Green Party Watch

From the Sun-Gazette:

The Arlington Green Party has nominated a candidate to take on Democrat Chris Zimmerman in November’s County Board election.

The party is backing Kevin Chisholm, formerly chief energy manager for Arlington Public Schools and a resident of Arlington for 29 years.

During his years in Arlington, Chisholm has been active in groups ranging from the Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network (A-SPAN) and Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment to Habitat for Humanity and the Better Sports Club of Arlington. He also served on the Environment and Energy Conservation Commission.

The Green Party has fielded candidates for County Board each of the last five election cycles. Last year, its candidate, John Reeder, won 32 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Jay Fisette. (Republicans did not field a candidate in that race, and thus far have not fielded one for the 2010 race.)

Maryland’s Green Party has four candidates this year, one of whom has already been elected to office. Mike Cornell was elected to the Village of River Hill city council in April of this year. On the ballot Tuesday are Christine Nagle who is running for city council in Prince George’s, Dan Robinson who is running for town council in Tacoma Park, and George Gluck who is running for County Council in Montgomery County.

In Virginia three candidates will be offering on Tuesday. John Reeder is running for county board in Arlington, Josh Ruebner is up for House of Delegates in the 47th district, and Mark Antell is running for the House of Delegates in the 48th district.

The Florida Greens are offering Javier Del Sol for Mayor of Lake Worth.

John Reeder is running hard for election to the Arlington VA city council. Emily Canal covers his campaign for the Arlington Connection.

“We need to keep service for public safety, schools, recreational centers, and aid for the needy,” Reeder said. “We need to keep those rather than fund projects that are frivolous.”

The Green Party in Arlington, Virginia has two candidates up this year: John Reeder for Arlington County Board and Josh Ruebner for House of Delegates in the 47th district. In addition to campaigning, both candidates are part of a lawsuit to stop expansion of the I-66 highway in Arlington, as the Sun Gazette reports.

John Reeder ran for Arlington County Board in 2008 and earned 23% of the vote. As Reeder’s website puts it, “Despite being outspent nearly 10 to 1, his campaign resonated with Arlington voters tired of one-party rule, over development, and the ruling party’s neglect of Arlington environment and social safety net.”

Josh Ruebner is the Virginia Greens’ only state-level candidate this year. The Arlington Connection covered Ruebner’s positions at a candidate forum:

THE GREEN CANDIDATE is Josh Ruebner, the only Green Party candidate in Virginia this year at the state level. A former Democrat who feels that the two-party system addresses issues from a narrow bandwidth that lead to what he calls “piecemeal reform efforts,” Ruebner says that corporate money is too influential in Virginia politics. He said that if elected his top priority will be to ban corporations from being able to donate money to candidates in Virginia. read more »

This race is in Arlington Virginia. John Reeder’s website: http://reeder4arlington.org/

From the Sun Gazette:

The Green Party’s candidate for County Board out-raised the Democratic incumbent during the two months ending Aug. 31, but County Board Vice Chairman Jay Fisette maintained a 10-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage in his bid for a fourth term.

Green Party nominee John Reeder reported $3,038 in contributions during the most recent reporting period, compared to $2,068 for Democrat Fisette, according to campaign filings released Sept. 15 by the State Board of Elections.

Unfortunately for Reeder, he only started the reporting period with $623 on hand, compared to $31,517 for Fisette. Counting expenditures made during the period, Fisette on Sept. 1 began the final two-month stretch to the election with $24,738 on hand, compared to $2,406 for the Reeder campaign.

(There is no Republican candidate in the race.)
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Several individuals associated with the “Independent Greens of Virginia” have been banned from posting comments on Green Party Watch following accusations that they have been “posing” as political candidates in comments without those candidates knowledge.

The Independent Greens of Virginia are NOT affiliated with the Green Party of the United States. They claim affiliation with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and endorse Independent candidates in Virginia against their will.

A comment posted here on July 31, 2009, claimed to be Aaron Tweedie, an Independent running for Virginia’s House of Delegates. The “fake Aaron Tweedie” wrote that he was collecting petition signatures in 2000, supposedly in Texas for Ralph Nader, and touted Teresa Amato’s new book “Grand Illusion”. Another post the following day also claimed to be Aaron Tweedie, touting “high speed rail” in Virginia. Both posts were written with the email address novagreen@prodigy.net, from the IP address 173.66.53.204

Last night the Real Aaron Tweedie posted here:

This is Aaron N. Tweedie, the real candidate for 29th district of VA house of delegates. The above post is from an imposter. I was not in Texas gathering petition signatures in 2000. I was in VA building houses. I have never read “Grand Illusion” and am not familiar with the author Teresa Amato. I do not get my courage from the Green Party, but from knowing that I speak truth, and what I am doing is honorable, regardless of the outcome. I do not lie, and want all to know the above posts are falsehoods. I am not a Green Party member, and will remember this deception if I ever do pick a party.

After following up with Mr. Tweedie, we have determined that we are pretty certain who is falsely claiming to be him, as well as posing as up to a dozen more candidates for office in Virginia. Mr. Tweedie will be consulting his legal counsel and we here fully intend to support him in any action he takes against the Independent Greens of Virginia. Furthermore, we will be contacting the other candidates, all of them Independents in Virginia, and make them aware of the comments being posted here in their name.

