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NADER/LADUKE 1996 Presidential Campaign Report

October 26, 2008 in 1997 Spring Volume 1 Number 1, Historic

Before 1996, the Greens had never run for the presidency. If they were to enter the race, most Greens felt it should not be to wage a traditional candidate-centered, personality-driven campaign. Rather, it should be to build the Green movement and advance a bottom-up politics. As it turned out, the candidacy of Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke did just that.

In November, 1995 Nader officially announced that heíd enter the Green Party of Californiaís 1996 presidential primary the following March. This set in motion a grassroots process where state by state, Greens debated the presidential option and decided to go forward, eventually putting Nader on the ballot in 21 states and the District of Columbia, and made him a write-in candidate in another 23 states. The campaign accelerated the growth of the Green Party, and complimented the Greensí local strategy – which, by nature, is slow-building. In many states, the Greens grew roots in many states where it had not existed (or had been dormant), like Arkansas, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Tennessee, and Washington. Greens also grew stronger in many of the partyís core states, like Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

This growth has been both quantitative and qualitative. Not only did the Greens expand their numbers, but also talented new activists joined from single-and-multi-issue non-profit groups. Many have been ëgreení in outlook, but hadnít focused on electoral politics. Others had, but mostly through lobbying Democrats and/or Republicans. Nader/LaDuke drew many of them to redirect their energy into independent, third-party politics, the Green Party in particular.

Nader/LaDuke also helped many voters to see the ëlesser of two evilsí as the ëevil of two lessersí. In the past, such a debate was mostly theoretical. But in ë96, the similarities between Clinton and Dole, and the clear superiority of Nader/LaDuke on issues to either, set millions on the path to voting Green. Some did it this time. Others likely will do so in the future, having considered it now the first time in real terms.

Nader attacked corporate America, challenged its dominance over politics and government, and the lack of democracy that results. With the top 1% controlling over 90% of the countryís wealth, and with Clinton and the Congress scapegoating the poor with welfare ëdeformí, Nader called attention to the nationís $200 billion expenditure on corporate welfare. LaDuke suggested a Seventh Generation Amendment to the constitution, that not only private property, but also common environmental resources could be defended.

The Greens offered the most progressive alternative among the seven visible national candidacies: Green, Democrat, Republican, Reform, Libertarian, Natural Law, and US Taxpayer. They also offered the best grassroots model for forming a new political party. This was critical with so many people looking for new options. If new parties merely replicated current structures, little changes.

In terms of the election results, Nader/LaDuke finished fourth, with 685,000 votes. This represented 1.6% in the 21 states where they were on the ballot. Oregon boasted a high of 4.1%. Averaged over all 50 states, the 1.6% decreased to 0.7%. But this was still ahead of the fourth-place Libertarians, whoíve been in existence 25 years and outspent the Greens in ë96 by $3 million to $200,000.

The Greens spent only 30 cents/vote, a significant achievement for a party that stressed building a civic culture through grassroots activism as one of the goals of the campaign. In contrast, Clinton spent $1.36, Dole $1.63, Perot $3.67, the Libertarians $6.37, US Taxpayer $11.17 and Natural Law $18.18.

It is instructive to look at the campaign in districts where Green activism is strongest. In Santa Fe County, where the Greens have two officeholders, Nader/LaDuke received 7.1%. In Boulder, CO, they received more than 20% in several precincts. In Madison, WI Nader received 20% and 18% (and beat Dole) in two different districts and received 10% in each of three more. In Park Slope, Brooklyn (where Craig Seemanís state assembly campaign was strong), Nader received 11.6% and Dole 11.1%, with 15,384 votes cast. Three precincts in Iowa City, IA that were leafleted by the Iowa City Draft Nader Committee received more than 10%. Russell Lovetinsky will run this fall in that same district for City Council.

In California, Greens have been organizing as locals since 1985, and as a state party since 1990. With the vote split over what was essentially an eight-way race in CA, and with all the third parties relatively well-organized, Nader/LaDuke finished with 2.37% statewide. They did best in counties where Greens are strongest – Mendocino County 11.04% (best in the nation), Humboldt 8.7%, Santa Cruz 7.8%, Marin 6.4%, as well as in some of the larger cities, such as San Francisco 7.6% and Oakland 5.8%. In Arcata, where more Nader yard signs were seen than Clinton and Dole combined, Nader beat Dole 22.0% to 16.5%. During a massive voter registration drive there, the progressive HOPE coalition registered more than 1,000 people in front of the Arcata Co-op, and estimated that half were Green and the rest from other parties.

