Every too often Ben Mieklejohn makes a public utterance that the Maine Green Independent Party should ... get in bed with the Maine Republican Party.
In the last cycle there were some districts were the Democrats weren't even thinking of running candidates. The Green political leadership suggested to their Democratic counterparts that in those legislative races, with a strong Republican incumbant and no apparent Democratic challenger, that Democrats get behind a Green candidate, and that in areas with close races between Republicans and openly progressive Democrats, the Greens would withdraw their candidates. John Eder had been elected to the House from the Downtown/West End in the previous cycle, becoming the first Green nationally to hold a seat in a state legislature. Reapportionment, always a political process, had placed John and Ed Suslovic, the Democrate elected from Rosemont/West End, in a two-incumbants-running-for-one-seat-race for the new West End district. Ed was a decent enough Portland Democrat incumbant,
There were quite a few such districts. In one district the Democratic political leadership put up an apple farmer who had no intention of even campaigning due to the fall harvest coninciding with election season.
The Democrats responded "Sure, we'll do that. We'll let you run candidates in Aroostock County, if you don't run any candidates in Portland."
Portland has few close races between Democrats and Republicans, the close races are between Demcrats and Green. It was an unreasonable counter-offer, but the reasoning was that they didn't trust the Party's number two man -- Zen Ben chaired the Maine Green Independent Party and had been elected to the Portland Schools Committee in the previous cycle, becoming after John Eder, the second highest elected Green in Maine.
The result was three sororicidal races in Portland -- Eder v Suslovic, Adams v Spencer, and Dudley v Cragin, the defeat of a progressive in the Harlow v Trice race, and a large number of unconstested races for seats held by Republicans in districts with 2/3rds non-Republican registration outside of Portland.
This week Reinhard Bütikofer and Claudia Roth, co-presidents of die Grüne, the German Green Party, declined the overtures of the Christian Democratic Union (Conservative), to form a coalition government with neoliberals ideologically and materially hostile to ecology. The European press had been running amok with speculation about a "Jamaican Coaltion", refering to the colors of the flag of that country -- black/yellow/green -- a coalition of conservatives CDU-CSU (black), liberals (warning: European meaning of the word) FDP (yellow) and the Greens (green). Rather than enter into a CDU-lead government, the Greens are going into the opposition.
There are three choices for Maine's Greens in the next cycle:
- Contest all districts
- Contest all progressive/liberal districts
- Contest only those districts held by a non-progressive, or where a Green is the incumbant, or the seat is open
Now that we're freed from having to run a fratricidal state-wide race to maintain ballot access, and Zen Ben has moved on down the food-chain from Party Chair to "local group organizer", we need to think about how Greens and Progressive Dems talk to, or campaign against, each other, and what we want out of winning.
Google key: Green Party, John Eder, Elizabeth Trice, Maine, Competitive campaigns, campaign strategy
Posted by EBW at September 24, 2005 08:00 AM