{news} Cliff and Margaret in Hartford Courant

[David Bedell]

courant.com
http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-susan0827.artaug27,0,3599039.column

It's Not Always Easy Being Green Party Candidate

Susan Campbell
August 27 2006

Margaret Thornton is wearing tiny peace-sign earrings and well-worn 
Birkenstocks, but it's not what you think. She's staying with a daughter 
who's a wildlife rehabilitator, and if she's pitching in to care for the 
wounded birds and animals, that's not what you think, either. She is simply 
being helpful.

Besides, says Margaret Thornton, laughing, "I'm too old to be a hippie."

You have to say that up front when your husband is the Green Party candidate 
for governor and people's notions about that party are so askew - and 
entrenched. (For some perspective, read the commentary outside of 
Connecticut about the state's Democratic Party. Did you know that since the 
Democratic primary, George McGovern's people have come back from the grave 
and are ready to party? That's not true, of course. Senatorial candidate Ned 
Lamont is no more a lefty than I am the Queen of May, but there you are: The 
chattering class has spoken.)

Clifford Thornton is the Greens' first gubernatorial candidate, and he is 
not strictly a hippie, either. He is a former phone company executive and a 
product of Hartford's North End whose mother died of a heroin overdose when 
he was a senior at Hartford High.

Thornton is a former Breck girl, the daughter of a West Hartford lawyer. She 
grew up playing piano and bridge. They've been married 19 years and have 
five daughters - parents themselves, students going for their masters' 
degrees, teachers and a police officer - between them. This is the second 
marriage for both.

She and her husband co-founded Efficacy, an organization that works to 
reform the country's drug policies. The Thorntons say the war on drugs is 
actually a war on people - mostly the disenfranchised- and that what keeps 
it going despite its manifest failure is that it profits people in power. 
Efficacy grew out of a radio show the Thorntons started 10 years ago on 
WWUH-FM (91.3). The show was a public-affairs program, but the conversation 
kept circling back to the country's misbegotten handling of illegal drugs.

The death of Clifford Thornton's mother helped shape his opinion. Margaret 
came to her own as she did research for the show.

"When you make drugs illegal, the drugs are controlled by criminals," she 
says. "They will never go away."

But that is not the candidate's only issue. Clifford Thornton also talks 
about jobs - the need for more, and the need for a living wage. He says a 
state lottery should pay for college educations. Politics was not in their 
plans, but "I feel people should do what they have a passion for," Margaret 
Thornton says.

She acknowledges that at this point if your name isn't M. Jodi Rell, a 
Connecticut gubernatorial campaign looks quixotic. Rell's approval rating is 
overwhelmingly high, and the two-party political system keeps rolling along 
like the bloated tick that it is. Since Lowell Weicker's A Connecticut 
Party, breaking in as a third-party candidate - an alternative to politics 
as usual - has been nearly impossible. Never mind Team Lieberman. U.S. Sen. 
Joseph Lieberman lost the Democratic primary not because of the party he 
belongs to, but because his politics didn't jibe with the those of most 
Democrats in the state. Thornton's campaign is entirely different. He has 
said that the state needs politicians willing to make the tough decisions 
that might lose them elections.

So far, Margaret Thornton's work has mostly been behind the scenes. She will 
not perfect that political-spouse look, where spouses stand on a stage 
looking at the candidate as a hungry dog would gaze at a biscuit, but she's 
already thinking of her role as the wife of the new governor. She'd like to 
bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots, particularly among children. 
If children know each other as friends, they can't very well turn on one 
another later.

But if things don't go that way - if Connecticut continues to vote along 
party lines for its governor - Margaret Thornton will be fine.

"We can't lose," she says. "He's got a platform to say some of the things he 
believes. People will listen to him."


E-mail: campbell@ courant.com

Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant