Green Party Watch

From Jill Stein for President:

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein praised former Senator Russ Feingold today for speaking plainly when he says that, “The President is wrong to have embraced the corrupt corporate politics of Citizens United and that’s what you’re doing when you start using and consorting with Super PACs.” Earlier this week, President Obama announced his support for unlimited spending by corporations and the very wealthy on via the formation of a Super PAC on behalf of the Obama campaign. read more »

UPDATE: Here are caucus results posted on the Green Party of Minnesota facebook page:

Minus one caucus reporting, here are the results of Tuesday’s straw poll:

Jill Stein, 92 votes
Roseanne Barr, 26 votes
Kent Mesplay, 22 votes
Harvey Mikkelson, 11 votes
No candidate, 9 votes
David Cobb, 2 votes
Ralph Nader, 2 votes
Winona LaDuke, 1 vote

The Green Party of Minnesota held Caucuses yesterday (Tuesday Feb. 7), and as of this afternoon there has been no official Caucus results released.

However, based on very unofficial (and anecdotal) comments on various Facebook pages, including the GP of MN page, it appears that Jill Stein won a number of the individual caucuses.

Green comments on Facebook include Jill Stein winning Washington County, North and South Minneapolis, and winning 3 to 1 in the 4th CD District in St. Paul, and another report indicates Stein splitting 50/50 with Roseanne Barr in another St. Paul Caucus.

Again, these are all UNOFFICIAL, we acknowledge that, but in lieu of an official media release or report on the Caucus results we felt like reporting *whatever* we could find.  The only msm news story we have found post-Caucus is from the Brainerd Dispatch which reports that two Greens showed up for their Caucus, but gave no Presidential results. From Facebook accounts, there were more Greens at other Caucus locations.

If you have any information about Green Party of Minnesota Caucus results we encourage you to post them here in the comments.

From Jill Stein for President:

Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein of Massachusetts is campaigning this weekend in Ohio and Indiana. From the campaign website:

Jill Stein’s support for worker power has carried her to the vital labor states of Ohio and Indiana this weekend. She begins a three day tour today with a visit to the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, accompanied by Cleveland City Councilman and Green Party elected official Brian Cummins and County Executive candidate David Ellison. Saturday at 11:30am, Dr. Stein addresses the Green Party of Ohio Presidential Nominating Convention in Columbus. And Sunday, as part of Indianapolis’ Occupy the Super Bowl protests, she rallies with supporters at the state capitol against anti-labor legislation such as “Right to Work for Less.”

Dr. Stein is especially interested in the Evergreen Cooperatives for providing one successful model, among many, for how economic democracy can provide employment and prosperity for stressed communities. In her recent People’s State of the Union address, Dr. Stein called for a Green New Deal providing for full employment and an immediate transition to a sustainable, more democratic economy. The Evergreen Cooperatives “are pioneering innovative models of job creation, wealth building, and sustainability,” and are, “employee-owned, for-profit companies are based locally and hire locally.”

On Occupy Super Bowl Sunday, at noon, Dr. Stein will rally with supporters and other labor movement advocates at the Indiana statehouse in Indianapolis. Dr. Stein is not only strongly opposed to so-called Right-to-Work legislation (RTW), her Green New Deal includes a “program of immediate creation of 25 million, publicly useful, sustainable, well-paying jobs,” according to a prepared statement. Stein will be joined at the rally by lifelong labor organizer Anthony Prince, and student activist Erika Wolf, both newly hired members of the Jill Stein for President campaign staff.

Campaign Itinerary:

Friday Feb 3 – Cleveland, OH

Meet & Greet at Mad Greek Restaurant in Cleveland Heights, OH

Saturday Feb 4 – Columbus, OH

11 a.m. Ohio Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention, Maynard Avenue United Methodist Church in Columbus, OH

6 p.m. Fundraising Party – Contact Anita Rios for RSVP and directions.

Sunday Feb 5 – Indianapolis, IN

Noon – Occupy the Superbowl Rally at Indiana State Capital

The Illinois Green Party, which lost statewide party status in 2010, is embracing online organizing by holding their Party Primary online. Although only Illinois Green Party members can vote in the Primary, the Illinois Greens have coupled their ballot with an online membership form, allowing voters to both join the party and cast a ballot at the same time. Voting is now open, and will remain open through February 19.

The state of Illinois does not have political party registration, unlike registration states such as California, New York and Arizona. Registration with the Illinois Green Party is based on dues-paying membership and limited to Illinois residents. Dues are $25 annually, but they do offer needs-based waivers of dues.