In Berkeley, Nader beat Dole 13.6% to 8.4%, with a high of 16.9% in Dona Springís City Council district. Within that district, Naderís top precinct was 22.5%. In Oaklandís City Council District 1, where Larry Shoup received 18.7% earlier in April, Nader beat Dole 10.7% to 9.9%. The top precinct was 20.7%. In San Francisco, the result was 13.8% in Haight-Ashbury and 15% in the Mission District. Tiny Orr Spring in Mendocino County gave Nader a 17-12 win over Clinton, and in Albion Nader lost by only 227-188. In Marin, Santa Cruz and San Francisco counties, Nader/LaDuke also beat 3rd place finishers Perot/Choate.

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The Road to Chicago

March 22, 2008 in 2008 Winter

Tom Yager, Presidential Campaign Support Committee

In August 2007, the Green National Committee voted to hold the 2008 Presidential Nominating Convention in Chicago from July 10-13. A great deal of work is necessary for the success of the Green Party’s nomination process. The Presidential Campaign Support Committee (PCSC), the Committee on Bylaws, Rules, Policies and Procedures (BRPP), the Annual National Meeting Committee and Convention Credentials Committee all have key roles in making it happen.

The BRPP has written convention rules, including the credentialing of state delegations. The drafting of rules to govern the nominating process itself was still in process in January 2008.

The PCSC has been charged with numerous tasks, including responding to inquiries from declared and potential candidates; helping them to start fundraising, finding volunteers, and other campaign activities; assisting state parties with their presidential nominating primaries and caucuses; and coordinating presidential candidate forums.

Becoming a nationally recognized Green Party presidential candidate

Officially recognized candidates for the Green Party nomination were required to meet the following criteria, as approved by the National Committee in September 2007 (Proposal 311):

  • To submit an official Candidate Questionnaire to the PCSC.
  • To not be a member of another political party.
  • To pledge to use all offered Green Party ballot lines.
  • To have a website for his/her candidacy.
  • To receive verifiable support from 100 Green Party members, including members from at least 5 state parties, no later than December 1, 2007.
  • To establish a campaign committee and file with the Federal Elections Commission, no later than December 31, 2007.
  • To raise at least $5,000, not including self-financing, for the purpose of his/her campaign, no later than February 1, 2008.

According to this same policy, individuals could also receive recognition as draft candidates if they met the following criteria:

  • To not be a member of another political party.
  • To receive verifiable support from 100 Green Party members, including members from at least 5 state parties, no later than December 1, 2007.
  • To meet the remaining criteria for officially recognized candidates by December 31, 2007.

The PCSC worked with declared and potential candidates to help them meet these criteria. It also encouraged applicants who were not ready to run in 2008 to seek other elected offices or to consider running in 2012.

As of mid-January 2008, there were five officially recognized candidates according to these criteria: Jared Ball, Jesse Johnson, Cynthia McKinney, Kent Mesplay, and Kat Swift. Although Ralph Nader did not meet the December 31st deadline by mid-January, the PCSC nevertheless considered him as a recognized draft candidate.

Presidential candidate forums

In July 2007, the PCSC put together a forum for all the then declared candidates to speak at the Green Party’s annual national meeting in Reading, Pennsylvania. Since then, the PCSC has assisted state parties with setting up and coordinating their own presidential candidate forums.

The first was held by the Green Party of Minnesota in Minneapolis on January 5th with Johnson, Swift and representatives for McKinney and Nader. Then on January 13th at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, Ball, Johnson, McKinney, Mesplay, Nader and Swift were all in attendance. Under the header “Green Campaign 2008: A Presidential Debate that Matters”, the debate attracted more than 800 people and was rebroadcast and archived on Pacifica Radio Station KPFA in Berkeley and also uploaded on YouTube.

At this debate Ball dropped out of the race and endorsed McKinney in his place. An assistant professor of communications studies at Morgan State University (Baltimore, MD), Navy veteran who served during Desert Shield/Desert Storm and D.C. Green Party member, Ball is an independent journalist, radio host with Pacifica Radio WPFW (Washington, DC,) Editor-at-Large of the Words, Beats and Life Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture and founder of FreeMix Radio: The Original Mixtape Radio Show.

In February candidate forums are being held in the District of Columbia for the D.C. Greens and in the state capital of Harrisburg for the Green Party of Pennsylvania. Further forums are scheduled for Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York. To view videos from these debates, see www.gp.org/ 2008-elections/presidential-videos.php

State party primaries, conventions and caucuses

The PCSC is helping state Green Parties develop their democratic processes for electing delegates to the convention. Because of differences in state laws and state party ballot status, the processes vary widely from state to state

Greens in Arkansas, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts had state-funded primaries on February 5; and in Washington D.C., on February 12. The Mountain Party of West Virginia will also hold its primary on February 12. The Arkansas primary is “open”; any registered voter may participate because Arkansas does not have registration by party. The Massachusetts primary is “closed”; only registered Greens may participate.

