Governor candidate gets unprecedented votes 
Rich Whitney gains recognition for the Illinois Green Party
By Deyva Arthur
Green Party of New York

Rich Whitney; GP candidate for Illinois governor addresses the issues at the University of Illinois

2006 was a successful election season, as Illinois Greens went from years of slow campaigns and low membership to a well-organized, powerful statewide campaign, resulting in Rich Whitney, Green candidate for governor, receiving 10.3 percent of the vote and getting The Illinois Green Party (IGP) established as a recognized party. 

"We made a little history here. …But we have to make our history, nobody is going to do it for us," Whitney said in retrospect after the campaign.

Not only did Whitney, a civil rights attorney from Carbondale, receive 361,321 votes in a three way race for governor in Illinois, but the Green Party achieved rigorous goals for their petition drive for ballot access, and overcame an aggressive petition challenge by Democrats.

Phil Huckelberry, IGP co-chair at the time, said their success was due to a host of reasons, including a prepared and centrally coordinated strategy, good media coverage, Republican and Dem­o­­cratic candidates many did not like, and meaningful state issues.

Although the IGP started in 1999, this was their first year running a slate of candidates for statewide office. There were six state-wide candidates, who averaged four percent of the vote among them. Whitney's 10.3 percent was more than double the required five percent needed for the IGP to become a recognized party. This gives them more funding and significantly easier ballot access.

The power of the media

"In reviewing the geography of the votes, media coverage showed a strong correlation," according to Huckelberry. He noticed that in some places where there were high votes, there was no Green campaign presence at all.

"The commonality of all these cities was that these were the areas where (Whitney) had gotten the fairest media coverage. … It was directly proportional. … The lesson we learned was, on a shoestring budget you must prioritize media. We found that media work was more important than grassroots, on the ground organizing in this race. We didn't expect that, and I am not 100 percent sure if that would work in all cases, but for the dynamics of this race, that is how it played out," Huckelberry said.

Whitney's campaign made waves right from the start. He got good newspaper coverage by announcing his candidacy at an Amtrak rail station, highlighting a key election issue of alternative transportation. Then the Illinois Greens became even bigger news statewide with an erroneous petition challenge by the Democrats. With scandal and growing dislike for the other gubernatorial candidates, Whitney was endorsed by the third most largely circulated paper in the state, the Rockford Register Star (see page 2). "A lot of the media hates the incumbents." Huckelberry said, "They thought Rich was a breath of fresh air."

Behind the media exposure was a successful approach by Green media campaign coordinator, Tim Tacker, to email journalists thanking them for their coverage of Whitney or encouraging them to cover him if they hadn't already. Apparently with just the right touch, instead of feeling pestered, journalists gave the campaign continued attention.

What matters to voters

"Picking the right issues and having good policy proposals appealed to a discouraged constituency," said Whitney "There were some good issues that broke through the Green stereotypes and I think that's one of the reasons we did fairly well in this campaign. Because I did my homework ahead of time, this campaign really addressed all the major issues facing the people in the state."

Illinois being a state deeply in debt, Whitney made fiscal responsibility a top concern. Incumbent Rod Blagojevich (D) had been strongly criticized for poorly managing the budget and dipping into state pensions to pay debts. Judy Baar Topinka, state treasurer running for governor on the Republican ticket, was not offering much better budget solutions. She proposed to balance the budget by opening a casino.

Whitney was the only candidate opposing state sanctioned gambling, and he also emphasized that workers should not be shouldering state mismanagement by losing their pensions - especially since Illinois already has one of the most regressive tax systems in the country. Similarly, school funding appeared to be a big concern. Whitney said schools in Illinois were among the most unequal in the country relying predominantly on property taxes. He proposed a progressive tax, which would be proportionally higher for higher income people. This would help to significantly balance the budget, and give more state funding to schools.

Whitney also raised global warming, the rising costs of energy and renewable energy sources. All were presented in a way that appealed across party lines. "One of the things I try to resist is that the Green Party should be pigeon-holed as liberal. … A lot of the things that we stand for - sure we are not going to agree with the extreme right. But I think what you call the traditional conservatives can find some things of value in what Greens stand for."

Towards the end of the campaign, Whitney was endorsed by several newspapers and showed at 15 percent and sometimes higher in polls. He said if the IGP had another month, they would have done significantly better.

Getting the signatures

For the IGP, the campaign actually started in November of 2005. Facing a difficult petition period of only 90 days to gather 25,000 valid signatures from registered voters, organizers began handing out petitions to state committee members at the fall meeting nominating candidates. They wanted to be better prepared, as two years earlier they only garnered 4500 signatures and did not get ballot access for the presidential election.

Ready at the starting gate, a small team of volunteers descended upon small town festivals and other outdoor events with petitions in hand when the 90-day countdown began. Charlie Howe, who also ran for state representative, single-handily collected 5700 signatures and Sheldon Schafer, collected the second most signatures at 2500, almost entirely at minor league baseball games. Huckelberry said it was a small but hard working group of volunteers who were able to meet the quota needed for ballot access.

Huckelberry ran the well coordinated, centralized statewide ballot drive, and personally collected completed petitions across the state as they were done. By the end of the 90 days, Illinois Greens had collected 39,000 signatures, more than enough with a good safety margin.

"We as Greens seem to abhor the concept of leadership and run away from it. We didn't do that in Illinois this time around and it worked really well because we had the clear leadership." 

Ready for the Democrat attack

Preparedness being essential to this campaign, the Greens knew the Democrats would challenge their petitions. Since the 2000 elections, third party petitions had been continually challenged by either of the two major parties. This time, the IGP had already done extensive work for the Board of Elections by the time the Democrats came at them claiming 24,000 Green petition signatures were invalid.

Huckelberry said each page of signatures was scanned and typed in as data. Each signature was checked, corrections were made, and individual registration numbers were submitted beside many names. The Greens also hired legal advisors who had been through petition challenges in the past. All this was done before the challenge was even made. By the time of the hearing, the IGP had well-organized substantiated documentation as proof. 

"Our people were armed with all this information and (the Democrats) showed up with nothing but two law interns," said Huckelberry. "With this, the confidence level on our end was great and the BOE was impressed. I think they were also ticked off at the Democrats about going through all this." 

The Democrats had handed in a 4000-page challenge, but many of the claims turned out to be bogus. Whitney said they had clearly picked names out at random as among their claims were that Whitney's name was invalid and that people not registered to vote included voter registrars and city councilors. Clearly a frivolous challenge, the state ruled in favor of the Greens. It was still estimated to cost the state nearly $800,000 in legal and other expenses to handle the challenge. This backfired against the Democrats in favor of the Greens at the polls.

Managing success

Now that the IGP has conducted a successful campaign, become an established party and even has a little money left in the bank, they are hoping to become even more organized for the next election cycle. Now that they are a party recognized by the state, they also have to comply with a considerable number of state regulations.

"What is going to be a big challenge for the coming year is getting those questions resolved, getting the committee structure that is imposed on us ready, and doing it in a way that preserves party integrity and principles," Whitney said.

Did Whitney enjoy his historic 10.3 percent gubernatorial run? (Second only to Roberto Mondragon's 10.4 percent in New Mexico in 1994). In 2010, Whitney said he is willing to run again as governor if the IGP needs him.

For more, go to: www.ilgp.org 

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