[GNC] Re: FWD: RIGGED CONVENTION DIVIDES GREEN PARTY

[Owen Broadhurst]

One error made by Mr. Hill and Ms. Miller that few will notice: Lorna Salzman at the time of the Massachusetts primary had announced an intention to seek the nomination. Even
though she did back the Nader campaign, she was not always averse to the notion of being the party nominee. Her position shifted along with the possibilities of her posing a major challenge in terms of delegates. HER POSITION ON SEEKING THE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION DID NOT CHANGE UNTIL AFTER THE PRIMARIES, WHEN FLOOR RULES WERE PASSED ELIMINATING POSSIBLE COMPROMISE CANIDATES- FLOOR RULES PASSED AFTER THE DELEGATE COUNTS WERE KNOWN. Ultimately, her goal for her campaign was to raise ecological consciousness within the party. Her radical environmental advocacy secured the MOST votes for her.

"I decided to seek the GP nomination for president for one reason: to promote an ecological vision and and environmental program within the Green Party, and by so doing to help bring environmental activists and the broader environmental community into our party. This constituency has been prominently absent, as several Greens have observed, and I believe that the Green Party has been remiss in its public statements and actions. This needs to be redressed and my campaign is intended to do this."

The authors therefore leave a mistaken impression of the Massachusetts primary vote by suggesting that it was primarily the perception of her being a "Nader stand-in" that motivated turnout for her. That is categorically false. A significant portion of the vote for her resulted from both her being the one woman candidate on our ballot and also her being a determined, relentless and radical environmental activist. There was a more clearly obvious Nader stand-in in the person of Paul Glover, who was on our ballot. Write-in votes had also been counted (where possible).

This article furthermore suggests that Lorna Salzman had a convincing victory within Massachusetts. She did well in our state ( and I certainly tried my hardest to promote her candidacy here), but she had but one more delegate than David Cobb based on calculations that were truly based on proportional representation. Furthermore, the recorded vote clearly suggests that the contest in Massachusetts was not truly between Cobb and Salzman but rather between Cobb, Salzman and no preference at all. Each had close to one quarter the recorded vote, roughly. No preference was the genuine "winner"
with 27% of the votes recorded. Representing 28% of the recorded vote also was the
combined recorded vote for Glover, Mesplay plus the recorded write-in votes. Some write-ins had not been counted.

It should also be noted that, in the GRP, not all of our rank and file actually has the privilege of being able to vote. In fact, a portion of our membership is not registered to vote. Those who do not, or cannot, register, secure party membership via the payment of dues. It therefore cannot truly be said that the vote was completely reflective of the party's true makeup. The authors ( Mr. Hill and Ms. Miller) are therefore mistaken in assuming that the voting members constitute the party's entire rank and file. This was a dilemma for us.

It should also be noted that Massachusetts was certainly one state, at least, where candidates indeed HAD been invited to select their own delegates. That's how I was selected. Massachusetts had also bound delegates to the candidates throughout all rounds of voting- that is, our delegates were not released until the candidate released them.

None of this seems to be mentioned in the noted article (eg. Hill and Miller), and-
furthermore- should the noted article's authors imagine that California should alone select the nominee, well, I could not more vociferously disagree. There were many flaws in the credentialing rules, but the covention's failure to let California delegates control the whole entire nominating process was not one of them- no matter how these authors protest.

================

That said, I do have comments on some of the remarks made by Dean Myerson and Jack Urich!

Jack Urich suggested that Camejo made a "false promise" to run for President. In fact, Camejo NEVER promised to run for President, period.

Dean Myerson was absolutely correct to take note of low turnout in party primaries. It is disingenuous for Mr. Hill and Ms. Miller to suggest that primary votes are representative of Green opinion. In fact, they're representative of primary voters opinions. There's a difference.

Dean Myerson is incorrect to suggest that Camejo made any false claims about running for president, and is also wrong to suggest that Salzman made any such claims (for reasons I've already noted: e.g. Salzman's views on running for president did not change until AFTER floor rules eliminating compromise candidates had been adopted).

I believe Gil is correct to suggest that Green analysis has at least the potential to be more radical than classical socialist analysis, but would add the provision that such be eco-feminist Green analysis with an eco-socialist component.

Regarding New Mexico politics, I do not believe Jack Urich is correct that Carol Miller can alone be blamed for problems. Quite frankly, from what I have read of Martin Zehr's accounts, fanatical and undemocratic ABB forces in the party may bear MOST of the blame for that party's problems at this time. Martin Zehr's accounts may be found on the greensnotdems list at Yahoo! groups. I can forward accounts to those interested.

