Green Party Watch

Although the Connecticut Green Party has no candidate for governor this year and is running a write-in campaign for US Senate, CT Green candidates running for a variety of statewide, congressional, legislative and local seats have been steadily making news. Here are some recent stories:

CT News Junkie: Nader Endorses Krayeske in 1st Congressional District

Hartford Courant: Putting Voters in the Driver’s Seat (letter from Mike DeRosa, candidate for CT Secretary of State)

Norwich Bulletin: 2nd District Incumbent, Challengers Duke It Out in Willimantic

Ralph Nader, the legendary activist who ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000, will make several appearances with New York Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins in New York’s Capital District on Wednesday 10/20. To RSVP and invite friends, see the facebook event “Ralph Nader and Howie Hawkins in the Capital Region Weds 10/20″. Here are details for the events with Nader and Hawkins:

Nader/Hawkins schedule for Wednesday October 20th:

11-12: Howie Hawkins and Ralph Nader on Capitol Pressroom with Susan Arbetter, broadcast on PBS/NPR stations across the state at various times. Check local listings. read more »

Oliver Hall reports at the Philadelphia Enquirer:

Pennsylvanians may notice something unusual when they go to the polls in November: Their choices for governor, lieutenant governor, and U.S. Senate will be limited exclusively to Republican and Democratic candidates. Only four other states’ 2010 general-election ballots are so restrictive.

What makes Pennsylvania unique, however – and suggests that something has gone seriously wrong here in the birthplace of America – is that the shortage of choices has been effectively imposed by the courts. The state’s courts have shut out minor-party candidates by allowing Republicans and Democrats to collect large money judgments from anyone who attempts to challenge the major parties.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20101018_Some_political_parties_remain_outlaws_in_Pa_.html#ixzz12j4GhgER
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On September 8th, Ralph Nader appeared in Oklahoma City at an event to promote ballot access reform in Oklahoma and Dr. Edward Shadid’s campaign for Oklahoma State House in the 85th District. Oklahoma is generally considered to have the most anti-democratic ballot access laws in the US. Due to the extreme difficulty of placing a Green on the ballot, Shadid is running as an independent with the support of the OK Green Party. Below are videos from the event of Shadid’s and Nader’s presentations:

read more »

Ralph Nader will appear in Buffalo on Tuesday 3 August at the Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center along with New York Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins. A local Buffalo paper interviewed Nader about Howie Hawkins and issues facing New York in anticipation of the event. Details from the Ralph Nader with special guest Howie Hawkins event on facebook:

Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate
Howie Hawkins, Green Party of New York State, candidate for Governor
Mike Kuzma, candidate for New York State Senate, 58th District

To discuss, “Ways to Mobilize the People for Long Overdue Changes, No More of Our Money for War and Wall Street” read more »

FEB 3, 2012 NOTE – This article is OLD. This article describes the four candidates actually seeking the nomination, and Green Party Watch is covering the campaigns daily.

Talk about 2012 and who might be a good Green Party standard bearer as the Presidential Nominee really began in earnest about one month before the 2008 election concluded. So talking about it now, in the summer of 2010, isn’t really out of line or out of place, and perhaps is overdue.

The conversation has already begun on the GPUS National Committee delegate email list, with names tossed around such as Barbara Ehrenreich, Margaret Flowers, Van Jones, and of course Cynthia McKinney. What I find interesting is the variety in “goals” that Greens expect from a Presidential candidate, and the variety of “types” of candidates that people think might accomplish those goals,

So what are the goals of running a national Green Party candidate for President? Winning the White House seems to rank low thanks to the reality of the duopoly in US Politics. So what, then? Five Percent might be brought up, because if a presidential candidate gets five percent of the national vote that political party is eligible for millions of dollars in support of the next presidential nominating convention, but more than that, the percent received by the candidate can impact ballot access in a number of states, Texas, Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin just to name a few.

Another major goal often brought up is “party building”. A national candidate for President can travel the land raising money and recruiting volunteers for local chapters everywhere. Nader did it. Cobb did it. And McKinney did it as well, bringing new people into the Green Party fold, some of whom are now candidates for federal office or have taken leadership positions within the party.

So who might be a good Green Party candidate for President? Lets explore the topic by “type” of candidate.

