The "safe state" strategy is rational and coherent in theory, but here is a paradox of Cobb/LaMarche and Nader/Camejo campaigns in the real world (in which we have to take into account many facts on the ground: where most Green Party organizers and activists actually live, in which states the Green Party has ballot status now, in which states the Reform Party has ballot lines now, where it's relatively easy and where it's exceedingly difficult to get on the ballot, etc. -- the issues that "safe states" advocates such as Ted Glick have never addressed). The delegates of the largest, best organized, and most powerful Green Parties in states such as California (where 65 Greens hold elected office), Pennsylvania (26), and Massachusetts (19) supported Nader/Camejo rather than Cobb/LaMarche, 2 to 1. The key is California: "Cobb won about 5,000 votes in the California Green Party primary, for less than 12 percent of the total. Fewer people than that voted for him in all of the other state caucuses and primaries combined leading up to the convention" (Alan Maass, "Green Party Shifts Into Reverse," <http://www.counterpunch.org/maass07012004.html>); in contrast, Camejo received 75.4% of votes in the California GP primary (<http://www.gp.org/convention/delegate_tally.html>). What does this mean?
* Cobb/LaMarche carried the majority of delegate votes in the second round of voting at the national convention, but if you look at primary votes, Nader/Camejo and their allies commanded *a far larger number of rank-and-file Green supporters* than Cobb/LaMarche. Those who are alleged to be better party-builders than Nader/Camejo turn out to have shockingly fewer party-building foot solders than Nader/Camejo. * The state where it made *the most political sense* to run a strong Nader/Camejo Green Party campaign -- because it is a "safe state" where Green leaders and activists solidly support Nader/Camejo -- will have Cobb/LaMarche (who are little known outside of Texas and Maine respectively and therefore will receive much fewer votes than Nader/Camejo would) on the Green Party ballot line. * As Nader/Camejo can get on the Reform Party ballot lines in two of the most crucial battleground states of Florida and Michigan, the Green Party's Cobb/LaMarche nomination may have an unintentional consequence of making the Green Party presidential campaign absent in the battleground states without making Nader/Camejo disappear from them.
In short, a politically sensible compromise between the Nader/Camejo and Cobb/LaMarche factions within the Green Party would have been Camejo's proposal for "free states," i.e., the Green Party at the national convention endorsing both campaigns and leaving each state Green Party free to choose the campaign that is best suited for growing the Green Party in the state. That way, New York and California Green, for instance, could have benefited from the prominence of Nader/Camejo whom they supported (and will probably continue to support anyway), while cautious Greens in the Southern states, as well as such battleground states as Minnesota and Wisconsin, whose majority supported Cobb in the primaries could have run a symbolic Green Party presidential campaign with the Cobb/LaMarche ticket while focusing their main efforts on down-the-ticket candidacies. (The only controversial point in the "free states" proposal would have been what to do with Pennsylvania.) But the Green Party paradox is that it ended up ceding the "safe state" of California, where the Greens are the best organized in the nation and Peter Camejo is best known, to John Kerry, while vacating the third party ground in Michigan and Florida to Nader/Camejo. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>