This person, affiliated with the “Indy Greens of Virginia”, has posted comments under the names of:

Anthony Triplin, French Mackes, Robert Smith, Anna Marie Choi, Shirley Havey, Monique Berry, Watkins Abbit, Craig Ennis, Todd Jack, Sherman Witcher, Bill Grogan, John Parmele, Aaron Tweedie, and even Joe Shriner, who is an Ohio Politician seeking the Green Party nomination for President.

All of the above individuals are listed as candidates on the Independent Greens of Virginia website, but many are listed as “endorsed”, not actual members of the Independent Greens of Virginia. All of the comments from the above “candidates” came from one person, at one IP address, with the email address novagreen@prodigy.net.

Impersonating a political candidate for office is a serious offense, and we have blocked the offending IP addresses from posting here. We will be cooperating with any legal action any of these candidates choose to take in response to this frankly embarrassing revelation about the Independent Greens of Virginia.

From the Green Party:

The 2010 elections offer an unprecedented opportunity for the Green Party. In the 2010 election cycle we will have the chance to get the Green message out and to hold the corporate parties accountable. Now more than ever our country needs an alternative that will fight for a Single Payer system, to bring ALL of our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, to take serious action on global warming, to bail out Americans who are suffering from the worst recession in nearly three decades, and to create a banking system that works for all of us and not just Wall Street.

The Democratically-controlled Congress has failed us on all these counts. Next year the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate is up for election. In addition, 37 states will be electing Governors. Seats for other statewide officials will be up for election. These elections provide the Green Party with many opportunities to win and maintain ballot lines. The more ballot lines we win in 2010, the more opportunities citizens will have to vote for a sustainable and just future and the stronger we will be when we go into the 2012 elections.
read more »

The Green Party of Pennsylvania has issued a call for the head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection to resign. As reported at Independent Political Report, Secretary John Hanger is supporting environmentally damaging practices for the money and jobs it would bring to Pennsylvania, among other reasons.

Arkansas Business is reporting that Arkansas Green Richard Carroll’s bill to require public facilities to include all ballot qualified candidates in any debates has died in committee, with two Democrats voting “present” rather than take a stand.

Over in Illinois, the News-Gazette is reporting that the Urbana City Clerk put the Democratic candidates at the top of the ballot, followed by the Republicans, with the Green Party bringing in the last place. State law requires a lottery be held to choose ballot order, but the City Clerk did not follow the law. In another article on the same topic, the Republican candidate appears ready to go to court to have the law enforced. In reply the incumbent mayor is reported to have said

“The city clerk does not want to disenfranchise people by changing the election,” Prussing said. “These people should go to court. In order to change something, you have to show you’ve been injured … Let him (Kruse) convince a judge he’s been injured. Let him spend all the money.

This article explains that the Green nominee joined the law suit.

And, finally, this article explains that the city of Urbana made the decision to go ahead and hold the state mandated lottery to determine ballot placement. The lottery will be held tomorrow at 10AM.

The Yale Daily News is reporting that Green incumbent Ward 10 Alderman Allan Brison will face opposition in his campaign for re-election in New Haven from Justin Elicker. The election will be held in November.

The Sun-Gazette of Arlington, VA reported that

The Arlington Green Party is expected to field John Reeder as its County Board candidate this year. Reeder challenged Democrat Barbara Favola last November, winning about a quarter of the votes.

The Colorado Green Party is running Bob Kinsey for US Senate in a four way race. The Constitution Party is also putting a candidate up in the race along with the two corporate parties. To find out more about this race, visit this site.

In a decidedly more local race, John Anthony La Pietra, Green Party candidate for Calhoun County Clerk and Register of Deeds has announced that he will make webspace available for towns in the county which don’t have websites of their own. The same story makes mention of Green Party candidate Lynn Meadows. She’s running for Michigan’s 7th congressional district.

Over in Virginia, the Green Party has announced support for a county bond issue. Interestingly enough, both the Democrats and Republicans are opposed to the bond issue.

Finally, both Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader have signed a pledge to, in essence, raise holy hell in the event this fall’s election is stolen as the last two were. To get those details from Yahoo!, just click here

That’s all folks! For now at any rate.

From the GPUS Ballot Access Committee:

Take action now! Let’s win one more state for the Green Party this month! The Green Party of Virginia has completed over half of its signature requirement. Donate at gp.org/commitees/ballot/ to put Virginia over the top! We need 18 more donations of $100 during June to completely fund the GPVA’s drive and move us onto the next state in our quest for maximum ballot access in 2008.

Is your state safely on the ballot for 2008? We still need your help fund raising, phone calling, and traveling to neighbor states to collect signatures. Volunteer at gp.org/commitees/ballot/

Do you have a MySpace or Facebook account? Copy and paste this message as a comment, bulletin, or message and SPREAD THE WORD!

The Virginia Drive adds to the growing list of states that the Green Party Presidential candidate may appear on in November. I’m not sure if this is up to date, but going by that information that indicates the Greens already have ballot access in 23 states, and Virginia and New Jersey join 8 other states with active campaigns, which would bring the number up to 33. There could be more to come?