Green Party Watch

Dirk Langeveld at the New London Patch has published 5 Green candidates’ responses to a questionnaire sent to all local candidates. Jessica Cartagena, Kenric Hanson, and Joan Sullivan Cooper are running for City Council. Ronna Stuller and Mirna Martinez are running for the Board of Education. With 5 local candidates, the New London Greens are one of the most electorally active Green Party chapters in the country this year.

Read the article at the New London Patch.

In 2009, Green candidates won 35% of municipal elections that they entered. Given this figure, it’s not hard to see that with more Greens running in more local elections around the country, the Green Party could become America’s third major party in the course of a few election cycles. Here’s a shout-out to cities where Greens are leading the way by running more than one candidate in 2011 elections, roughly arranged by population. Will your town be next?

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Cheri Honkala, Philadelphia Sheriff

Brian Rudnick, Philadelphia City Council District 8

Baltimore, Maryland

Bill Barry, Baltimore City Council District 3

Douglas Armstrong, Baltimore City Council District 14

Tucson, Arizona

Mary DeCamp, Tucson Mayor read more »

Christy Wood reports at the New London Patch about the Green Party’s nomination of candidates for local office in New London, Connecticut:

For City Council, the Greens are fielding three candidates: Joan Sullivan, Jessica Cartagena and Ken Hansen.  Sullivan and Cartagena spoke to the Greens about their positions.  Sullivan noted her opposition to the proposed sale of Riverside Park.  “Different socioeconomic groups use it,” she said.  “Not everyone can afford to go to the beach.”  Cartagena said that it was important that New Londoners see young people in the community who care about change.

For the Board of Education, the Greens nominated two candidates: Ronna Stuller and Myrna Martinez.  Stuller is the first Green to actually hold a seat on the New London Board of Education, and she will run for that seat again this year.  Martinez, a former teacher now raising young children, wants to see school children integrated more into the city.  She hopes to use New London’s art galleries and cultural activities as an “alternative classroom.”

The New London Green Party currently has two officeholders, City Councillor John Russell and Board of Education member Ronna Stuller.

Read the full article at the New London Patch.

In what can be called a Kafkaesque abuse of taxpayer money and citizen’s political rights, the Connecticut Central Criminal Intelligence Unit set up a surveillance of the Connecticut Green Party in 2006. In a detailed account posted at Hartford Courant website, Government Watch reporter Jon Lender lays out what the Central Criminal Intelligence Unit did, the reasons they gave, and the outcome of the domestic spying they engaged in.

The police were on the alert for a protest by Green Party supporters who were upset that their candidate for governor, Cliff Thornton, was not being allowed in debates between Democrat John DeStefano and incumbent Gov. M. Jodi Rell. The Greens had protested a week or so earlier outside a debate in New London.

But that night, they didn’t show up.

Details of the operation were only recently exposed in papers filed by the defendants in a law suit brought by Ken Krayeske, a freelance journalist who was arrested for taking photographs of Governor Rell in her inaugural parade. Krayeske had served at Cliff Thornton’s campaign manager in the same gubernatorial race. Thornton is now one of the national Green Party’s co-chairs, and started the drug law reform website Efficacy.

Krayeske first appeared on the radar for the mainstream media after he asked University of Connecticut men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun to justify his multi-million dollar salary at a time the state faced a two billion dollar deficit.