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| Home from Nominating Cobb-LaMarche Ticket at Milwaukee Convention, Michigan Greens Get Back to Focusing on State Candidates, Issues. |
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Green Party of Michigan July 2, 2004 For More Information Contact: Kalamazoo Kicks Off a Month of County Caucuses at 4th Coast Café Will Campaign for Stronger Water Protections; IRV, Open Debates, Election Reforms; Universal Health Care; Affirmative Action; Peace Delegates of the Green Party of Michigan (GPMI) are home from last week's lively national nominating convention in Milwaukee -- and ready to take on state issues and campaigns from now to November 2. The convention nominated home-grown party organizer David Cobb of Texas and California for President, and single mother turned radio host and Maine gubernatorial candidate Patricia LaMarche, on the second ballot. The Cobb-LaMarche ticket has been certified for November -- and now Michigan Greens will turn to their home counties, and attend a dozen local caucuses in the month of July to nominate more candidates to serve those counties. The first county caucus took place at the 4th Coast Café in Kalamazoo Thursday night, and yielded nominations for county clerk and sheriff. Also, following in the footsteps of the national Green Party of the United States (GPUS), which adopted a new platform in Milwaukee, Michigan Greens will update their platform to reflect recent activity on issues ranging from fighting the privatization of water to instant-runoff voting and opening political debates to all ballot-qualified candidates, from pushing for universal health care to holding onto affirmative action and threatened civil rights to protecting peace. Cobb-LaMarche Nominated . . . But Nader-Camejo Would Be Welcomed, Too. Cobb and LaMarche won with 53% of the delegates on the second ballot, to 40% for supporters of a national endorsement (not a nomination) of Ralph Nader and his running mate, progressive financier and two-time Green candidate for California governor Peter Camejo. Turtle Island Institute founder Kent Mesplay was third with 5-1/2%, and Michigan favorite-daughter candidate JoAnne Bier Beemon fourth at 1%. Nader, Camejo, and three other candidates who had run largely as Nader stand-ins were eliminated after the first ballot because they did not agree to run as the Green Presidential candidate on all state ballots across the country if nominated. Beemon's strong convention speech drew support from inside and outside her home state's delegation. She got one of her 14 first-ballot votes from Tennessee, and two votes of her second-ballot total of eight from New York. Still, as she told a reporter from home, "The real thrill for me was to be able to stand up in front of 1,000 people and talk about the beauty of the Jordan River Valley and the hard-working, grassroots environmental movements that are working to protect the natural resources of northern Michigan." Michigan Greens backed Beemon strongly on the first ballot, giving her 13 of their 32 delegate votes to 10 for the Nader/Camejo ticket, 8 for Cobb, and 1 for Mesplay. On the second ballot, the Nader position of "No Nominee got 14 votes from Michigan, Cobb 11, Beemon 6, and Mesplay 1. The competition for delegates was fierce, with new informational and tactical literature from the two biggest campaigns coming out hour after hour. However, notes GPMI elections coördinator John La Pietra, it was easy to tell that the rivalry was friendly at bottom. "Whenever a state delegation would announce its vote totals, it told everyone else about the good things Greens in the state were working to protect -- and the bad things they were working to prevent. And everyone was cheering and booing right with them -- in unison and in harmony. It shows how united we really are -- inthe Green values David Cobb has so rightly described as the better instincts of our country." When his turn came to report the GPMI delegation's first-round votes, Mount Pleasant city commissioner Jim Moreno reminded the convention that Michigan was (among other things) the home of the 1937 sitdown strike that founded the UAW -- and the home of Rosa Parks, who sat down on the bus for freedom. The Nader-Camejo ticket has been offered a Reform Party nomination in Michigan, which is currently being verified by the Bureau of Elections. Greens of all shades would welcome Nader's joining Cobb on the ballot. GPMI national representative David Spitzley commented, "If there's room on our ballot for the two big pro-war candidates, there must be room enough for more than one peace candidate." Party on Pace for Record Slate, Has 14 County Caucuses Set for July Between now and the August 3 primary, Greens can hold county caucuses to nominate candidates for any offices serving areas entirely in the counties they cover. In Wayne and Oakland Counties, that can reach all the way up to US House seats -- for the 9th, 13th, and 15th Congressional Districts. Many counties also contain one or more Michigan state House districts, and all have county-level or local offices up for election this November. The first caucus, for Kalamazoo County, was held upstairs at 4th Coast Café (816 S. Westnedge) Thursday, July 1 starting at 7pm. Green Party of Kalamazoo co-chair James Wilber won his local's nomination for county clerk -- and will have company on the ballot from sheriff candidate Stephanie Frizzell. Wilber is "proud to be representing the Green Party. This is what Grassroots Democracy is all about --concerned citizens taking an active role in their government on all levels. "I feel that the position of County Clerk is the perfect way to have Green issues heard, and have a highly visible and active role in our community," he adds. Greens in thirteen more counties are expected to follow Kalamazoo's lead and nominate candidates in coming weeks. Next up are two "Bi-County Caucuses" for Oakland and Wayne County Greens, who will gather on Saturday, July 10 from 1pm to 5pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church at 4605 Cass Avenue in Detroit (just south of the Wayne State University campus). Bay County Greens will be holding