{news} (Hartford Courant)"Green (Party) With Envy

[Green Party-CT]

Green (Party) With Envy 

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       -->April 9 2006

Michael DeRosa, 61, helped form Connecticut's Green Party 10 years ago, "and it's been an odyssey ever since," he says. The sometimes candidate and full-time reformer is currently focused on pushing for changes to Connecticut's newly passed campaign finance reform law. The Wethersfield resident works as the community affairs director for WWUH Radio (91.3 FM) and hosts his own show, New Focus (newfocusradio.org). He spoke to NE Assistant Editor Paul Stern about his views on campaign finance reform.

Q1 Does Connecticut's new campaign-finance reform law give third-party candidates the same opportunity as Democrats and Republicans?

The present campaign finance reform law discriminates against third party and independent candidates by requiring them to gather the signatures of 10 percent to 20 percent of the people who voted in the last election, while exempting the major parties from this requirement. Third parties are not allowed any money for primaries, whereas the major parties do get funding for this.

The Green Party as well as the major parties would, of course, also have to gather a large number of small donations under this law. Third parties in Connecticut are not allowed permanent ballot-access status. Getting the nomination of a third party is not automatic either.

The major parties are trying to limit voters' choices and reduce the ability of the Green Party to get its message out. We believe that all of this violates the 14th Amendment equal protection clause and many other rulings by the courts in the past. To put it another way - all parties are equal in Connecticut, but some parties are more equal than others.

Q2 If you could fix one element of the campaign reform law, what would it be?

We need to eliminate the 20 percent petitioning requirement. We need to have a level playing field for all political parties. There are no petitioning requirements in the Maine or Arizona clean election laws, and there were not any in the Massachusetts law before they repealed it. So why is it needed here in Connecticut? The reason is to game the system and make it difficult for third parties and others to be part of the political process.

Elections are supposed to be about issues and ideas. Elections are the purest form of First Amendment protected speech. Our elections have become auctions between two parties that are mirror images of each other. The Green Party supports campaign-finance reform. But this is not campaign-finance reform; it is campaign-finance deform. What we are looking for is equal protection under the law and we intend to get it.

Q3 How should the state go about controlling the influence of lobbyists and political action groups on state government?

I think that the Maine and Arizona laws are a great model that Connecticut could have used, but instead Connecticut's law allows "clean" election candidates [who agree to take money from the state's Clean Election fund] to take additional money from state party PACs and "leadership PACs" for in-kind donations that include radio and TV ads. I thought the idea was to limit the amount of money and give outsiders a chance to challenge incumbency. The problem of incumbency is not addressed by this law. On the contrary, some critics have called it the "no-incumbent-left-behind law."

Q4 Realistically, how much likelihood is there of the major party legislators giving independent and third-party candidates an equal opportunity to run for office and share power?

There is no such thing as the two-party system. There is only the two most popular parties. Right now they are not listening to third parties like the Green Party about issues like campaign-finance reform. But they forget that it is the voters who put them where they are. Sooner or later we are all going to wake up from the political amnesia of recent years, and if third parties keep their eye on the prize, we will begin to win elections in the Connecticut legislature.

We also have a chance to challenge a lot of these laws in the courts. The kind of discrimination that this law applies to third parties is a violation of the Helsinki agreements that the U.S. signed.

It is up to us to educate the electorate about what is really going on in Hartford, not only about campaign finance reform, but about other issues that affect their lives. That's why we are running an entire slate of candidates for statewide offices in November if we're given half a chance.   Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant 
  
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