for Granby municipal judge.

Both Givens and Lindstedt said Lindstedt attended a Libertarian meeting Sunday at a Columbia restaurant, began videotaping and recording it, was asked to leave, and did after the manager called police.

Page 1C, Wednesday, March 19, 1997