Kent Mesplay, Jill Stein, “Undecided” are options on the online ballot, along with a Write-in Option.

You can check out the ballot and membership form here.

Our Feb. 1-2 Presidential Poll closed earlier tonight, and of the 1,792 votes cast, Jill Stein received 1,223 of them, or 68%. Roseanne Barr, who had just entered the race in the last week, picked up 526 votes, or 29%. There were 35 votes for Kent Mesplay, and 8 votes for Harley Mikkelson.

Word of Roseanne Barr’s declaration of candidacy for the Green Party Presidential Nomination just went national tonight with an Associated Press piece that is getting picked up by all the major media outlets. For example, see CBS News, or see the post in the Huffington Post and browse the comments. Roseanne Barr seems to have something in common with 2008 Green Party Presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney – people either love her or hate her. You can put me in the “love her” category, by the way. “Long time fan, first time caller!”

Roseanne Barr is very active on Twitter, and had tweeted a challenge to Bill Maher, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to have both herself and Jill Stein on their programs. Barr, who supported the Cynthia McKinney / Rosa Clemente Power to the People campaign in 2008 and Cindy Sheehan’s Independent campaign against Democrat Nancy Pelosi in 2010, has been promoting the Green Party via Twitter and her websites.

Nonetheless, there is clearly a very significant amount of support in the Green Party for Jill Stein, who has been a Green Party organizer since 2000, a Green Party candidate for State Office since 2002, a medical physician and advocate for single payer universal health care, and who has been building a network of support for her campaign since November of 2011. The Jill Stein Campaign is actively fundraising, has hired at least 3 staff onto the campaign, and has campaigned so far in California, Colorado, Delaware, DC, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Wisconsin, and other additional states as well. Jill Stein has been speaking at Occupy Wall Street encampments from Boston to Sacramento.

The Green Party will select their Presidential nominee at the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention July 12-15 in Baltimore, Maryland. Between now and then, state Green Party chapters and caucuses will be meeting and voting and selecting Delegates to the Presidential Nominating Convention. Local caucuses in Minnesota are meeting next week, and Arizona holds their state primary on February 28.

Green Party Watch will continue to provide updates to the Green Party Presidential Race, including more polls, through the July Convention.

Following is a list of Green Party candidates running in the 2012 US elections. More candidates will be added as we become aware of them. Jump to your state to connect with your local Green Party and candidates:

United States President

• Roseanne Barr

• Kent Mesplay

• Harley Mikkelson

• Jill Stein read more »

Kent Mesplay, one of four candidates seeking the Green Party nomination for President in 2012, is featured in an article at the Bloomington Alternative.

In his position as an enforcement officer with San Diego County’s Air Pollution Control District, the 49-year-old Mesplay helps ensure businesses comply with local, state and federal air quality standards through education and regulation, his website says. “He is exposed, daily, to the effects of our current economic climate on small and large businesses.”

He ranks climate instability as his top presidential priority.

“Climate change is the gravest environmental, social and economic peril that humanity has ever met,” he says on the website. “Across the world, it is causing vanishing polar ice, melting glaciers, growing deserts, stronger storms, rising oceans, less biodiversity, deepening droughts, as well as more disease, hunger, strife and human misery.”

Calling global warming a “tragedy unfolding in slow motion,” Mesplay says greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by at least 40 percent over 1990 levels by 2020, 95 percent by 2050.

Much of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is initially absorbed by the ocean, which creates roughly a 30-year delay in the impact of that heat at the surface of the planet, he says.

“Practically speaking, that means that the melting glaciers and expanding deserts of 2009 were the result of greenhouse gases dumped into the atmosphere in the late 1970s, when the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was below 350 parts per million (ppm),” he says.

Returning to safe greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere requires they be reduced as quickly as possible to pre-1980 levels, to 350 ppm carbon dioxide, he says.

In his capacity as an emergency shelter manager for San Diego County, Mesplay experienced first-hand the human misery and strife wrought by climate change when he helped manage the evacuation shelter in Del Mar during the last fire-storm in San Diego.

A civil libertarian, Mesplay says on his website that he believes each individual should be allowed, by government and society, to determine how to live their lives as long as their decisions do not negatively affect others. He supports the right to choose, same-sex marriage, reparations for African Americans and wants to end all racial discrimination and the “war” on drugs.

