{news} Richard Duffee in the Norwalk Hour

[David Bedell]

This was in yesterday's paper. We are planning a caucus of Fourth District Greens for Jan. 5, when we will decide whether to run or not.


Norwalk Hour
12/17/07

This year, Green Party will not back off the ballot

By JARED NEWMAN 
Hour Staff Writer

REGION - Richard Duffee wants another shot at impeaching the president.

A member of the Green Party who ran for the state's fourth district seat in congress two years ago, Duffee is seeking the party's nomination again for the 2008 elections. Impeachment is so important to him that if nominated, he'll continue to run even if it means less votes for the Democrats in a close race.

"I do not think it's much better to have democrats in office than republicans until the democrats say that they will fulfill their oaths of office," Duffee said. "You're not going to reinstate the constitution if you can't even say that violating it is wrong."

Duffee pulled out of the 2006 election only a couple weeks from election day. A poll found that Diane Farrell, a democrat, had a chance at unseating Chris Shays, the republican incumbent, and the Green Party was afraid of siphoning votes from Farrell.

This time, the party has said if they place a candidate on the ballot, they won't back out.

"It's an enormous effort to get onto the ballot," David Bedell, secretary of the Fairfield County chapter of the party, said. "You have to collect a lot of signatures, and then to do all that work and change our minds - it's a wasted effort."

Duffee is a 59 year-old retired lawyer who has traveled to almost 30 countries and lived in India for seven years. After graduating from Pace Law School, he said he lost faith in the democratic party when the Legal Services Corporation, a federal agency that provides free legal aid, reduced it's scope under President Bill Clinton.

Now a resident of Stamford, Duffee talks extensively, when prompted, about the aspects of America that anger him. His voice cracks when describing how much money the country spends on defense - roughly 50 percent of the entire world's spending - and how other countries view the U.S. as an empire.

"We in this country don't understand how the rest of the world perceives us, or why, because we don't look at ourselves from the outside," Duffee said.

He wants progressive taxes to even the country's distribution of wealth. At a more local level, he wants the license revoked for Indian Point, a nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y.

On Iraq, Duffee said the U.S. should pull out immediately and pay reparations. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice should all stand trial before an international criminal court for leading the country to war, Duffee said.

But Duffee's marquee issue remains impeachment, a stance supported by the Green Party. The new congress takes over Jan. 3, 2009, providing a 17 day window to get it done.

"You can impeach, even in a day," Duffee said.

Staff writer Jared Newman can be reached at (203) 354-1045 or jnewman@ thehour.com

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