Green Party has best showing ever in New York State
Party confident of recapturing full ballot status in 2006 gubernatorial elections
By Mike Feinstein
Green Party of California

The Green Party of New York State (GPNYS) arguably had its best electoral showing in 2005, including electing its fifth and sixth current officeholders and getting a higher percentage of the vote in many races than in previous years.

Mary Jo Long, who polled more than 50,755 votes (1.1 percent) for state attorney-general in 2002, was elected to the Afton town board. She joins four other currently elected Green officials in Ulster and Monroe counties.

A former Afton Village attorney, Long's campaign combined a sense of community-friendly zoning and town hall democracy with a big-picture vision of the challenges municipalities like 3,000-person Afton face. "Too many demands were placed on small municipalities by higher levels of government," Long argued, "while corporate welfare increases sales and property taxes and disadvantages local businesses." She sought to align Afton with other communities to make this fight. 

In Cobleskill Village, west of Albany in Upstate New York, former State University of New York Albany student Mike Sellers was elected mayor with 46 percent of the vote. Sellers handily defeated both the current mayor and another candidate. Sellers becomes the second Green mayor in New York State, joining New Paltz Mayor Jason West.

Sellers' main issues were youth empowerment (over 50 percent of the Village is under the age of 25, yet previously no board member had been under 45) and downtown revitalization. While the Republican incumbent and his Democratic opponent ran negative campaigns against each other, Sellers stayed positive and focused on his Get Out the Vote effort, with phone bankers calling voters throughout Election Day, poll watchers keeping track of who had not yet voted and drivers giving rides to the polls. Sellers benefited immensely from high voter turnout, normally low in odd-numbered years, which came close to beating presidential election-year records. This, he felt, was a result of the three-way race, which engaged more people in the process.

In addition to these victories, New York State Greens also ran mayoral candidates in four of the state's largest cities. Civil rights advocate Dr. Alice Green polled a stunning 24.8 percent of the vote in Albany, the state's capital, surpassing the Republican candidate by almost four to one. Dr. Green was the party's 1998 lieutenant-governor nominee when she and gubernatorial candidate Al Lewis polled 52,533 votes statewide, to qualify the party for automatic ballot status for the first time. In 2005, her municipal platform emphasized improving the environmental health of Albany through an expansion of public transit, bike paths, open space, community gardens, solar and energy conservation, composting and recycling. She also campaigned on increasing affordable housing, embracing the city's ethnic and racial diversity, and making the municipal government more transparent and accessible to the average resident.

Evidencing the party's growing strength in the Capital region, fellow Green candidate David Lussier received 28.9 percent for a seat on the Albany common council, Ward 11, defeating his Republican opponent by a similar margin to that of Dr. Green. Lussier's main issues were rehabilitation of communities through a living wage, rehabbing abandoned housing, instant runoff voting and public financing of campaigns.

In Syracuse, 1984 national Green cofounder and 2002 New York Green state comptroller candidate Howie Hawkins polled 4.7 percent of the vote in his race for mayor, running on a "Sustainable Syracuse" platform featuring "neighborhood-directed development using green technologies and widespread community ownership to create living-wage jobs in a city that is ecologically and economically sustainable. It means directing city resources toward the creation of thousands of $40,000-per-year manufacturing and construction jobs-and not $14,000-per-year jobs servicing tourists at Destiny USA" [a local tourist destination].

To the west in Buffalo, Judith Einach polled 5 percent in the City of Buffalo, while in New York City, Tony Gronowicz came in fourth place out of a field of eight for New York City mayor.

Elsewhere in New York City, two Green candidates qualified to receive public matching funds: long-time peace and labor activist Gloria Mattera for Brooklyn Borough president and Robyn Sklar for New York city council, District 26 (Queens). To qualify for public financing, candidates must meet a two-part threshold. City council candidates must raise at least $5,000 from residents anywhere in New York City and have at least 75 donations of $10 or more from in-district residents. For borough president, 100 in-district donations are needed, but the threshold dollar amount is based on the number of people living in the borough. Brooklyn has the highest population and therefore the highest threshold-$49,307. The program matches each dollar a NYC resident gives with four dollars in public funds, up to $250 per contributor.

The Sklar campaign easily met the first fundraising deadline, Sept. 24, and continued raising money for subsequent filings. A total of $33,172 in matching funds was deposited into the campaign account over three installments. The bulk was spent on posters, literature, direct mail, print ads and staff salaries for a campaign manager and campaign treasurer. Running on a platform of more parks, public transit and affordable housing, Sklar finished second of three candidates with 12.9 percent of the votes.

While not qualifying for public funds, long-time GPNYS organizer Jerry Kann still managed to receive 8.1 percent in nearby Queens District 22. He vowed to establish community councils in every city council district to increase the voice of local residents and to revamp the city's Rent Guidelines Board, which Kann argued gave disproportionate representation to landlords and property owners compared to tenants.

By the final public financing deadline, the Mattera campaign ultimately raised close to $60,000, resulting in her campaign receiving just under $200,000 from the Campaign Finance Board on the Thursday before Election Day. Personal loans from supporters had met earlier print and direct mail deadlines. After repayment of these loans, the remainder of the public financing was spent on radio and television ads as well as a strong ground campaign, which placed over 100 people on the streets each of the three days before the election and almost 400 on Election Day itself.

Mattera, who also serves as GPNYS co-chair, received 18,700 votes and 6.9 percent, more than double what Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader received in the same area in 2000. Her campaign featured opposition to the Forest City Ratner Corporation, which seeks to tear down several blocks of residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn and to put in its place a publicly subsidized large-scale commercial development that would include the NBA Nets' basketball franchise. 

Impressively, Mattera hit 30 percent or higher in several neighborhoods surrounding this proposed Atlantic Yards project. "Our totals in these districts clearly show that there is a lot of community opposition to this project," said Mattera after the election. "People who have never voted Green before did so in big numbers. They see us working side by side with the community in its fight against tax-subsidized private development and eminent domain."

In other races statewide, Darin Robbins polled 25.3 percent in a two-way race for Corning alderman in Steuben County. Like many Green candidates across the state, he campaigned upon establishing a municipal living wage. Robbins then expanded upon that vision to include a community investment fund, a micro-credit system for small business loans, time banks for community services and a local currency for community goods.

In Rensselaer County, Green Party Secretary Dan Spilman polled 17.5 percent of the vote, finishing third in a race for two seats on the Schodack town board. In Onondaga County; David Linton polled 17 percent of the vote for Onondaga County legislature in District 17, while Cosmo Fanizzi, a carpenter who works on housing restoration and neighborhood revitalization efforts, received 13 percent in District 16. Disability activist Chris Hilderbrant polled 15.1 percent of the vote in his run for Monroe County legislature. Advocating new ways for the county to support small business after the area lost manufacturing jobs, he was endorsed by the Rochester Labor Council, as well as the Rochester chapter of the National Organization of Women, the local Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, and the Empire State Pride Agenda, a statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights advocacy group. In Ulster County, Will Maksuta ran for New Paltz town clerk, saying he supported same-sex couple marriage and would issue marriage licenses to that effect if elected. He received 13.4 percent of the vote.

According to GPNYS Co-Chair Ian Wilder, these strong showings bode well for the party in 2006, as it seeks to obtain at least the 50,000 votes (approximately 1 percent) in the gubernatorial election necessary to regain the official party status that it achieved in 1998 (52,533 votes) and lost in 2002 (41,797 votes).

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