Ballot access laws for primaries are highly variable between different states. In Arkansas, California, and Massachusetts, the state simply accepts the candidates approved by the party leadership. In the District of Columbia, a candidate must collect signatures from one percent of the party’s registrants. In Illinois, candidates in the primaries were required to collect a minimum of 3,000 signatures. The Illinois Greens, by petitioning, succeeded in placing Ball, McKinney, Mesplay and Howie Hawkins (a stand-in for Nader), on the ballot last fall.

Although the Green Party currently has ballot access in 21 states, not every party with ballot access is eligible for a state-funded primary. In some states, such as Arkansas, California, D.C., Illinois, and West Virginia, having ballot status automatically allows a state to hold a primary. However, other states make distinctions between ballot-qualified minor and major parties. In Texas, for example, it is possible for a party to get ballot status by winning five percent of the vote in a statewide race, but to not be eligible to hold a primary if the party did not get three percent of the vote in the previous Governors race.

Parties that are ineligible for state-funded primaries are holding caucuses, conventions, or mail ballots of their membership. On March 4th, the Green Party of Minnesota plans to hold its caucus. The Green Party of Virginia will conduct a mail ballot in March. The Green Party of Pennsylvania will hold county caucuses from April 24 through May 10. The Green Party of Texas will hold its nominating convention in June.

A complete nomination calendar, including party primaries, conventions, caucuses and state delegate selection timing, is at www.gp.org/2008-elections/ president/nomination_calendar.

Delegate apportionment: state and national

The PCSC is encouraging as many state parties as possible to have their delegates chosen and instructed by April 1. Under the convention rules passed by the Green National Committee in November 2007, “States are urged to provide in their Delegate Plans for a delegate selection process that offers representation proportional to the support each candidate enjoys within the state Green Party represented by the delegation† and that allows the delegation to reflect the diversity within the state Green Party and the state’s population”.

In January 2008, the National Committee approved a delegate apportionment formula (Proposal 336) establishing that GPUS affiliated caucuses and state parties shall receive four times the number of delegates allocated for the Green National Committee. Unaffiliated states, territories and caucuses, credentialed according to convention rules or affiliated after apportionment, shall be allocated four votes and four delegates.

Each delegate seat counts for one vote. Proxy votes are allowed, as provided for in the convention rules, as long as the total number of votes cast for does not exceed twice the number of voting delegates in attendance for that delegation.

A complete breakdown of the number of delegates per state is available at www.gp.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail? pid=336

Recognized declared presidential candidates as of late January 2008

Jesse Johnson is the co-chair of the Mountain Party of West Virginia, which became affiliated with the Green Party of the United States at the national meeting in Reading last July. He produced, directed, and acted in many plays and films, and founded Talkback, Children Respond to Violence in the Media, which uses the arts to teach inner-city elementary school students how to combat violence. He was the Mountain Party’s candidate for Governor in 2004 and U.S. Senate in 2006.
http://www.jesse08.org/

Cynthia McKinney was elected to the Georgia state legislature as a Democrat in 1988 and to Congress in 1992. She was the first African-American woman from Georgia in the U.S. House of Repre senta tives, serving in Congress from 1993 to 2003 and from 2005 to 2007. She served as an advocate for voting Hurricane Katrina victims disenfranchised in the 2000 and 2004 election. Last year, she left the Democratic Party and registered as a Green.
http://www.runcynthiarun.org/

Kent Mesplay has been a registered Green since 1995 in California, serving as one of his state’s delegates to the Green National Committee since 2004. He has worked as a substitute teacher and an Air Quality Inspector at the Air Pollution Control District, San Diego. He also served as the president of Turtle Island Institute. In 2004, he ran in the Green presidential primaries and caucuses, and in 2006, in the Green primary for U.S. Senate.
http://www.mesplay.org/

Kat Swift is a member of the Green Party of Texas, having served on her party’s State Executive Committee and as co-spokesperson for the national partys Womens Caucus. She has served as a facilitator for the Green Party and for several other organizations, groups, and coalitions, including Clean Money San Antonio and SA Democracy Now. She currently works as an accountant. In 2007, she became the first Green to run for the City Council of San Antonio.
http://www.bexargreens.org/katforprez/

Recognized draft presidential candidates as of January 2008

Ralph Nader has been a long-time advocate for consumer rights, environmental causes, product safety, and greater government and corporate accountability. He helped to pass numerous reforms, including the National Automobile and Highway Traffic Safety Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Consu mer Product Safety Act. He founded or sponsored many organizations, including Public Citizen and Multinational Monitor. In 1996 and 2000, he was nominated as the Green Partys Presidential candidate.
http://www.votenader.org/

