{news} Nick Berg's father to seek U.S. House seat in Delaware (as a Green!) please forward

[Green Party-CT]

  Posted on Mon, Jan. 23, 2006
  Nick Berg's father to seek U.S. House seat in Del.  Green Party peace candidate Michael Berg, whose son was beheaded in Iraq, will oppose seven-term Rep. Mike Castle.  By Sandy Bauers  Inquirer Staff Writer  Michael Berg, father of independent contractor Nick Berg, who was beheaded in Iraq in 2004, is turning his emotional antiwar crusade into a political battle against one of Delaware's most popular elected officials.
  The retired West Chester teacher, who moved to Wilmington in May, is expected to become the Green Party candidate for Delaware's lone U.S. House seat when the party's coordinating council votes tonight.
  "My head count says we're good to go," John Atkeison, the party's Delaware chairman, said last week.
  Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, a former two-term governor, has held the seat for seven terms. He won 69 percent of the vote in 2004 and has a 70 percent approval rating, according to a Republican Party spokeswoman.
  Berg, 60, last fall expressed his interest in running on a platform focused on his antiwar views.
  The videotaped murder of Berg's 26-year-old son, who was kidnapped by Islamic insurgents, shocked an international audience. Berg blamed White House policy in Iraq and received wide media attention for his accusation that his son "died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld."
  Berg turned his anguish into a plea for peace and an end to what he sees as a cycle of political retribution. His run for office, he said, is inspired by his activism.
  "The biggest choice that I expect to give people is... whether they want to have war or peace," Berg said last week.
  Only 621 of Delaware's 545,000 registered voters are members of the Green Party. Atkeison said Berg, however, would have strength among voters disenchanted with the major parties.
  Scott McLarty, national media coordinator for the Green Party, called the Delaware race the Greens' "flagship" campaign in 2006. The liberal grass-roots party supports the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
  Even if Berg loses, Atkeison said, the publicity from the race could have an impact.
  Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, who met Berg in July, said that while a Berg victory was "a very long shot," Castle "might wind up sweating a bit."
  Berg's candidacy could force debate about Iraq throughout the campaign, Solomon said.
  Asked to summarize Castle's position on the war, Priscilla B. Rakestraw, national committeewoman for the Delaware GOP, said only that he had "always been supportive of the war on terror."
  Rakestraw said Castle "takes every election seriously." She said she expected most of Berg's votes to come from Democrats, however.
  "All of us empathize with his grief," she said, "but he has a mighty challenge ahead of him."
  The Democrats have not yet selected a candidate.
  Besides name recognition - "the most of any of our candidates outside of Ralph Nader," Atkeison said - the Delaware party chairman cited Berg's "stealth charisma."
  "He's an ordinary guy, a high school teacher," he said. "But when he tells the story of what he went through, he just gets you. He's very inspiring."
  Berg has ties to the national and international peace movements. He has traveled and spoken in South Korea, France and England and has been arrested for civil disobedience several times at demonstrations.
  He doubts the arrests will be an issue. "I don't think people see me as criminal," Berg said. "I think they see me as a man of principle."
  So far, the lone position on his campaign Web site is his opposition to the war.
  "I was against war in 1965," Berg wrote. "I was against it in 1991. I was against it in 2003. And I have been especially against it since May 10, 2004, when I learned that my son Nick, who had been in Iraq to help with the reconstruction effort, had been brutally murdered. The cost of war is too high."
  Last week, Berg said he would also focus on jobs, education, national health insurance, and the environment - areas he feels have suffered due to the distraction and expense of the conflict in Iraq.
  Though Molly Jurusik, executive director of the Democratic Party in Delaware, said she was unaware of it, Berg said the Democrats initially had approached him.
  He wasn't interested in being their candidate. "They would be saying, 'Well, you don't want to come out against the war. That would be unpopular,' " Berg said.
  "I don't think the Democratic Party knows how the people feel... . The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, knows how the corporations feel."
  He plans to meet voters by "touring the state on my bike," said Berg, who rides about 20 miles a day. He'll signal his difference from the major parties by campaigning in his signature outfit - jeans and an antiwar T-shirt.
  "I consider the suit and the tie the sheep's clothing that the wolves wear," said Berg, speaking on a cell phone as he pedaled along Route 52 north of Wilmington.
  "That's kind of what's wrong with Congress right now... . They should all be wearing overalls and jeans. Who do they think they're representing?"
  It seems certain Berg's wife will not campaign publicly for him. Suzanne Berg, an intensely private woman, was outraged by the nearly weeklong presence of reporters outside the couple's home when Nick was killed.
  "I know that America wants to see a family man," Berg said, "but because I am a family man, I won't be posing my wife next to me... . I care about her too much to expose her to that kind of pain. She's had enough pain."
      
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  Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 610-701-7635 or sbauers at phillynews.com. 

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