{news} (Boston Globe Mass Gov. Race) Undaunted Green-Rainbow's Ross meets the people

[Green Party-CT]

Green-Rainbow candidate Grace Ross spoke with Verizon employee Jim Beggan last week in Boston. (Barry Chin/ Globe Staff)   Undaunted, Green-Rainbow's Ross meets the people      Boston Globe      Grace Ross 's political machine is small, and the state has downgraded its status from ''party" to ''political designation."            May 7, 2006  -->   THE TRAIL REPORT
  Undaunted, Green-Rainbow's Ross meets the people  May 7, 2006
  Grace Ross's political machine is small, and the state has downgraded its status from ''party" to ''political designation."
  But the Green-Rainbow candidate for governor takes it all in stride.
  ''I think if you ask where the Democrats or Republicans were in their fourth year of existence, you might have a reasonable comparison," she said as she headed toward a union rally for Verizon workers last week.
  Ross, 44, a community organizer from Worcester, until recently ran Sisters Together Ending Poverty, a nonprofit organization. She says she has 150 people on her campaign committee, and is undaunted that every other candidate, except for Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, is a millionaire. ''I've decided that I am uniquely qualified to run," she said. ''I actually know what most people face day to day, trying to pay the rent."
  After earning a bachelor's and master's degree from Harvard, Ross made her first foray into politics in the mid-1980s when she joined Nuclear Free Cambridge, which campaigned to ban research that could be used in the making of nuclear weapons.
  ''We got creamed," she said. ''The funding of the other side was a who's who of the nuclear industry of the US."
  To qualify as a state-recognized political party, a political organization must receive 3 percent in a statewide election. Green gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein just met the threshold in 2002. But the party's 2004 presidential ticket, David Cobb and Pat LaMarche, won only .36 percent of the vote, dropping the Greens (now Green-Rainbows) back to ''political designation," a status it shares with 18 other groups, according to the secretary of state's website.
  In recent months, Ross has crisscrossed Massachusetts in her blue 2003 Prius, talking to people about affordable housing, education funding, global warming, and ending corporate tax breaks. She has attended no fewer than four Earth Day celebrations. (Her campaign was scheduled to represent her at Wake Up the Earth in Boston yesterday, but Ross decided to attend Northampton Pride instead.)
  At the Verizon rally, union leaders hollered into microphones, and actors in sumo wrestler costumes pretended to reenact contract battles. Ross circulated, handing out her (green) campaign brochures, explaining that during the last round of Verizon negotiations, she helped workers learn how to get health insurance in case of a strike.
  The workers accepted the brochures, with puzzled looks. A few nodded and smiled. ''I think people have a desire to see someone more like them win," she said.
  Patrick takes lead in hometown funding race
   
   
  It's not easy being labeled Green
  John Bonifaz, the Democrat challenging Secretary of State William F. Galvin, has had to fend off charges from Galvin that he is really a Green-Rainbow candidate in disguise. Bonifaz denies that strongly, although his vote for Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential candidacy in 2000 and his legal work for the Green Party effort do not help defuse the allegation. But now his drive to get nomination signatures is again raising the issue: His petition coordinator is Patrick John Keaney, a registered member of the Green-Rainbow Party, according to voting registration records. He can't sign the petitions because he is not a Democrat. Bonifaz, noting that important issues he is raising are not getting news coverage, said that he is not aware of Keaney's registration, but knows him as a key organizer for other Democrats.
   
  Frank Phillips, Brian Mooney, and Lisa Wangsness contributed to this report. Starting tomorrow at noon, check out ''Political intelligence," the Globe's blog on politics at www.boston.com/political_intelligence.  


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