[statecom] III. State Legisl & Ballot Questions

[Mike Heichman]

mikeheichman at verizon.net wrote:

>State Legislative & Ballot Questions, 2008
>Proposal to the April State Comm. Meeting
>
>Mike Heichman
>mikeheichman at verizon.net
>617-265-8143
>
>
>Will 2007 be a year of growth for our party? Will we improve our financial
>situation? Will we strengthen existing 
>chapters, rebuild old ones and create new ones across the state? 
>
>Will our party participate in the process of supporting the US Green
>Party’s effort to run a presidential ticket? Will we 
>find a candidate to run for the US Senate and for Congress? To the extent
>that our party will say “yes” to these 
>questions, how much energy will we have for more local electoral campaigns?
>
>
>I.	State Legislature
>
>If we say “NO” to the above, then we potentially will have far more energy
>and resources to run more local races. In 
>this case, we should decide early that we will focus our efforts locally
>and come up with an early and organized 
>campaign to recruit and train many candidates and campaign workers.
>
>If we decide to focus on the “bigger” picture, I believe that we should
>then prioritize our attention and support in 
>recruiting candidates where we have an existing chapter or at least a
>strong base.
>
>Once again the key is to start early. Ideally, many of our candidates will
>surface and begin to organize in the next 
>couple of months and no later than the end of this year.
>
>II.	Ballot Questions
>
>I strongly believe that this is NOT the year for our party to play a major
>role in promoting a STATEWIDE ballot 
>question. Even if we were to decide that this would be our major focus, I
>believe that this would be an enormous 
>project and beyond the scope of our party’s current size and strength. On
>the other hand, I think that it would be an 
>excellent idea to join other ballot question efforts, where our party could
>play minor roles. In doing this, we could 
>improve our efforts in working in coalitions in support of or in opposition
>to issues that are important/crucial to 
>many of the constituencies that we want to strengthen our ties.
>
>I believe that Ron’s proposal for our party to initiate local ballot
>question(s) has a lot of merit. Additionally, one of 
>the positive things that Ron is doing is organizing early. 
>
>I believe that the fewer the questions the better. The best might be for us
>to see if we could unite behind one issue. 
>We will be more effective and it will be easier if we are working on one
>campaign. We can set up a statewide effort 
>(fundraising, literature, publicity, coalition building, etc.) that will
>work with our local groups to put the question on 
>the ballot and conduct a campaign in their legislative districts.
>
>Grace has argued in support of working on mandatory local initiatives
>instead of an advisory state legislative 
>question. I think that this idea has both some strengths and weaknesses. I
>believe that both Ron and Grace’s ideas 
>should be explored. I do not see them as being mutually exclusive.
>
>III.	Combined State Legislative & Ballot Question Campaign
>
>I think that the best approach would be to encourage our local chapters
>(and locations where we have a strong base) 
>to run a combined campaign-to both run a candidate and to support the GRP
>“statewide” question.
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