The “Name” candidate

This group of candidates would include those who have a well known name for themselves in the public eye – the bigger the better. It is all about name recognition, but perhaps at a smaller scale. Lets face it, Nader was a “name candidate”, Cobb was not. McKinney was. Van Jones is close, but I would class him more as an “issue candidate”. Celebrities fall in this category, such as: Michael Moore, Amy Goodman, Susan Sarandon perhaps, Ben Affleck (or is it Matt Damon?), and any other famous person who wants to risk their career by taking the “Green Cause” to the political scene. My first choice for a “celebrity candidate” at this point would be Woody Harrelson, tied into the “Issue Candidate” category below for his Cannabis Activism.

The Issue Candidate

This category would include those candidates who are big activists on a narrower issue. Margaret Flowers is a universal heath care advocate. Woody Harrelson is a “legalize marijuana” advocate. Cindy Sheehan is an anti-war activist. Jesse Johnson is an anti-coal mining activist. Cynthia McKinney in a way is a social justice candidate, with emphasis on Palestinian Liberation. Would an “issue candidate” help the party meet its goals? My personal favorite potential “issue candidate” is Kathy Kelly, an anti-war / peace advocate who is a wonderful speaker, I would love to see her at the top of our ballot.

“Insider Candidate”

There is a case made for a Presidential candidate who is a political insider, an organizer within the party or a candidate for federal or state office who has done well. Kent Mesplay falls in this category, as does kat swift, and certainly David Cobb. What about Rich Whitney in Illinois? Jill Stein? Laura Wells? What about a party organizer like Mike Feinstein, Farheen Hakim, or Claudia Ellquist? Would a Green without national name recognition have any impact? Would a Green who had a broader package than a single issue candidate improve our returns? I think if the Green Party is going to consider an insider candidate, they would do well to tag someone who has run in high profile races and done well, who can speak well, raise money, and campaign. Rich Whitney, who got 360,000 votes for 10% in 2006 would be a leading candidate, and I would also bring attention to Jill Stein, who got over 3% of the vote running for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Medea Benjamin, who brought in over 300,000 votes running for US Senate in California in 2000, and Rebekah Kennedy, whose 200,000 votes in Arkansas in 2008 for US Senate brought her 20% of the vote.

Who will the Green Party recruit? Who will the Green Party attract? Will McKinney run again? Will there be another Draft Nader campaign? And if a Green is elected President in 2012, will the world still end as per the Mayan Calendar?

From Free and Equal via StopTopTwo.org:

Ralph Nader Warns Californians:

Vote NO on Proposition 14 — Stop the “Top Two” Tyranny

Ralph Nader, who has run for president both as an independent and as a third-party candidate, today warned against the ballot proposition promoted by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Californians need to defeat Proposition 14 or they will risk further entrenching the two-party system,” stated Nader.

Nader explained that he has campaigned for the need for “more voices and more choices” on the ballot, not fewer. He noted that Proposition 14: read more »

In a two part series of articles by Ruth Ann Dailey at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the saga of Ralph Nader and Carl Romanelli and the PA Democratic Party’s fight to keep them off the ballot is covered in some detail. Both Nader and Romanelli faced challenges to their ballot access petitions in 2004, and Pennsylvania’s courts ruled that both Nader and Romanelli were responsible to pay the costs for those who took their ballot access petitions to task.

This is the first time that candidates have been charged for reviewing petitions which were found to be insufficient to secure a spot on the ballot. In essence, Nader and Romanelli were charged over $80,000 each for daring to run for office.

H/T to Ballot Access News. read more »

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has written an article for Truthdig chronicling how Ralph Nader’s quest for a better society was overpowered by a coordinated corporate takeover of the media and political establishment. Ralph Nader was the Green Party candidate for president in 1996 and 2000, when he was scapegoated by Democratic Party pundits (see the documentary “An Unreasonable Man”) for the Republican Party’s theft of the election (see the documentary “American Blackout”).

