Below are but a few of the Greens running for office this year. Information about other candidates can be found here, or on the web sites for each Green Party, a list of which can be found here.

Javier Del Sol
Mayoral Candidate, Lake Worth, Florida
Campaign Site

Alfred Molison
City Council Candidate, Houston, Texas
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Josh Ruebner
Candidate for 47th District, House of Delegates, Virginia
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Anitra Brockman
Candidate for City Council, Cincinnati, Ohio
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Evergreen Chou
Candidate for City Council, New York City
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Lynne Serpe
Candidate for City Council, New York City
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Annie Young
Candidate for re-election to Minneapolis Park & Recreation board
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Chuck Turner
Candidate for re-election, District 7, Boston City Council
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Jan de Smet
Candidate for Mayor, Windham, Connecticut
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Hector Lopez
Candidate of Constable, New Canaan, Connecticut
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Tanya Ishikawa
Candidate for re-election, City Council, Federal Heights, Colorado
Additional Information

Dana Silvernale
Candidate for North Humboldt Union High School District
Campaign Site
Additional Information

Ingredients for the success of Green incumbents: Cam Gordon and Alan Brison
by David McCorquodale, Green Party of Delaware and Elections Editor

As Green Parties have grown and begun to mature as political organizations, some Green candidates are finding themselves in the happy situation of running as incumbents, having already been elected to office and now having to run as standing officeholders. Helpful for future Green candidates would be examining the similarities of incumbent candidates Cam Gordon and Allan Brison, in this off-year election.

Cam Gordon, a Montessori educator, is the City Councilman of Ward 2 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and was elected to a four-year term in 2005. Alan Brison, elected to a two-year term in 2007, is the Alderman of Ward 10 in New Haven, Connecticut

A History of Activism in the Community and Previous Candidacies

Cam Gordon, a founding member of the Green Party of Minnesota in the early 1990s, has a long history of involvement in his community. He has worked in the community as a teacher, community organizer and performer as well as a reporter for the neighborhood newspaper. As a resident of the area for over 30 years, he has served on the boards of neighborhood associations and revitalization programs as well as Common Cause Minnesota and FairVote Minnesota. Gordon served on the Mayoral Ethics Task Force in 2001-2002.

In 2001 Gordon was first-time candidate for city council. Endorsed by The Green Party; Progressive Minnesota; United Electrical Workers; Sierra Club; Clean Water Action Alliance; U. of Minn. College Green Party; Lavender Greens; and the Minnesota Daily, he finished second with 48 percent of the vote.

Allan Brison is a retired computer programmer and stay-at-home dad, who has lived in his ward since 1997. Since 2001 he has worked with unions, in particular the Yale Union, representing workers at Yale University. Brison also ran for Alderman in 2001, coming in second with 38 percent of the vote. Persistence in being visible to the public by previous runs for office and by ongoing community involvement appears to be important to electoral success.

Brison reports when he is out door-knocking, a resident will say, “I know who you are. You’re doing good things and I’m going to vote for you.”

First Term Election and Accomplishments

After initial losses in 2001 Gordon and Brison won narrow majority victories on their second attempts. Name recognition from their earlier candidacies and their willingness to get out and knock on doors helped. According to Robin Garwood, Gordon’s campaign manager, voters have found Gordon to have a mild temperament and to be open and transparent about where he stands on issues.

Once in office, Brison and Gordon have forged strong records of accomplishments, too numerous to completely cover. To highlight, Brison co-sponsored the successful legislation for more pedestrian/bike friendly streets and for green cleaning agents to be used by city workers, as well as resolving many neighborhood traffic and street problems. Still in committee are proposals on “double-dipping” of retirees and layoff oversight. He has advocated for more transparency in the budget process. Outside of his official capacity, Brison belongs to Fight the Hike, which opposes utility rate hikes and advocates for clean energy generation.

Gordon has worked on numerous issues, such as community-center policing; protection of free speech during the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in 2008 and other events; passing Ranked Choice Voting; planned transportation including light rail and more bike paths; and neighborhood livability emphasizing a healthier environment for children. On environmental issues he has championed the city’s first environmental planning policy, green building policies, allowing wind turbines where appropriate, and funding for solar, rain barrel and tree projects.

