{news} Green Party candidates face hurdles

Sun Aug 27 15:11:11 EDT 2006

      Article created: 08/27/2006 04:43:11 AM EDT 

Green Party candidates face hurdles
      KEN DIXON dixon.connpost at snet.net<mailto:dixon.connpost at snet.net> 

     
      To say the statewide slate of Green Party candidates faces a tough election campaign underestimates the obstacles that Republican and Democratic domination have built in Connecticut since Henry Dutton, a Whig, was governor in 1855. 
      Political experts and observers say the 2,200-member Green Party, while addressing some major issues that concern state voters, cannot get its message out to enough people to overcome the massive media campaigns of the Republicans and Democrats. 

      But amid the expected cacophony of attack advertising in this year's quadrennial gubernatorial race and the sizzling-hot U.S. Senate campaign, the Greens will provoke Connecticut's electorate to think beyond traditional party politics. 

      The Green Party is under funded and expected to finish no better than a distant third in the fall races, but the party's top-of-the-ticket candidates hope to use the upcoming Senate and gubernatorial debates to frame public discussions on national security, health care and environmental issues. 

      Clifford W. Thornton Jr., 61, a retired Glastonbury businessman whose campaign centers on drug-policy reform, is leading a team of advocates from throughout the state who believe that mainstream politics has failed Connecticut and the nation, letting corporate interests dominate public policy at taxpayers' expense and detriment. Overshadowed by the recent gubernatorial primary - which, in turn, was drowned out by the uproar of the U.S. Senate primary contest between Sen. Joe Lieberman and upstart millionaire Ned Lamont - Thornton hopes to break into the electorate's consciousness during the upcoming debates with Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Democrat John DeStefano Jr. 

      That is, if he gets invited and the mainstream candidates agree. 

      Thornton may have an easier time than another petitioning gubernatorial candidate Joseph A. Zdonczyk of the Concerned Citizens Party, who received only 8,792 of the nearly one million votes cast in the 1998 election. 

      Ralph A. Ferrucci, a 34-year-old truck driver and artist from New Haven, is the Green's U.S. Senate candidate, who has the formidable task of getting voters to notice him. 

      The daily mud slinging of the Lamont-Lieberman race has also eclipsed former Derby mayor and little-known Republican Alan Schlesinger's attempt to gain traction beyond the 4 percent rating in the recent Quinnipiac University Poll. 

      Ferrucci believes that voters are ready to listen to someone talk about issues that really concern them, such as health care. 

      "I want to talk about a real universal health-care system," Ferrucci said recently. "A single-payer plans that takes insurance companies out of the system and makes health care the first priority." 

      He said that the way elections are financed, with special-interest money fueling mainstream campaigns such as Lieberman's, make the fight for healthcare access tougher. 

      "The problem is universal health care and campaign finance reform have to come together," Ferrucci said. "You have to take the lobbyists out of Washington, set up public financing instead of the insurance companies and pharmaceuticals financing the elections." 

      He believes that the attack ads hurling back and forth between Lamont and Lieberman are turning off the electorate. "I talking about the issues that people care about while these commercials attack each other on what they do not stand for, while ignoring most of the concerns of the working people in Connecticut." 

      ???????????????????? ? ? Thornton, the first African-American to run for governor, said during a recent interview that current national and statewide drug policy has created a wasteful prison culture that ensnares a disproportionate percentage of inner-city residents, let suburbanites off the hook and ignores the overriding need for better drug treatment. 

      "It's not that today's drug laws are racist, but it's the application that's racist," Thorton said. "What I'm talking about is the double standard for people in the justice system. Anyone that supports our present system is directly responsible for its results." 

      Thornton said that while initial signals seem to include him in the anticipated upcoming gubernatorial debates, he's concerned that Rell and DeStefano might work to keep he and other minor-party candidates like Zdonczyk, off the stage. 

      "We're hopeful and we're pushing," Thornton said. "We've appeared at a ton of places and we've been well received even by people who say that for years they've been Republicans or Democrats." 


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      He said that while the Lamont and Lieberman race has garnered national attention on Connecticut and the war in Iraq, the domestic war on drugs is being annoyed. 
      "Our own house is not in order and we're telling people about democracy around the world?" Thornton said, adding that his main platform is the "legalization, medicalization and decriminalization" of drugs including marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. 

      "Once we put the models in place at the same time, crime and violence is gone over night," Thornton said, adding that drug dealers would then be given chances to back to school and train for jobs. 

      "If one does not understand racism, classism, white privilege, terrorism and the war on drugs, what these terms mean and how these work, then everything else you do understand will only confuse you," he said. "The war on drugs is a world destabilizer. The most-pressing issue facing the state of Connecticut and this country is not the war in Iraq, and I respect the human toll the war has taken." 

      Thornton expects to run the campaign for $50,000 and to at least blaze a trail for future Green Party candidates. 

      "The true test of a real leader is how many leaders he creates in the process," Thornton said. "I'm not talking about Lamont Light, the Lieberman Light or any of those rich white boys. Going along to get along makes one complicit." 

      But political analysts and observers say that beyond adding some issues to the campaign, third parties in general and the Green Party in particular have little impact. 

      Since the mid-1850s, there are been only two minor-party governors, Alexander H. Holley in 1857 and 1858 of the American Republican Party and Lowell P. Weicker, who invented A Connecticut Party for his successful 1990 campaign. Otherwise, it has been a string of 31 Republicans and 15 Democrats. 

      Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said he doesn't include third-party candidates in telephone surveys unless they have prompted some amount of popularity. 

      "They have to show things like fund-raising, media coverage, participation in debates and other issues that they show they could significantly affect the outcome of the election," Schwartz said last week. "Historically, they have not performed well at the voting booths and they get scant attention in the news media." 

      Schwartz admitted that third parties can raise important issues that the mainstream politicians avoid. 

      Gary L. Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at Sacred Heart University, said last week that Weicker and other independents such as Ross Perot and Teddy Roosevelt, are the few exceptions to the rule that third-party candidates are doomed. 

      "And those who are successful often come out of the major parties," said Rose who teaches a class in political parties. Part of the problem for minor parties is that the two main parties write state and national election rules, he said. 

      "Even though we have a lot of independents out there, they usually identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats," Rose said. "It seems that the American people break into two broad political factions. The parties that have existed have also been broad enough to encapsulate the broad range of their interests." 

      Rose said the best that third parties can hope for is to shape the debate and possible force the mainstream pols to accept, or steal, their ideas. 

      "The Progressives raised the issues of civil-service reform, creating primary elections, providing Social Security and even minimum-wage legislation," Rose said. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt split from the Republican Party and formed the Progresive to run as independent president campaign nicknamed the "Bull Moose" party. 

      On Thornton's drug-reform proposal, Rose said he hasn't seen any polling data indicating that state residents are concerned about it. 

      "That's hardly front and center in either Connecticut or American politics today," Rose said. "I have serious doubts whether it gets traction in Connecticut." 
     
       
Thornton for Governor
PO Box 1971
Manchester, CT 06045
votethornton at yahoogroups.com<mailto:votethornton at yahoogroups.com>
www.votethornton.com<http://www.votethornton.com/>
860 657 8438-H
860 268 1294-C
860 778 1304-Tim Mckee-Campaign Manager
860 293 0222-Ken Krayeske-field Manager
Paid for by Thornton For Governor
Donna L. Byrne-Mckee, Treasure
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