their caucus at Bay City Coffee & Tea on Sunday, July 11 starting at 1:00. They plan to nominate candidates for several county and township offices and the 96th District State House seat. Genesee, Lapeer, and Tuscola County Greens will meet noon to 3 pm on the following Saturday, July 17, at 510 S. Saginaw St. in Flint. Tuesday the 20th will see a joint Charlevoix-Emmet County caucus session in the Boyne City Library (Park and Ray) starting at 7pm -- kicking off Beemon's bid for re-election as Charlevoix County Drain Commissioner, among other campaigns. Other counties where Greens are planning nominating caucuses include Grand Traverse, Hillsdale, Jackson, Lenawee, and Washtenaw. And more caucuses may yet be arranged -- as long as members in each affected county are mailed or e-mailed notice of their caucus at least 14 days in advance. If each scheduled county caucus nominates two candidates, Greens will have 41 people on the Michigan ballot this year -- topping the party's biggest previous slate of 33 in 2002. State laws currently bar Green Party candidates from the August primary election. Instead, all Green Party members in a county must be invited to that county's caucus to nominate candidates -- though each county may have its own rules for how to caucus and with whom. GPMI caucuses can also endorse individual Greens running for election to non-partisan offices. At the state convention in May, to which Greens across the state were all invited, GPMI endorsed Moreno in his bid for re- election to the Mount Pleasant City Commission, and newcomer Jason Glover as a candidate for Northwest Michigan College's Board of Trustees. Shared Values Draw Various States' Attention to Similar Issues At the national convention, Michigan Greens took part in the final discussions of the new national platform -- and compared policy notes with fellow Greens from other states. And when they came home, they found that many of the same issues are facing Michigan voters as well. For example, in announcing its first-ballot votes, the Washington state delegation spoke proudly of a petition drive to give voters there a chance to choose to use instant-runoff voting (IRV) to elect state and Federal officials. Earlier, Beemon had led the chorus of candidates in calling for IRV -- which may be on the ballot inFerndale as well this fall. Other campaign/election reforms were also on the minds of many Greens. There were many calls forincluding Cobb and Nader in Presidential debates, an idea close to the heart of Michigan observer Jason Seagraves. Though a candidate for the 7th District U.S. House seat, Seagraves has already been excluded from a debate with his fellow Congressional candidates . . . in his own home town of Adrian. Other Green-supported reforms include Clean Money/Clean Elections public financing of campaigns, in the style used from Arizona to VP candidate LaMarche's home state of Maine; verified voting; and other technical and procedural improvements to make sure everyone eligible to votes gets to vote -- and has a reason to vote, and to trust that her/his vote will stand up . . . and be counted. Another issue Greens found on the front burner when they came home to Michigan was Governor Granholm's effort at dam-building to hold back a flood tide of private assaults on the public's rights to water: the Michigan Water Legacy Act (HB5634 and SB1087). GPMI candidates and party leaders will be holding their fingers in the dike, and urging Granholm and the Legislature to help plug the holes. As Greens heard at their state convention from Jim Olson, the attorney who won Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation's case against the Néstlé Ice Mountain extraction/bottling plant in Mecosta County, Granholm's plan sometimes says the right things but doesn't follow through on them. For example, the bills mention water as a "public trust", but they don't truly recognize the common-law principles that make water a public trust -- principles, says Olson, that stem from Michigan's statehood and cannot be overturned without overthrowing statehood as well. Another egregious example is a weak definition of "diversion" of water (the very action the bills are supposed to control) to mean only moving water from one watershed to another *outside* the Great Lakes basin. That would do nothing to regulate operations like Néstlé's. And the proposed act as it now stands would only block "significant impacts" -- language parallelling an argument Néstlé lost in District Judge Lawrence Root's court, and ignoring the need Olson sees for all parties to join together and "give water a voice." Greens are also speaking up for water across the state in Highland Park -- where they are part of the citizens' coalition which told the City Council and city manager to reject a corporate bid to take over the municipal water system. And Michigan Greens will continue to address many other state issues: * Universal health care. Greens supported a lawsuit filed earlier this year seeking to have Governor Granholm and the Legislature plan for statewide universal health care, in accordance with Michigan law and the state Constitution. * Protecting Affirmative Action from back-door efforts to deny funding to state universities that practice it -- and from the rebirth of the misnamed "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative". * Supporting other threatened human and civil rights, from reproductive choice and same-sex marriage to the right to read or worship free from snooping or censorship. * Opposing the death penalty (on the grounds that it violates social justice) and dove-hunting (because it targets the bird of peace). As the nation heads into a patriotic holiday weekend, La Pietra thinks of a button he brought back from the national convention in Milwaukee. It reads: "Patriotism is making sure your country is worth defending." That's what Greens are doing," he says. "For the next four months -- and for years to come after that." ]-------------------------------------------[ For more information on the national GPUS nominating
convention in Voting at GPUS nominating convention: 1st ballot
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