Read the entire article here.

There are four candidates currently seeking the Green Party nomination for the Presidential Election in 2012: Kent Mesplay (CA), Jill Stein (MA), Harley Mikkelson (MI), and Roseanne Barr (CA).

This poll will stay open until Sunday February 5. Thursday, Feb 2, at 6 P.M. Eastern. In this poll, you can vote for one of the four choices. Next week we will put up an Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or Ranked Choice Poll.

For brief information about all four candidates and the nomination process, see this post.

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With the late addition of Roseanne Barr to the race, we are now looking at a four way Green Party Presidential race.

The Green Party nominates its Presidential slate at the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention (PNC) in Baltimore, July 12-15, 2012. Delegates to the Green Party’s PNC are elected by the various State Green Parties and Caucuses. The exact number of Delegates and the distribution of them among the states and caucuses has not been determined since the last proposal on the matter was rejected in October 2011.

Although some State Parties will have state run primaries, namely Arizona (Feb. 28), Massachusetts (Mar. 6), DC-Statehood (Apr. 3), and California (June 5), most state parties and caucuses will elect their delegates at state conventions. If you don’t know when and where your state party’s convention is, go here, find your state, and find out.

Here are the candidates:

Kent Mesplay – Dr. Kent Mesplay is an air quality inspector in San Diego County. Dr. Mesplay has a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. He was born in Papua New Guinea, raised there for the first 10 years of his life. He identifies as 1/16th Blackfoot, and has a strong identification with indigenous peoples and their struggles around the world. Environmental issues and working towards sustainable, localized communities is at the core of Mesplay’s Campaign.

“Sustainability is Security. Humanity must do everything possible to stabilize the climate. Climate change is a public health and safety issue of epic proportions. It has been called the World War III of our time. Cutting way back on carbon emissions is a key step, requiring a change in our lifestyle as U.S. citizens. Scientifically, there is no debate that this is a real issue, that human behavior affects the climate, and that public policy and private action must be geared toward recognizing and correcting the problem.”

Dr. Mesplay previously sought the Green Party nomination in 2004 and 2008.

Jill Stein – Dr. Jill Stein is a mother, housewife, physician, longtime teacher of internal medicine, and pioneering environmental-health advocate. She was the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party’s candidate for Governor in 2002 and in 2010, and ran for Massachusetts Secretary of State in 2006 and picked up 350,000 votes. She has twice been elected to town meeting in Lexington, Massachusetts. Jill Stein has built a strong campaign team, led by former Green Party co-chair Ben Manski, that has hired on three staff and raised over $40,000 through mid-January. Jill’s campaign has already committed staff to national ballot access, and Dr. Stein has campaigned so far in California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maryland, Virginia, DC, Massachusetts and Delaware. She has spoken at Occupy Wall Street events from Dover to Sacramento. The “Green New Deal” is at the center of the Stein Campaign. In her words:

“First, we will guarantee the economic rights of all Americans, beginning with the right to a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work. Second, we will transition to a sustainable, green economy for the 21st century, by adopting green technologies and sustainable production. Third, we will reboot and reprogram the financial sector so that it serves everyday people and our communities, and not the other way around. Fourth, we will protect these gains by expanding and strengthening our democracy so that our government and our economy finally serve We the People.”

Harley Mikkelson – Harley Mikkelson is retired from a 26 year career with the Michigan Departments of Community Health, Education, and Human Services. He graduated from Michigan State University, served in the U. S. Army and spent one year in South Vietnam. He was an active American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and United Auto Workers (UAW) member, and he has held several union offices. Labor issues are at the core of his platform:

“It is the working class perspective I hope to bring to this race. I do not want the Green Party to be the party of a small group of left wing intellectuals. I want to represent people who shop at Walmart as well as Macy’s. I want to represent working people such as teachers, factory workers, farmers, government employees, health care workers, etc…”

Harley Mikkelson has not filed with the FEC to date.

Roseanne Barr – Comedian, Actress, and Author Roseanne Barr first announced her intent to run for President on the Green “Tea” Party ticket last summer, and made her intent to seek the Green Party nomination official in the last week. Her late entry into the race has prevented her from appearing on primary ballots in California, Arizona, Massachusetts and DC. Roseanne Barr may be more commonly known as a comedian, but she has been an outspoken social justice advocate for decades.