*****

Note: Subsequent to the publication of this issue, Ralph Nader announced his candidacy for President as an Independent

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Democrats Tighten Noose On Nader In Punitive Attack On "Third Party" Candidates

December 1, 2007 in 2007 Summer

Democrats Tighten Noose On Nader In Punitive Attack On “Third Party” Candidates
by Michael Richardson

“Major party interests naturally lean more toward rigging and sabotaging than insuring fair and competitive fights.”
- Mark Brown

The Democrats are tightening the financial noose around Ralph Nader for his failed bid to obtain ballot access in Pennsylvania during his 2004 Presidential campaign. Nader had been deprived a place on the ballot after extensive litigation brought by the Democrats, and was later assessed a hefty $89,821 penalty by the Pennsylvania courts to be paid to the Democrats for court-related costs. Nader appealed the assessment and was recently denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Emboldened, lawyers for the Democrats have now entered the costly order as a final judgment in an ongoing effort to enforce the penalty.

A Nader campaign attorney says about the post-election vendetta, “They have overreached and gone way too far. It is unprecedented.” The obvious chilling effect on independents and minor party candidates is not lost on Carl Romanelli, the 2006 Green Party would-be candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. Romanelli, too, has been hit by the Democrats with a huge bill for their costs in removing him from the ballot and has been ordered to pay $89,668.

If successful in Pennsylvania, Democrat legislators around the country will likely introduce similar punitive election laws in other states, particularly “swing” states, in a preventive effort to keep independents and minor party candidates off the ballot.

Capital University law professor Mark Brown has studied the 2004 legal wrangling that took Nader off the ballot in Pennsylvania and recently published a law review article on the affair. Brown discovered that the judge who favored the Democrats may have been motivated by animus toward Nader’s candidacy.

Nader needed 25,697 signatures on his nomination petitions to get a spot on the Pennsylvania ballot and submitted approximately 52,000. A week after filing the petitions the Secretary of State accepted Nader’s nomination after tossing about 5,000 signatures for various reasons. That same day, August 9, 2004, eight Democrat “objectors” represented by 24 lawyers challenged some 37,000 of the remaining signatures. After weeks of legal wrangling eleven judges were assigned the monumental task of a line-by-line review of Nader’s petitions.

Judge James Collins, who assessed the $89,821 bill, led the review declaring Nader’s petitions were “rife with forgeries” and that “this signature gathering process was the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this Court.” Collins alleged “thousands of names” were “created at random”. Justice Saylor of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court disagreed. He declared the Nader campaign had not engaged in any kind of “systemic” fraud and only 687 signatures out of 51,273 had actually been rejected for forgery.

Brown has discovered that Judge Collins personally ruled that 568 of the 687 purported forgeries were fraudulent leaving the other ten judges to find only 119 forgeries. Collins and two of the other reviewing judges discarded thousands of signatures on very “technical and complicated” criteria including a missing middle initial, use of ditto marks, or mixing printing with cursive writing. Collins ended up rejecting 70 percent of the 10,794 signatures he reviewed.

Brown wrote in his law review article, “Moreover, the eleven judges who reviewed Nader’s signature submissions apparently employed different standards to invalidate signatures at alarmingly different rates.” In a footnote, Brown notes that 3,500 signatures were invalidated for unstated reasons.

Brown writes there was a “concerted Democratic program to purge Nader from the presidential ballot.” Further, “The lesson to be drawn from the 2004 presidential race is that neither major party can be trusted to police a general election ballot. Major party interests naturally lean more toward rigging and sabotaging than insuring fair and competitive fights.”

“The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court pressed just under a dozen judges into service at different locations over the course of two weeks to canvass 52,000 signatures submitted by the Nader campaign. This pushed the Nader campaign beyond its legal and technical capacity.

“Forcing lawyers to scramble among a dozen courtrooms in as many days to uphold an agency’s decision authorizing ballot access is neither measured nor productive. The practice is not only constitutionally objectionable, but it also facilitates a moneyed effort to veto a political outsider’s participation in the electoral arena,” Brown said.

Ralph Nader is still reviewing his options regarding the costly and punitive order issued by Judge Collins to punish his bid for public office.

Brown concludes his analysis of the Democratic legal attack on Nader, “I suspect that as long as America’s political system rewards an empty lust for power, politicians and judges will continue to turn blind eyes to fair procedures.”

—

Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in Boston. In 2004 Richardson was Ralph Nader’s national ballot access coordinator.

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