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Less than
one week before the elections, San Francisco social worker Mark
Shapiro had never heard of Medea Benjamin. Sure he knew about the
Greens, but the name Medea just did not ring a bell. Not a good
sign for a candidate for California’s U.S. Senate seat.
In a race in which a well-financed and widely known incumbent was
sure to win by a landslide, even the runner-up, Republican Tom Campbell,
had a hard time drumming up support. And unlike Ralph Nader’s
perceived hold on the presidential contest, this race was so far
gone from the outset, Medea’s measly three percent was not
threatening anyone’s lead.
But Medea, who campaigns by her first name, wasn’t running
with any intention of winning. So what did this 48-year-old international
activist and mother of two have in mind?
"To build the Green Party, to challenge the two-party system,
to run a clean campaign," said Akilah Monifa, Medea’s
press officer. Medea also wanted to challenge Feinstein’s record,
which she called "appalling" in an April interview with
Amy Goodman on Pacifica Radio’s "Democracy Now."
Best known as a founding director of Global Exchange, Medea says
her decision to run came out of the wild success of the World Trade
Organization protest in Seattle last winter.
"If we can challenge the WTO, why not the two-party system?"
she said.
So when the Green Party asked her to join its ticket she agreed,
defeating another candidate in the party’s primary on March
7th. From there, she hit the ground running.
With the help of her 15 or so volunteer and paid staffers, Benjamin
put on four radio ads challenging people to "think really different,"
two cable T.V. ads, a 10-day bus tour and a couple of super rallies
with Nader.
She called the Feinstein campaign once a week, "just to remind
them that I am here." She debated Tom Campbell and the slew
of other, even smaller, candidates, and staged a rowdy protest outside
the T.V. station where the Campbell/Feinstein debate was aired.
Over Campbell’s objections, she was excluded from both of the
debates that Feinstein only reluctantly agreed to.
She even published a short book called "I, Senator: How Together
We Transformed the State of California and the United States."
Modeled on Upton Sinclair’s 1933 book, "I, Governor, and
How I Ended Poverty," Medea’s book reflects on today’s
stalemated and corrupt political system from the year 2012, after
an economic collapse prompts the reinvention of government.
All this, and it took her getting arrested Monday night at a Feinstein
rally for the Los Angeles Times to give her lip service. The paper
mentioned her only four times over the course of the campaign, despite
glowing endorsements from major weeklies like the San Francisco
Bay Guardian and the LA Weekly.
But then, she never expected it to be an easy campaign. Whether
it was pleading with editorial boards to send a reporter out with
her or trying to get Feinstein to acknowledge her candidacy, Medea
was starting from the ground.
With no contributions from political action committees (PACs), her
team relied exclusively on individual donations.
According the Federal Election Commission filings for October, Medea
had garnered only $205,000 by the end of September, compared with
Feinstein’s $9.5 million and Campbell’s $4.3 million.
Nor did she have the benefit of an established party machine providing
back-up.
Campaigning also meant personal stress. She took six months off
her job at Global Exchange, relying on her husband to keep the kids
happy and the bills paid.
"My youngest daughter has been miserable," she said. "Well,
she’s a little better now because we finally let her get a
dog."
But however difficult and uncomfortable it got trying to squeeze
in where she was not wanted, this petite, blond fireball remained
undaunted.
"I really don’t think we are going to get the five percent
of the vote," she told supporters at a private fundraiser on
Thursday, referring to the five percent Nader needed to secure the
party federal matching funds for next election.
"We should not take it as defeat, but as another example of
the obstacles we need to overcome. We are building and we’ve
got to remember how difficult it is, and not be disappointed if
we don’t reach even our modest goals."
Even if they did get their five percent, the Greens still would
have a long way to go.
"Five percent is not a big deal," said Bruce Cain, Director
of the Institute for Government Studies at University of California,
Berkeley. "Eight to 10 percent is a big deal. At that level,
it starts to affect the outcome of races at various levels."
Despite their best efforts, the Greens will have to be satisfied
with more subtle political impacts.
"The system of winner takes all makes it highly unlikely they
will ever have large numbers of sitting members," said Cain.
"But the threat of taking votes away from Democratic candidates
will move the Democrats slightly to the left on environmental issues."
Fortunately, Medea’s measure of success isn’t limited
to election outcomes.
"We have exposed to a tremendous degree just how bad the system
is, just how many obstacles there are, how badly people want other
candidates to be included in debates, and how complicit the media
is in all of this," said Medea. "We’ve gotten the
dirt out, and now its time to start cleaning it up."
She is already turning her attention away from this election and
on to party building. The next steps, she said, are increasing voter
registration, reaching out to a larger constituency, forging new
coalitions, and campaigning for an independent debate commission.
Perhaps the hardest part will be mending the bonds with progressive
Democrats. In the last weeks leading up to the election, they ran
an intensive campaign to prevent Nader from tipping the scales in
the presidential race, running ads and spreading word that a vote
for Nader is a vote for Bush.
"What the Democrats are doing is really disgusting. There are
many places they could go to get votes, like to the half of the
population that doesn’t vote. To hear our friends trashing
the Greens has been very painful," Medea said.
Despite her commitment to the party, Medea’s name most likely
will not be on the ballot again.
"I hope to convince people on the local level to run for positions
that they could actually win," she said.
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