Ten years ago, the Green Party’s potential effect on the 2000 presidential election left Democrats nervously biting their fingernails and Republicans gleefully rubbing their hands together. In fact, some still argue that Green Party candidate Ralph Nader is the reason Bush took Florida from Gore, becoming the forty-third president despite losing the popular vote. But these days, another third party—the Tea Party—has become the one to watch come November after its notable victories in the September primaries. Now it’s the Republicans who are casting a suspicious eye toward their potential usurpers.
A USA Today/Gallup poll taken in late August 2010 showed that Americans across the board want a third party to shake up our two-party system—58 percent of them do, to be exact. In terms of political leanings, that’s 61 percent of liberals, 60 percent of moderates, and 54 percent of conservatives polled. Even Democrats and Republicans are dissatisfied with the current system, with 45 and 47 percent of them, respectively, in favor of a major third party. Clearly, the public is fed up with the way things usually work, and as a result, tea-baggers have become a force to be reckoned with. But what does that mean for the Green Party, which has been somewhat eclipsed by this new movement? Is it benefitting from the strong demand for political change as well?
A Rocky Race to the Finish Line
“It’s always an uphill battle,” says Erika MacDonald, spokesperson for the Green Party of California. She’s referring to two problems that the Green Party continues to struggle against: a lack of resources to raise public awareness and constant interference from the major two parties. Because two of the Green Party’s core tenets are to fund itself through non-corporate and non-labor donations, and to rely on volunteers and other grassroots organizations for help, it’s harder for members to spread its messages. Rather than taking money from organizations and industries that could go against the party’s politics, Greens pull from the surrounding community in the hopes that people will support the cause enough to fund it.
Greens in many states also have to devote much time, energy, and money to getting enough signatures to put their candidates on the ballot. Even then, that’s not always enough, according to MacDonald. “In some of these states, you’ll get ballot status, but then if you run a candidate in a presidential election who doesn’t get 5 percent [of the votes], they’ll throw you off,” she explains. Once Green Party candidates get on ballots, the situation is still far from smooth sailing, thanks to Democrats’ filing lawsuits against them in an attempt to take their names back off. MacDonald cites Nader’s presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004 as examples. “There was a lawsuit thrown at them in every single state,” she shares, “saying there was some fine print in the law they didn’t follow. And in many cases, Democrats were successful.”
This election season is no different, with a particularly scandalous lawsuit filed by Democrats in Texas that claims that the Republican Party helped the state’s Green Party obtain the ninety thousand signatures needed for ballot placement. That isn’t the only time Republicans have tried to drum up support for the Greens in order to take votes away from Democrats. In early September of this year, word got out that Republicans in Arizona recruited members of the community—including a tarot card reader and a man who goes by the nickname “Grandpa”—to run for office under the Green Party.
As if limited resources and bipartisan trickery aren’t enough to grapple with, the Green Party is often ignored by the media, which restricts its access to the public even more. “They’re still shutting us out of the debates,” MacDonald says. “We have a candidate for governor in California, Laura Wells, and she was told a couple of months ago, ‘If you get 10 percent or more in the polls, you’ll be invited to the debate.’ But all [the pollsters] ask about is [Meg] Whitman or [Jerry] Brown. If you say somebody else, they mark you down as undecided.” In New York and Illinois this year, gubernatorial candidates Howie Hawkins and Rich Whitney have also publically protested their exclusions.
Greens Garnering Support This Season
Despite all of this, MacDonald feels good about her party’s chances this year. “Money plays a really big role in politics, but it’s not always true that the campaign with the most money always wins,” she maintains. In fact, political experts predict that the upcoming elections will prove successful for third-party candidates, as more people become disenchanted with the two-party system. MacDonald and her fellow Greens are hoping to lure them over to their side. “We think they’re very open to us,” she says, speaking of young people in particular who strongly supported Obama and feel disappointed with his administration presently. “We’re just doing the best we can to go out and capture them.”
The media’s focus might be on the Tea Party right now, but Green candidates are making some strides across the country. In Massachusetts, Green-Rainbow Party candidate Jill Stein recently raised over $130,000 in just a week after a heavy fundraising push; it previously took her a whole year to raise just half that amount. Chicago’s Jeremy Karpen, who’s running for the 39th House District, just secured the endorsement of the Chicago Tribune. “We disagree with Karpen on plenty of issues,” the editors wrote. “But he says, ‘My campaign is about more than winning office, it is about shaking the foundation of the political machine. …’ Fair enough. Karpen is endorsed.” That’s the key to any candidate’s winning an office seat this season—proving he or she will be a break from politics as usual.
If at First You Don’t Succeed …
If the Green Party hopes to increase, or at least hold on to, the 141 offices it currently holds, it has to find a way to do that without falling prey to pitfalls set up by the country’s two-party, everyone-else-stay-out system. Green candidates on the campaign trails today are playing up their outsider status. California’s Laura Wells even likens her supporters to the “Green Tea Party,” telling the Boston Herald, “We share the same feeling that we have been betrayed.” In an earlier public statement, she says, “We’re building a movement—a movement of people who are fed up with the bailouts, the payoffs, the rip-offs, and the layoffs.” There’s no doubt most of the public would support her stance—but how many will actually hear it when the media instead focuses on bipartisan bickering between Whitman and Brown, and when Wells isn’t invited to debate along with them?
“There’s a lot of loyalty to the Democratic Party and a lot of disaffection, but it’s hard to reach those people,” MacDonald explains. Because of this, the Green Party hasn’t experienced the kind of membership growth it’s hoping for—but that doesn’t mean the tides won’t ever turn, especially with entire generations of people eager for something new. MacDonald is hopeful about recruiting voters too disaffected with the state of the country to head to the polls. “I think people stay home because they’re fed up with the system,” she says. “[But] you might as well vote with us and tell them that you do care and understand you have a stake in this democracy.” The Green Party will continue to target disaffected voters and young people as the election season continues. “It’s an uphill battle for us, but we’re still out there plugging away because there’s really no other option,” MacDonald asserts. “It’s a weak democracy, but we’ve got to do what we can to save it.”