Running Against Clinton in 2006 and 2008
Thoughts and advice from my campaign
By Howie Hawkins
Green Party candidate for U.S. senate in New York

New York U.S. senate candidate Howie Hawkins speaks out against the opposition, Hilary Clinton at a press conference with Ralph Nader, where Nader announced his support for Hawkins. Photo by David Doonan

What is it like to run against the likes of a Hilary Clinton, one of the most powerful political figures in the United States? Our Green presidential nominee in 2008 may very well find out, if Clinton turns out to be the Democratic nominee, as many expect. If so, here are lessons learned, based upon our Green Party of New York (GPoNYS) campaign for U.S. Senate in 2006. 

Why did I run for U.S. Senate and why against Hilary Clinton? As a political act­ivist, I've been organizing around Green issues since the mid-1970s. Back in August 1984, I attended the founding meeting of the formal U.S. Green movement, and have stayed very active since, including running for office several times, mostly on the municipal and county level where I live in Syracuse, New York.

But by 2006, with the country mired in the Iraq quagmire and with a clear lack of progressive leadership on the national level, I decided to run for U.S. senate. My campaign had two main goals - one structural, one political.

Structurally the goal was to help the GPoNYS gain ballot status for the next four years. Under New York state law, for a party to gain (or retain) ballot status, it has to receive at least 50,000 votes in the governor's race - and only the governor's race. In 1998 the GPoNYS gained ballot status, but then lost it in 2002. Our hope in 2006 was that the attention and support my U.S. senate campaign gained, would also help that of our GPoNYS gubernatorial candidate Malachy McCourt.

While this inspired some, what really put fire in the bellies of my campaign supporters was our second goal - to bring our top three policy demands into the public debate: 'stop the war/ bring the troops home now', 'national health insurance', and a '$300 billion a year public investment in renewable energy funded by military spending cuts' - and to do so by contrasting these positions against often unprogressive positions of Senator Clinton.

Were we successful? Our campaign received 55,469 votes - at 1.24 percent, more than double our previous GPoNYS high of 0.59 percent back in 2000. But we did not regain ballot status (See article on page 9), nor did we force Clinton to respond to our issues, and there were several reasons why we were unable to gain serious traction against Clinton in this effort. 

First of all, the campaign was a juggernaut. New York is a Democratic-leaning state, with 5.5 million enrolled Demo­crats compared to 3.1 million Republicans. Clinton's election was never in doubt. But because she wanted to prove her national viability for president, she went all out to maximize her vote, spending upwards of $37 million dollars in a race that she won 67 percent to 31 percent.

Since the corporate media like to cover the horse race, not the issues, and with Clinton ahead by 30 to 40 percentage points the whole way, I had little leverage. As a result, media coverage in the campaign's last few weeks focused on such critical public policy issues the costs of Clinton's supposed plastic surgery. My public appearances and press releases on life and death issues - the war, health care, and energy crises - were ignored. 

A Green presidential candidate may have a better opportunity than we did to reach similar goals: ballot status for Green Parties in more states and forcing our demands into the debate. A big difference will be that the presidential race will likely be closer. This can benefit Greens in two ways. 

First multi-candidate races make negative campaigning less productive. The attacker and the attacked get muddy, while the Green stays clean. This wasn't a factor in New York's US senate race, but that was because the race wasn't close.

If the 2008 presidential race is as close as expected, the Greens' relevancy in the horse race will be greater, and that will naturally bring us more attention. If the Green presidential can­didate then em­braces this potential "spoiler" role, it can provide a forum for Green ap­proaches that corporate-backed Repub­lican and Democratic candidates don't want to hear, but that are popular with many voters - on war and militarism, universal health care, the energy crisis, poverty, workers' rights, and others.

More than anyone else, Green "spoilers" anger the professional progressives who staff some unions, community organizations, and environmental and peace groups. Greens often see these people as "progressive allies," but the reality is they all too often line up with the Demo­cratic corporate establishment against independent, grassroots insurgencies. Their career opportunities and social networks, their salaries, grants, and contracts, tie them to Democrats being in power.

In my race, the professional liberals gave Hillary Clinton a free pass. Clinton has been the most pro-war Democrat in the senate, with the possible exception of Joe Lieberman and New York's other senator, Chuck Schumer. She killed single-payer national health insurance in 1993 when it had majority support in the public and a hundred co-sponsors in Congress. Today she is the recipient of more insurance industry campaign donations that any other elected official in America. Her energy program is a thinly veiled attempt to earn energy corporation campaign funding, in return for corporate welfare to promote biofuels with tax breaks for the existing energy giants.

Yet, peace groups and progressive leaders barely pressured Clinton on these issues. Peace Action did not issue their customary candidate comparison sheet for the general election. The Working Families Party convention voted 94-6 percent to endorse pro-war Clinton over anti-war challenger Democratic primary Jonathan Tasini, thanks to the weighted votes carried by the pros working for the unions, Citizen Action, and ACORN who overwhelmed the local chapters who wanted Tasini. Working Families then spent nearly $1 million to promote the pro-war corporate lawyers, Clinton and Demo­cratic Gubernatorial candidate Elliot Spitzer, heading their ticket as the anti-war, progressive vote. A $25,000 mailer from Work­ing Families even misleadingly depicted Cindy Sheehan, along with Michael Moore and Pete Seeger, urging voters to vote for the Working Families ticket to bring the troops home. Sheehan, who had endorsed McCourt and myself, had to issue a reaffirmation of her support of Greens and her opposition to Clinton, which did garner some media coverage. 

My advice to the Green presidential candidate in running against Clinton, or whichever corporate sponsored candidate the Democrats choose, is to embrace the spoiler role - we can't spoil a two-party system of corporate rule that's already rotten. Don't worry about annoying the professional liberals. Build a field operation that can reach out to grassroots activists, use the media that we do get, and then put forward a bold, clear message to the millions of potential voters who are already convinced of the need for an alternative to the Democrats and Repub­licans, but who usually don't vote If we do these three things, not only will we grow the Green Party, we will Green America. 

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