{news} Green Thumbs Up

[clifford thornton]

We are getting the press, this article also appeared in the New Haven paper as well.  There was an article last week in the Waterbury Republican.  There will be five such articles in the next week or so. I will be on face the state this Sunday 18th. Tom Monahan's channel 30 on the 30th.  So let us write letters to the editor.   

http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content.html?oid=oid:158633<http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content.html?oid=oid:158633>

Green Thumbs Up
Connecticut´s Green Party revs up with Cliff Thornton´s bid for the governor´s chair on a drug decriminalization platform 

by Adam Bulger<http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/archives/index?author=oid:79076> - June 15, 2006 

            NICK LACY PHOTO 
              
            Cliff Thornton, the Green Party candidate for governor.  
     
Derek Slap, spokesman for John DeStefano´s bid for governor, said he hadn´t paid much attention to Cliff Thornton´s campaign. 
The New Haven mayor is considered more progressive than Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy his rival for the Democratic Party´s gubernatorial nomination and I thought DeStefano´s campaign might be watching Thornton, the Green Party candidate for governor. 

Slap noted, positively, that Thornton is the first African-American to run for governor in the state, and said that after looking at Thornton´s website, he had a sense of déjà vu. 

¨On the major planks here, I think there are a lot of similarities between what the Green Party cares about and what John DeStefano cares about,¨ Slap said, noting that the campaigns line up on health care, election reform, death-penalty opposition and medical marijuana. 

But Hartford native and Glastonbury resident Thornton, a long-time drug legalization advocate and first-time political candidate, saw a clear distinction between his campaign and the campaigns of DeStefano and Malloy. 

¨I´m not insane. They´re insane,¨ Thornton said. Their insanity, he said, stems from support of drug prohibition. 

¨DeStefano and Malloy are applying the same tactics that have been employed for almost a century, in and around drug prohibition. We have had almost a century of the war on drugs,¨ Thornton said. ¨Yet there are more drugs selling for cheaper prices on our streets than ever before. Would you say it´s time to look at something different than what we´ve been doing?¨ 

Through the organization Efficacy, which Thornton ran with his wife Margaret until he accepted the Green Party´s nomination in April, Thornton clocked in a decade advocating drug legalization in the U.S., Canada, England and New Zealand. He bristled at the notion that he was a one-note candidate, though. 

¨There are a lot of other things. I´m against the death penalty, I´m for the estate tax. I have a universal health care plan,¨ Thornton said. 



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Thornton´s race is part of the Green Party´s first bid for statewide office. New Haven political activist Ralph Ferrucci, who ran for New Haven mayor in 2003, is running for Senate, and officials within the Green Party said they are looking for candidates for all state offices. With approximately $20,000 in their campaign war chest, the Greens have more resources than ever before. But they still have work to do. 

¨We´re a party that´s in the process of rebuilding, quite frankly. We´ve had an office we haven´t had a chance to fully staff,¨ Tim McKee, Thornton´s campaign manager, said. In order to get Thornton on the ballot, the Greens need 15,000 signatures by Aug. 9. McKee said they currently have just under 1,000. 

Meanwhile, the party is still reeling from defections and from a divisive 2004 election. 

¨I think people know that the 2004 presidential race split us quite a bit. Locally, people like [New Haven alderwoman] Joyce Chen switched and became a Democrat. [Hartford City Council member] Elizabeth Horton-Sheff left because she thought we were talking too much about international issues like the war. Quite frankly, this is the first time we´ve had to talk about statewide issues,¨ McKee said. 

Thornton was optimistic about the race. 

¨We´re going to win. We´re not going to place or show. It´s not about how Rell is untouchable or how we´re taking votes away from the Democrats. But if we do, so be it. They´re not doing shit anyway,¨ Thornton said. 


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