BTW: Gil should know that Buchanan and the Buchananites are simply no longer involved in what little is left of the Reform Party that they conspired with the Newmanites to destroy. As for Nader taking Republican money, he has also taken Democratic and Green money. That hardly matters to me. What matters is that our campaign is against the two-party duopoly. The Nader campaign is not our genuine enemy here.

Both credentialing rules and floor rules left a LOT to be desired, and they must be reformed. As we react with appropriate anger towards the Hill and Miller disinformation campaign, we must not ignore that a kernel of truth does exist in SOME of their observations about credentialing and the conduct of the convention.

Owen Broadhurst

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gil Obler" <greengil at comcast.net>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 21:16:57 -0400
To: <natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org>, <forrest_hill at comcast.net>
Subject: [GNC] Re: FWD: RIGGED CONVENTION DIVIDES GREEN PARTY

Re: 
Re: 	Mr. Hill and Ms. Miller -
Re: 
Re: 	What a boatload of bullcrap. Here's a dose of reality for you.
Re: 
Re: 	First a point about the allegations that we have sold out our
Re: 	values. That Nader is fundi and Cobb is realo. Nuh uh.
Re: 
Re: 	Part of what Nader pulled here is to distance himself from our
Re: 	"radical agenda" but then try to sell us his followers are the
Re: 	"true left" of the party. Well someone told me that the true
Re: 	radical notion of our party was "neither left nor right but
Re: 	forward". And I think that the Green analysis is more radical
Re: 	than socialism (let alone bourgeois consumer activism - which
Re: 	is all Nader EVER represented) because it rejects the industrial
Re: 	revolution, not just capitalism. So that would make mainstream
Re: 	socialists our right wing anyway.
Re: 
Re: 	The convention result was not a case of insider conspiracy,
Re: 	it is a simple case of growing up and rejecting a BATTERING
Re: 	relationship. Did activists have more influence than the
Re: 	average Green voter? Probably. What representative democracy
Re: 	does not have that problem? Sour grapes are no prettier when
Re: 	couched in self-righteous indignation.
Re: 
Re: 	Mr. Nader and his pals have been selling some pretty smelly
Re: 	stuff here. Mr. Nader wants to sleep with whomever he pleases,
Re: 	the Reform Party of Patrick Buchanan, the Populist Party
Re: 	501c4, the Republicans who are funding his ballot drives, and
Re: 	the not-so-secret meetings with Terry McAuliffe. Who has been
Re: 	selling out who here?
Re: 	
Re: 	But we Greens are supposed to remain monogamous. We are BAD for
Re: 	flirting with Cobb and Mesplay and Glover, even though they
Re: 	actually try to live our values.
Re: 
Re: 	Mr. Nader can insult us at parties in front of our friends. He
Re: 	can refuse to run in our primaries and caucuses. He can mock
Re: 	and disparage us in the press. He can refuse to meet with us
Re: 	when we ask to talk things out. He can renege on promises to
Re: 	share data that our members gathered for him in 1996 and 2000.
Re: 
Re: 	He can insult our intelligence and confuse our voters by having
Re: 	a mishmash of apparently opposing candidates actually fronting
Re: 	for him (remind you of a certain farm that Orwell wrote about?).
Re: 
Re: 	He can refuse us even the courtesy of showing up in Milwaukee
Re: 	to ask for our pledge of loyalty. He couldn't even FAX us his
Re: 	proposal from the strip club.
Re: 
Re: 	Be we owe him our blind loyalty and allegiance. We are supposed
Re: 	to deliver him our pledge of monogamous loyalty, even though he
Re: 	won't actually give us a ring. We are BAD for wanting respect
Re: 	and reciprocity.
Re: 
Re: 	And he can batter us, yes, beat the crap out of us, by causing
Re: 	us to lose ballot status in several states when we run him as
Re: 	independent rather than as a party nominee. Oh, and should he
Re: 	rate 5% and get matching funds in 2008, that is his pot of gold,
Re: 	not the party's - no common law marriage here - thank you (talk
Re: 	about a patriarchal wet dream). And he can punch us, tear us
Re: 	apart with a scorched earth politics, for daring to leave him.
Re: 
Re: 	But we are BAD partners for not taking the abuse with gratitude
Re: 	and telling the press, "we got that bruise from the Democrats".
Re: 
Re: 	Well, Ms. Miller and Mr. Hill, I hope you don't give the same
Re: 	shitty advice to your girlfriends that you give to your party.
Re: 
Re: 	Otherwise, the Green Party may have discovered its own Phyllis
Re: 	Schlafly and Bill McCartney.
Re: 
Re:                Gil Obler
Re:                GRP Alternate (MA), USGP Coordinating Committee
Re:                Middlesex Delegate, Green-Rainbow Party State Committee