ìNow that people have seen his performance, they have been pleasantly surprised that Cam is engaging and more effective than they thought.î

Outlook for Upcoming Elections

Both candidates are optimistic about their chances for re-election. Having a record of accomplishments certainly helps. But both the voters and the other members of their councils have had their eyes opened.

Brison reports when he is out door knocking, a resident will say, “I know who you are. You’re doing good things and I’m going to vote for you.” Brison’s Democratic opponent, Justin Elicker is a graduate student at Yale. However, Brison feels his support by Yale graduate students, who are trying to unionize and know of his record of supporting unions, trumps any support his opponent would get from them in the district, which is heavily populated with graduate students.

On the other hand, because New Haven is almost totally controlled by the Democratic Party, including the mayor, almost all of the other ward elections will be decided on primary day. Since his district is one of the few contested in the general election, Brison says his opponent “will be getting a lot of help from the administration.”

Cam Gordon appears to have a somewhat easier path to re-election. His opponent, Allen Aigbogun, bills himself, as ìsort of a libertarian,î who is endorsed by the Republican Party. That will be a tough sell in this very progressive area. Also numerous union groups, the Sierra Club, and the grassroots organization Take Action Minnesota endorse Gordon. Going into his fourth year since he was first elected by a slight majority, “now that people have seen his performance, they have been pleasantly surprised that Cam is engaging and more effective than they thought,” said campaign manager Robin Garwood.

Second Term Focus

Should either Gordon or Brison be re-elected, they plan to build upon their first term accomplishments. Each candidate has a plethora of ideas in the pipeline.

Some ideas Gordon wants to implement include the production of more homegrown food, making the city friendlier to walkers, changing maximum occupancy laws that tend to discriminate against students, and creating rideshare opportunities over the Internet and cell phone applications without having these vehicles labeled taxis.

Brison would like to emphasize the issue of why Yale University is exempt from property taxes. Also he is pushing for an independent city school board. Currently the school board budget is controlled at the discretion of the mayor, who also appoints the board members. Within his ward Brison calls for community policing and a neighborhood youth center.

Cam Gordon and Allan Brison demonstrate getting elected requires persistence. A history of activism and concern for the issues citizens care about helps. Their ideas demonstrate how even one Green can expand the thinking of elected bodies and entire communities.

Claims state rules hurt third parties and voters alike

On August 27 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Green Party of Arkansas (GPA) and Arkansas voters challenging the decertification of the Green Party by the Arkansas Secretary of State Charlie Daniels (D). The suit charges the state is denying First and Fourteenth Amendment Rights to not only minor parties to compete in the political arena, but the rights of voters to support candidates who represent their views.

The GPA has been actively fighting for ballot access in Arkansas since 2001. Two previous times it has won lawsuits concerning how one attains ballot access. But until now, no third/minor party has sued over the vote-test rule, which is how the state decides a party stays on the ballot.

Currently the rule is that no matter what a party achieves in an election or how many of its candidates are elected or how many votes it attains in statewide races, unless that party’s candidate for president or governor reaches three percent of the vote total, it will lose it’s ballot status. This forces the party into an expensive resource-depleting signature drive just to get on the ballot again.

The Democratic Party currently controls Arkansas politics. The Republican Party frequently does not field candidates for elective offices and the state leads the nation in the percentage of unopposed races at 70 percent. State Coordinator Mark Swaney said, “Arkansas is the classic case of there being NO CHOICE at the polls, and the Democratic Party clearly wants it that way.”

Earlier this year sympathetic lawmakers introduced state legislation, crafted by GPA, which would have amended the vote test law, but the Democratic leadership caught wind of the move and quashed it. Swaney said Democratic leaders admitted “they don’t want competition in state races. When there is a choice of candidates, it is usually between a conservative Republican and a conservative Dixiecrat – and they fight each other over who is the more conservative.”

ìThe Green Party clearly represents the interests of a large number of Arkansans,î said Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas in the press release announcing the lawsuit. ìBut the Democratic and Republican parties have set up an unconstitutional system to deny ballot access to legitimate third parties that have substantial voter support in order to shield themselves from competition. Thatís just not the way democracy is supposed to work.î

Holly Dickson of the ACLU notes that the trend since 1968 has been to relax ballot restrictions. However, in Arkansas, the only time a minor party retained its ballot access after an election was when billionaire Reform Party presidential candidate H. Ross Perot got 7.9 percent of the vote in 1996. When the Reform Party’s gubernatorial candidate only received 1.59 percent of the vote in 1998, the Reform Party was decertified.

