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Although the
Green Party fell short of achieving its goal of receiving five percent
of the popular vote, local party officials last night defended their
controversial campaign and refused to take the blame for what appeared
to be George W. Bush’s impending presidential victory.
"This is not what we wanted, but this is an absolute wakeup
call to the rest of nation that the Green Party has to be taken
seriously," said Ross Mirkarimi, California director for Nader’s
campaign. He was addressing gloomy Greens at the party’s San
Francisco headquarters as an overhead television showed a crowd
waiting to hear Bush give what appeared to be an imminent acceptance
speech. A volunteer turned off the television as Mirkarimi said,
"We don’t want to listen to that."
Mirkarimi called for a liberal coalition with the Democratic Party
to offset apparent gains by the Republicans, who at that point last
night appeared to have taken control of the Congress and White House.
"This is the opportunity to bridge the divide between the left
progressives and the liberals," Mirkarimi said. "We really
have to band together."
His call for unity may not be well received by Democrats, who feared
Nader’s campaign, which early this morning had four percent
of the vote nationally, could take potential voters from Gore in
key states like Wisconsin and Oregon. In what has developed as the
closest presidential race in modern American history, the outcome
is still in doubt after news agencies across the country declared
Bush the winner, then rescinded that announcement early this morning
after the vote in Florida was found to be too close to call. Ballots
in Florida, whose 25 electoral votes will decide who wins the presidency,
will be recounted, state attorney general Bob Butterworth said.
Bush led Gore in the state by less than 1,000 votes early this morning.
Nader had 96,560 votes in Florida.
Susan King, the Northern California field coordinator for the Nader
campaign, speaking before Bush’s perceived win in Florida was
retracted, said Democrats could not blame Nader for a Gore loss,
but acknowledged they might not want to cooperate with the Greens.
"In the short term they’re going to be pretty pissed,"
King said. "But it will be misplaced anger." King said
blame for a Gore loss lay squarely with his campaign. "I think
he cruised," she said. "I don’t think he ran a good
campaign."
King, who called the results "dismal," sat dejectedly
at a table as the mood in the headquarters picked up. A jazz trio
kicked in as Green supporters sipped wine in plastic cups and began
to dance around the room. Many said that although they had not won
their five percent of the vote, they had started a shift in U.S.
politics that demonstrated grassroots parties could bring issues
to the national stage. They also said garnering 2.6 million votes
without accepting corporate donations or participating in the presidential
debates showed impressive mobilization and party strength.
"That we were able to do what we did was a pretty amazing thing,"
King said. "Now we’re farther along the road than we would
have been."
Falling short of the five percent threshold means the Greens will
have to do without federal election funds, which would have totaled
about $7.4 million for a five percent showing, in the 2004 presidential
campaign. Mirkarimi downplayed the significance of the funds. "That
was always a lofty goal," he said. "That was the holy
grail of politics."
One political observer said, however, that money was not the main
obstacle to the Green Party winning elections on the local, state
and national levels.
"It’s really our electoral system – our first-past-the-post
winner-take-all system – that reduces the chances of the Green
Party really developing as a third party alternative," said
Melissa Buis, an assistant professor in the Politics Department
at Willamette University in Oregon. "It’s much more likely
that the Democratic Party absorbs enough of the Green Party’s
issues in order to attract those voters. That’s traditionally
been the role of third parties, to raise issues that then the major
parties adopt."
Some Green Party supporters said they hope their movement will help
spur a Democratic Party shift to the left, but that they believe
the Greens will expand and remain a political force.
"It’s possible that the Democratic Party can be scared,
can be frightened into moving back to the left," said Jack
Brown, the California media coordinator for the Nader campaign.
"But I think a lot of people who are in the Green Party now
have abandoned the Democratic Party permanently."
Bill Kohlase, who said he was apolitical until he heard Nader address
an Earth Day gathering, said he could never be involved with the
Democratic or Republican parties. "They both represent people
who are corrupt – and people who aren’t me," he said.
"I’m looking at four years from now, eight years from
now, 20 years from now," Kohlase said. "I want to make
a real democracy, which we don’t have yet. This is a chance
to feel like you can make a difference, like there’s hope."
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