“Both the Democratic and Republican parties are bought and paid for by corporate America and cater to the needs of the highest bidder as opposed to the people they claim to represent. I cannot be bought. I have been a tireless advocate of Occupy Wall Street since Day 1 when I delivered my campaign speech in Liberty Plaza on September 17th, 2011.”

She supported the 2008 Green Party slate of Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, and supported Cindy Sheehan’s 2010 congressional run against Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Ms. Barr lives in Southern California. You can find out more about Roseanne Barr at her personal website, Roseanneworld.

Additionally, in Arizona, which has very open ballot access laws for Presidential Primaries, six candidates will appear on their ballot. Besides Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay, on the ballot will be Gary Swing, who is also a Congressional Candidate in Colorado, and three Arizonans: Gerald Davis, Michael Oatman, and Richard Grayson. Grayson was a candidate for Congress in 2010,
but was embroiled in a controversy with the Arizona Green Party, which had identified him as a “sham” candidate.

Green Party Watch will be providing regular updates to the Green Party Presidential nomination news section as we hear it.

We will also be posting a Presidential Poll on Wednesday February 1.

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan’s latest Soapbox post is about Roseanne Barr’s announcement that she is seeking the Green Party nomination for President. Barr supported Sheehan’s 2008 Independent run against Nancy Pelosi, and Sheehan returns the favor:

In the last election, I supported the Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney and her running mate, Rosa Clemente. Unfortunately, the Party is not entirely functional (which party is?), even if many of us do support its 10 Key Principles.

I have also been impressed by the other woman seeking the nomination, Jill Stein–she is bright, articulate, well-informed, truly progressive and dedicated to public service–but if push came to shove, I would support Roseanne.

Read the entire post at Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox.

Steve Horn is a researcher and writer at DeSmogBlog, and a freelance investigative journalist. Steve had a chance to interview Jill Stein when she was campaigning in Madison, Wisconsin last month, and that interview was posted today at truthout.

Read the entire interview at truthout, but here are some excerpts:

Jill Stein: “…You can see the Greens as weak and fringe or, on the other hand, you can see them as incredibly heroic survivors who’ve managed to withstand the barrage from corporate America, and the fear campaigns and the smear campaigns, and being kept off the ballot, and censored and away from the microphone and all of that…”

On hydro-fracking:

SH: Would you support a national ban on fracking?

JS: Absolutely. We should not be opening up new lines of carbon right now, like shale gas and shale oil, as well as tar sands oil, and we just cannot go there right now if we do not want to go over the climate cliff.

On ObamaCare:

SH: The big question here, though, is do you support ObamaCare?

JS: I don’t support ObamaCare and see it as a step backward that entrenches the power of the private health care industry.

On the Green New Deal:

JS: The Green New Deal is an emergency jobs creation plan that really addresses the crisis in our economy, in unemployment, and likewise, in the climate. And truth be told, it has enormous potential to address health issues, as well. It’s a win-win on all those fronts and is modeled after the New Deal that helped us get out of the Great Depression, and would help us through direct and indirect means, ways to create scores of new jobs and really attack this problem with all of the inspiration and force that it deserves, not just a little two million job creation hit that comes and goes, but to really tackle the crisis head on. In doing so, it would do away with the recession and put people back to work, jumpstarting the economy as a green economy, instead of going back and going back to the same old economy that isn’t going to work. It goes green and also relocalizes, and it jumpstarts, in particular, small businesses and co-operatives. And in so doing, it puts a stop to escalating climate change.

Read the entire interview here.

On Wednesday January 25th, one day after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein broadcast her own speech entitled “The People’s State of the Union: A Green New Deal for America”. In the speech, Dr. Stein spoke on the problems facing America and the solutions that she is proposing in her campaign. Watch the video here or at Vimeo:

People’s State of the Union: A Green New Deal for America from Jill Stein for President on Vimeo.

Ballot Access News reports:

Roseanne Barr has taken several steps to make it possible for her to seek the Green Party presidential nomination. She filed with the Federal Election Commission on January 25, and she has fulfilled the requirements of the Green Party to seek the nomination. She is a registered Green Party member in California, although she also has a home in Hawaii.

Dr. Jill Stein, a Green Party candidate for President of the United States, will be presenting her People’s State of the Union address tonight, Wednesday Jan 25, 8:30 PM Eastern, live on her website.

Dozens of House Parties have also been organized and scheduled around the country, there are 29 of them publicly listed (and mapped) here.

Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay both appeared on the Green Party of the US Livestream last night to provide responses to President Obama’s State of the Union, rebroadcast of that may be viewed here.