In the 2008 election, the Green Party put candidates up for offices, which would have only had a Democratic candidate otherwise. Most noteworthy was the candidacy of Rebekah Kennedy, who ran against incumbent Mark Pryor for the U.S. Senate. Kennedy received 206,504 votes for 20.54 percent of the vote. The lawsuit notes Kennedy and three other Greens running for U.S. House seats each received over 32,000 votes, which is equivalent to about six percent of the Arkansas presidential vote in 2008.

Swaney notes GPA has little control over the presidential candidate or whether that candidate campaigns in Arkansas. But in light of the support other GPA candidates for national office received, “the three percent requirement [for gubernatorial or presidential candidates] is a very poor test of whether a political party has a ‘modicum of support’, which is the only recognized legitimate purpose for the ballot law.”

Even more ironically, the decertification of the Green Party of Arkansas would be the first time since 1906 that a state has done that to a party AFTER one of its candidates successfully attained legislative office in the election. In 2008 Richard Carroll won the 39th district state house seat as a Green when he ran unopposed. He subsequently re-registered as a Democrat.

Clearly the Green Party of Arkansas has offered the voters of Arkansas more choice in the states elections. Hopefully the courts will see the wisdom that preserving choice in elections is key to having a democratic form of government.

ìThe Democratic and Republican parties have set up an unconstitutional system to deny ballot access to legitimate third parties Ö Thatís just not the way democracy is supposed to work.î Rita Sklar

Hoping to enable political viability with multi-pronged approach
by Rolf Maurer, Connecticut Green Party and Stamford Mayoral and Constable candidate

While the Green Party is quite prominent in New Haven and elsewhere in Connecticut, Stamford, located in Fairfield County, because of its status as a corporate center and its intimate ties to Manhattan’s financial community, produces voters who tend to go with what is tried (if not true) when considering their options.

This learned helplessness succeeds only in the perpetuation of well-financed favoritism at public expense as the political norm, with election outcomes limited to Democrats or Republicans as little more than fait accomplis.

By permeating the local political scene with several Greens running at once for different government offices – Constables (Mary Farrell, Rolf Maurer, David Bedell), Board of Representatives (Ted Hanser, Mary Farrell, David Bedell), Board of Education (Megan Cassano), as well as Mayor (Rolf Maurer), it is hoped such a multi-pronged strategy will enhance the political viability of Greens as a constructive alternative to the status quo.

Chapter Secretary David Bedell, a Justice of the Peace, who is running for two positions this year and has run for other positions in the past, commented, “We want to continue increasing the number of offices to which we have ballot access, while providing voters a Green option in as many races as possible. Even with limited resources, we can do this through a combination of placeholder candidates and active campaigns.”

The platform collectively emphasizes support for enhanced mass transit (including light rail and more buses on more routes) and a bicycle-friendly infrastructure, through adoption of Safe Routes to School’s bikeways and traffic-calming practices in the vicinity of public schools, as well as training in the responsible use of bicycles as vehicles, just as with autos. In particular, students of driving age could be encouraged to participate by having high school student parking repurposed into parks, or even pilot community gardens.

The three candidates for constable, a position whose duties mainly consist of serving legal papers, have pledged to perform their tasks year round using bicycles or mass transit. All three have already eliminated the use of automobiles in their personal lives.

Concerning community gardens, a major component of promoting environmental/agricultural sustainability is the conversion of unused downtown spaces, such as the “hole” adjacent to the Stamford Town Center (STC) mall, as proof-of-concept community gardens to encourage people to plant more throughout town.

A private/public partnership with the STC to lease part of the mall for exclusive use by local businesses would boost the local economy by keeping more dollars circulating in Stamford. While a private/public partnership already exists in the form of the Downtown Special Services District, expanding its commerce-building activities beyond the Bedford Street environs would benefit the whole of Stamford, by nurturing the evolution of several adjoining retail and cultural hubs. Like local agriculture, the incremental adoption of local currency, in the form of notes, or time bartering, already in place in Willimantic and New Haven, would strengthen social bonds among Stamfordites, while further softening the blow in the event of catastrophic economic collapse.

