{news} Nancy Burton in The Redding Pilot

[David Bedell]

Burton seeks Green Party's nomination to run for state attorney general's post

The Redding Pilot, April 20, 2006

by ALEXANDRA FARSUN
afarsun@ acorn-online.com

Reddingite Nancy Burton is a Green Party nominee to run for state attorney general. Ms. Burton will attend the party's convention on April 22 in New Haven for an official decision about her nomination and others for Green Party candidates.

Ms. Burton is an environmental activist and founder of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone, and a public interest attorney.

"This year, for the first time, the Green Party of Connecticut, an expanding political force, is running candidates for state and federal offices," said Ms. Burton. "I was invited to be considered for a run for attorney general."

She is not presently licensed in the state of Connecticut to be an attorney, because she was disbarred from practicing law for five years in 2001, Ms. Burton said. While she has been disbarred from practicing law in Connecticut, she can still practice in federal and New York courts. Her term of disbarment will be up a few days before the election in November, she said. She would not automatically be reinstated, but rather she would need to apply to have her license reinstated in Connecticut.

If she were to win the party's nomination, and the election, she would potentially be qualified under the state statute to act as the public's attorney, Ms. Burton said.

She wears her disbarment as "a badge of honor and am currently taking steps to challenge what happened. I am very confident that one day soon I will be fully vindicated," she said.

Ms. Burton was a lifelong Democrat but changed her party affiliation in the summer 2004 when the Green Party invited her to be its candidate for a state representative's seat on the Green Party line. She successfully petitioned to get on the ballot but lost to the incumbent, Rep. John Stripp.

After giving it some thought, Ms. Burton said she accepted the party's request to be considered as its attorney general candidate.

"I believe strongly that all public officials should be subject to a to a time of scrutiny and that elections provide the opportunity to hold our elected representatives publicly accountable for their conduct during their preceding term," she said. "I fully recognize that (Attorney General Richard) Blumenthal is enormously popular, and, in fact, much of what he has stood for during his distinguished career, I fully endorse. I believe it's really a civic obligation for the political process to engage an elected official in public debate," she said. "Someone needs to do that. I've been invited to do so, and I decided, why not me?" she said.

Ms. Burton said she does not agree with some of the positions Mr. Blumenthal has taken, especially over litigation involving the Millstone nuclear power plant.

"One of my accomplishments was to persuade a judge to keep one of the reactors shut during larvae migration in the spring," she said. "On these fronts, Blumenthal was on the other side of the table with the corporate owners of the plant," she said.

Ms. Burton said another reason for her acceptance of the nominations is the same as her reasoning behind running for the state representative seat - to raise awareness of nuclear dangers since the state has two nuclear power plants on either end.

"Since 1988, I have been principally engaged in public interest campaigns," she said. Ms. Burton said if the party chooses her as its candidate this Saturday, she would use the candidacy as a platform to raise public awareness "for the urgent need to shut down nuclear menaces."

Ms. Burton earned her law degree from Brooklyn Law School and her bachelor's degree from New York University. She did graduate work at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Division of Historic Preservation, and earned a Homeland Security Certificate through the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. She also holds a certificate from Women's Campaign School at Yale University.

She served as a judge in the Toxics Action Center Dirty Dozen Awards and was honored by People's Action for Clean Energy for accomplishments in public-interest environmental litigation. She is co-founder of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone, "has litigated successfully to enforce environmental protection laws, combat racism, eliminate gender discriminations and protect the rights of children," led a petition drive that resulted in the permanent preservation of Redding's Crossfields and is "a judicial whistleblower, 1985-present." She is a member of Greenpeace and the Redding League of Women Voters.

Ms. Burton and her husband, William Honan, are the parents of three adult children.

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