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To get on the ballot in past elections,
candidates from the Green Party have first had to beat off challenges from
Democrats and Republicans. Now that the Greens belong to an
“established” party in Illinois, though, they will be able to
slug it out in February with one another — just the way God intended
politics to work.
On Dec. 6, the Illinois State Board of Elections
threw out objections to the petitions of four contenders for the Green
Party presidential nomination, clearing the way for the state’s first
contested primary for the sapling party. However, the Green Party’s admittance to the
big dance will cost local taxpayers just over $10,000, says Sangamon County
Clerk Joe Aiello.
The primary election, which takes place on Feb. 5,
will carry on as usual, with voters selecting a Democrat, Republican, or
Green Party ballot. Approximately $2,200 will be spent to print 25,000
Green ballots, and another $7,500 will go to pay for notices in various
local publications. In addition, the estimated cost of programming and
testing voting machines totals about $375, Aiello says. The Green Party presidential contenders whose names
will appear on the ballot are: • Jared Ball of Washington, D.C. He served in
the U.S. Navy during Gulf War I and is now a communications-studies
instructor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md. • Howie Hawkins of Syracuse, N.Y. A retired
Marine, Hawkins co-founded the national Green Party and continues to serve
on the party’s national committee. • Kent Mesplay of San Diego, Calif. Mesplay
holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University. • Cynthia McKinney of Berkeley, Calif. She
served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Georgia Democrat
but switched parties in the fall of 2007. Other Greens on the ballot include Vic Roberts, a
candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 19th District, and Marc Sanson,
who is running to become the Greens’ Capital 19 precinct
committeeman. To complete the task of collecting the necessary
signatures, Green Party volunteers even assisted their rivals, says
national party co-chair Phil Huckleberry. “Even with the contested presidential
nomination, our focus is on having a clean, open, deliberative process, not
one where people are out to get one another. Our eventual nominee will need
help from the supporters of the other candidates as well,”
Huckleberry says. Illinois Greens achieved recognition status in 2006
when Green gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney received 10 percent of the
popular vote. As a result, the party’s candidates were required to
gather significantly fewer petition signatures. The party’s platform, adopted in 1984, is based
on principles, or pillars, that include grassroots democracy, ecological
wisdom, nonviolence, and social justice. The Green Party will hold its national convention in
July 2008 in Chicago. The decision to hold the event in the Windy City was
made in part because of Whitney’s strong showing here in 2006.
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2007.