In addition to emphasizing community gardens and a pedestrian and bicycle friendly city, Thaddeus Hauser, a candidate for the city board of representatives, has a platform which notes the need to clean up toxic landfills in residential areas and the importance of creating jobs by supporting local businesses rather than giving tax breaks to large outside corporations, which will frequently relocate for a better tax break.

Megan Cassano, candidate for the Board of Education, is a licensed clinical social worker and also teaches at area colleges. Having a passion for education, she is emphasizing every child is given opportunities to achieve and that those with behavior problems should not be simply pigeonholed into categories such as hyperactive. She believes a ìwhole-isticî approach needs to be taken, examining all aspects of a child’s life to determine why there are behavior problems and addressing those problems.

Elsewhere in Fairfield County, Greens are running for other Constable positions. In New Canaan Hector Lopez, a two-term incumbent, is joined on the ballot by his daughter, Estela Lopez, and Cole Stangler, while in Redding is Leif Smith, who is also a Justice of the Peace.

Greens in Fairfield County, and most especially Stamford, are demonstrating several methods to start building the party as a political entity by running candidates for offices in which there is not a lot of prestige, but a lot of work, such as constable or school board, and by running both active and placeholder candidates, giving Green voting options and making the party more visible.

Rolf Mauer works in trade and directory publishing and is running simultaneously for mayor and constable.

“We want to continue increasing the number of offices to which we have ballot access, while providing voters a Green option in as many races as possible.î

Green Party of Connecticut wins lawsuit against Clean Elections Law
by Mike DeRosa, co-chair of the Green Party of Connecticut

Greens applaud Federal Judge Underhillís decision because it supports the political opportunity of minor parties to enter the political stadium and supports the idea of a level playing field.

In a thought out and farsighted decision, Second District Federal Court Justice Underhill, recently overturned Connecticutís campaign finance law and declared it unconstitutional because it violated the First and Fourteenth (equal protection) amendment rights of minor parties like the Green Party of Connecticut (GPC). This decision calls into question the assumption of Connecticutís campaign finance law that all political parties in Connecticut are equal but some political parties are more equal than others.

Instead of fixing the law in the legislature this year by addressing the judgeís concerns, some of the very people who have a conflict of interest in defending the old Citizensí Election Program (CEP), including Connecticutís Attorney General Blumenthal and Governor M. Jodi Rell, have decided to appeal the decision.

The Judgeís decision (http://www.acluct.org/downloads/GreenPartyDecisionAug27.pdf) and the inconvenient facts exposed in the decision show the CEPís solution is simultaneously the problem. Judge Underhill confirms and validates in his decision that the CEP diminishes minor party ìpolitical opportunityî by enhancing major partyís candidatesí relative strength. It does this by providing candidates with ìwindfall levelsî of funding that are an ìimpermissible subsidy for major party candidates, rather than a permissible substitute for those traditional sources of funding,î Underhill said. He also recognized the law is cleverly crafted to add ìadditional qualifying criteria for minor party candidates that are so difficult to achieve that the vast majority of minor party candidates will never become eligible to receive public funding at even reduced levels.î

Tim McKee, spokesperson for the CGP said, ìThis is an important victory because this law has been held out as a model for other states to follow and to even possibly use in Congressional races. But the restrictiveness, which effectively shut out third parties and independent candidates, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.î

How difficult are the ìadditional qualifying criteriaî for minor parties under CEP, which includes huge petitioning requirements?† For a full grant under the CEP, minor parties needed to collect the validated signatures of 20 percent of the people who voted in the last election for each office sought. For example, in the Connecticut 2006 gubernatorial election over a million votes were cast. In 2010 the GPC, under the CEP would have to collect 224,683 valid signatures to qualify for a full grant. In addition as many signatures are discounted, independent parties have to collect twice as many as is required. So the real number of signatures that must be collected in order to gain entrance into the CEP for the office of governor is over 400,000. How many signatures do the Democratic or Republican candidates for governor have to collect under CEP? The answer is none.

