Doug Henwood wrote:
> I'm coming around to Nathan's argument that "progressives" should run
> in Dem primaries and in general try to hijack the party, just as the
> right did with the Republicans. What's to lose? The Greens seem more
> & more like a doomed fantasy.
>
> Doug
Tale Massachusetts, for example, a state custom-built for Green Party electoral activism. Massachusetts has 200 state legislative seats (160 in the House and 40 in the Senate) and an extraordinarily weak Republican party. Yes, the Republicans have won the last 3 gubernatorial races, but that's about all they win: the other statewide officers are all Democrats; and the Congressional delegation is entirely Democratic. The Republicans only ran candidates in about half of the state legislative seats in 2002. They couldn't even get their candidate for Secretary of State elected, even though he was (1) endorsed by the Boston Globe, and (2) had done an objectively decent job as Registrar of Motor Vehicles.
To top matters off, the most hated man in Massachusetts politics, the Speaker of the House, Tom Finneran, has been running the State House as a personal fiefdom (historians: think Czars Reed and Cannon). Republicans like to drag his name out when they decry Democratic politics here, but they forget that Republican votes in 1995 got Finneran the nod for Speaker (the Democratic caucus favored Finneran's opponent, Richard Voke).
So, with the Republican party extra weak, what do the Massachusetts Green do? They could recruit challengers to pro-Finneran Democrats. Every Green could run with the slogan "I will vote against Finneran." If the Greens had spoiled a seat or three to the Republicans, it wouldn't throw the legislature to the Democrats. And if the Greens posed a threat to go-along Democrats, it would be a good thing for progressives. It baffles me why the Greens would want to copy the electoral strategy of the Libertarians (only without the Libertarians' penchant for mischief via referendum).
Did they do this? No. Out of 200 races, the Greens ran all of 7 candidates. Instead, they concentrated on their statewide campaign-- one doomed to failure from the start (because the election was going to be close between any Democratic nominee and Republican Mitt Romney). The Greens gambled that they could qualify for public financing--they lacked the proper number of donors and the funding for the financing dried up, thanks to self-interest in the legislature. The Democrats lost the governor's race by more than the Green vote--the Democratic nominee, Shannon O'Brien decided early on not to court the union vote!
I think that in some cases, Greens pushing a gubernatorial candidate can make sense--in Maine, for example, limited public financing had broad support and was easy to obtain AND the state has recently had third-party governors. But in many more cases, it makes more sense to think small.
--tim francis-wright