“The press in the 1980s would say ‘why should we cover you?’ ” Nader went on. “ ‘Who is your base in Congress?’ I used to be known as someone who could trigger a congressional hearing pretty fast in the House and Senate. They started looking towards the neoliberals and neocons and the deregulation mania. We put out two reports on the benefits of regulation and they too disappeared. They did not get covered at all. This was about the same the time that [former U.S. Rep.] Tony Coelho taught the Democrats, starting in 1979 when he was head of the House Campaign Finance Committee, to start raising big-time money from corporate interests. And they did. It had a magical influence. It is the best example I have of the impact of money. The more money they raised the less interested they were in any of these popular issues.”…

Nader, locked out of the legislative process, decided to send a message to the Democrats. He went to New Hampshire and Massachusetts during the 1992 primaries and ran as “none of the above.” In 1996 he allowed the Green Party to put his name on the ballot before running hard in 2000 in an effort that spooked the Democratic Party. The Democrats, fearful of his grass-roots campaign, blamed him for the election of George W. Bush, an absurdity that found fertile ground among those who had abandoned rational inquiry for the thought-terminating clichés of television. read more »

Carl Romanelli, 2006 Green Party candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania, has written a piece at Citizen Voice entitled “What’s good for Iran is good for Pennsylvania; freedom of assembly, speech, due process”. Green Party watch has covered Carl Romanelli’s struggle with the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s illegal campaign of harassment to deprive him of his right to run for office.

Last week Senator Robert Casey passed a resolution through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which recognizes and demands that Iranian citizens be afforded freedom of assembly, speech and due process. To be clear, the U.S. Greens are in complete agreement with Pennsylvania’s junior senator on this issue. In fact, we recognize that such individual democratic freedoms are an essential component of any person’s basic human rights. The difference between Greens and Mr. Casey is that Greens expect the rights of free speech and due process everywhere in the world, including here in Pennsylvania.

At first glance the above statement might seem over-the-top, but not so to those following the developments in the scandal known as Bonusgate. read more »

Granny D, who’s given name was Doris Haddock, died yesterday at the age of 100.

In an article at the BBC News website she is quoted saying

“This country has become one in which, in order to run for office, a poor man has to sell his soul, or he has to be a multi-millionaire. That’s not democracy.”

Granny D, who walked more than 3200 miles in 1999 and 2000 to raise awareness of the need for campaign finance reform, ran for the US Senate from her home state of New Hampshire in 2004 on the Democratic Party ticket, drawing 34% of the vote against Judd Gregg. At the time she was 94 years old. Gregg was later nominated by Barack Obama to serve in his cabinet. Gregg declined the offer.

Granny D, who spoke favorably of then Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader, published the book Walking Across America in my Ninetieth Year. The subtitle was “You’re Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell.”

Her personal website is GrannyD.com

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges recently wrote an article for Truthdig entitled “Ralph Nader was right about Barack Obama” advising progressives to join the Green Party. You can read the full article here.

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives… read more »

For several weeks Greens across the nation, and especially in Connecticut, have been encouraging Ralph Nader to enter the Senatorial race seeking the seat currently occupied by Christopher Dodd. A darling of Wall Street Bankers and other financial firms, Dodd received a sweetheart mortgage deal from Country Wide as the committee he heads up was deliberating on new regulation of the nation’s financial firms. Now the disgraced Dodd has admitted defeat and decided to take his chips off the table and retire a rich man.

The Democratic Party is now expected to offer up Dick Blumenthal, the state’s Attorney General. The CT Green Party issued a press release today explaining why they still want Nader to run. The full text of the press release is below the fold.

read more »

In a column published at counterpunch, Ralph Nader takes a look at the first year of the Obama administration.

Jim Hightower writes that “Obama is sinking us into ‘Absurdistan.’” He bewails: “Ihad hoped Obama might be a more forceful leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his newly announced Afghan policy shows he is not that leader.”

Wonder where good ol’ Jim got that impression—certainly not from anything Obama said or did not say in 2008.

To read the full essay, visit the link above.

H/T to Ballot Access News

Theresa Amato, who served as campaign manager for Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green and 2004 independent runs for president, has an opinion piece in the Harvard Law Record entitled “The Two Party Ballot Suppresses Third Party Change”. She notes that although Nader wrote a piece on discriminatory ballot access laws for the same publication in 1958, the situation has not improved in the 51 years since then. Amato is the author of the recent book “Grand Illusion: the Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny”. read more »