Steve Fournier, CGP’s other co-chairman, added “We will push for the General Assembly to treat all political parties equally by scrapping the excessive petitioning and matching funds requirements. If a candidate qualifies for the ballot, that candidate should receive full funding. The General Assembly can quickly and easily amend this law to make it constitutional.”

Judge Underhill also pointed out the unique difficulties facing minor party candidates seeking to connect with members of the electorate without name recognition or major party identification to help them. He also said Connecticut does not require private property owners or merchants, such as grocery stores, to give access to their property to signature gatherers.

Former CT Governor Weicker , who was successfully elected as Governor on a third party line in 1990 (A Connecticut Party) and is a† former Republican U.S. Senator with significant name recognition and political base, indicated in a deposition in the lawsuit that it is unlikely he would have qualified as a minor party candidate under the recently reversed CEP. Weicker further testified that the organization expenditures and matching fund trigger in the CEP would put minor party candidates who lack ìunlimited resourcesî at a ìpermanent disadvantage.î In Weickerís opinion, participating major party candidates are ìvirtually assured of maintaining a spending advantageî over any self-financed minor party candidates. Weicker believes election outcomes are affected, as the matching funds ensure an independent candidate will never be able to outspend his participating opponent.

The CEP system did allow minor parties to get a reduced monetary grant of a third or two thirds of the maximum grant if they collected signatures from 10 to 15 percent (respectively) of the people who voted in the last election. The CEP eliminates the petitioning requirement for minor parties during the next election cycle if the candidate for governor or other state office got between 10 and 20 percent of the votes in the election.

Like the proverbial chicken or egg dilemma, minor parties cannot get access to the grants because of the draconian petitioning and other discriminatory entrance requirements of the CEP and without upfront and timely access to the CEP they subsequently canít effectively and fairly compete during and after the election.

In addition, Democrats and Republicans were allowed generous grants for primaries but minor parties were banned from getting such money. All candidates for governor had to additionally raise $250,000 in order to enter the CEP system and qualify for funding. This additional requirement is extraordinarily high when compared to similar campaign finance laws found in Maine and Arizona.

Underhill in his decision also pointed out if a Republican or Democrat candidate polled less than 20 percent of the total vote in an election, which happened on numerous occasions during the 2008 election, the candidate could still access CEP funding without petitioning. But a minor party candidate, who got less that 20 percent of the vote, was still required to qualify for a CEP subsidy through petitioning. Underhill reasoned that since neither candidate reached the magic threshold of 20 percent, then the Democratic or Republican candidate can’t be exempt from petitioning while the minor party candidate was not.

Under the Connecticut CEP all traditional Political Action Committees (PACs) are banned but paradoxically the ìOrganizational Expenditureî provision of the CEP law allow 366 political party town committee PACs and eight ìlegislativeî party PACs the ability to spend additional money for just about every activity related to a candidateís election just not within a candidateís campaign fund. This ìOrganizational Expenditureî scheme essentially destroys the spending caps on campaigns thereby eliminating one of the keystones of good campaign finance reform. The mostly major party town and legislative committees are granted a spending maximum of $3,500 on state house races, $10,000 on state senate races, and ìunlimitedî spending on state wide elections under CEP. This is another windfall that undermines real campaign finance reform under this law. It is also one of the ways that a more sophisticated and pernicious form of ìCorrupticutî can be given new life.

The Green Party of Connecticut is confident the Second Federal Appellate court will uphold Judge Underhillís decision. Greens are working to get the state of Connecticut to stop defending a law that is indefensible and change the draconian petitioning and other unconstitutional requirements on minor parties found in this law.

Greens applaud Federal Judge Underhillís decision because it supports the political opportunity of independent parties to enter the political stadium and the idea of a level playing field. His decision also moves closer to the day when everyone in the political system will have a fair chance to fully share in the funding that permits the electorate exposure to a variety of ideas and proposals that will assist them in making good choices.

Mike DeRosa is a litigant in the lawsuit Green Party of CT et al vs. Garfield et al. He is also a CT radio journalist and co-chair of the Green Party of CT. He wishes to thank the ACLU of CT for its assistance and support in litigating this lawsuit. You can reach him at smderosa@cox.net