City Scuffle
Syracuse City Eagle
Walt Sheppard
November 16th, 2006
Back home after an intense and frustrating statewide tour campaigning for U.S. Senate on the Green Party ticket, Howie Hawkins says the experience was a relearning of the degree to which all politics is local. We have to build a grassroots infrastructure, he said. We have to do politics the old way, door to door and face to face. Weve got to get people who support us to be active and weve got to start identifying people would support us if given the opportunity. And its time for the local Greens to win one, Hawkins said.
He is fond of citing the 234 Greens holding office nationwide before last weeks elections, and the 40 others who won this years races. It felt really good to win on the South Side, he recalls of his partys role in enabling Mike Atkins to oust incumbent DeBorah Young in a 4th Common Council District Democratic primary, while adding, but it didnt really advance the Green agenda.
That agenda was, however, advanced significantly by Hawkins in last years mayoral campaign, when the publics imagination was demonstrably fired by his advocacy of public power, the municipal control of local utilities. Interest in that issue has faded somewhat, he reflects, with the recent discussion of building a plant to generate electricity for the city school district and municipal buildings. But it will definitely be in the party platform for Campaign 2007, when the Greens will target the 5th Council seat, an open race since incumbent Bill Simmons will be term-limited, and a race Hawkins thinks they can win.
Hawkins will be articulating the Green agenda in next years campaign, probably running citywide for councilor-at-large. If the Democrats and Republicans each run two candidates [incumbent Democrats Bill Ryan and Kathleen Callahan will be up for reelection], he notes, it will be five people running for two seats. Ill be working closely with the candidate in the 5th in Eastwood and the East Side. We had wanted to run someone there last year to get their name out and build momentum for next year, but the candidate didnt emerge. Nor has one yet emerged for next years race.
But the agenda is now clear including public power, the vision of a sustainable Syracuse and the creation of a progressive tax structure for the city. Hawkins major issue in his Senate campaign, however, probably wont make much headway in the city race.
Seventy-two percent of the people oppose the war, he says. Clinton and Spencer were both for the war. But the media wont cover us unless theres a horse race and we could make the difference. The media wont cover the issues. Hawkins knows he will also have to battle a dwindling voter turnout. People are disgusted, he says. They dont participate because they dont identify with the candidates as representing them. Theyre now being labeled the global slacker class, focused on private pursuits because the feel they dont have the power to change things.
The initial canvass of votes reported on Election Night had Hawkins at over 50,000 votes, the largest return for any Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate from New York since the party began challenging for that post in 1998. Fifty thousand votes in a gubernatorial race is the requirement for a party to be listed on the ballot for the following four years. The party qualified for ballot designation eight years ago when they ran Al Gampa Munster Lewis for governor, but lost it in 2002 when they ran academician Stanley Aronowitz.
This year Malachy McCourt polled in the low 40,000s at the top of their ticket, but the state Green leadership considered filing a law suit to gain ballot access since Hawkins, their Attorney General candidate Rachel Treichler and their Comptroller candidate Julia Willebrand all topped the 50,000 mark. Four years ago New York State Greens won a lawsuit that established the right of members of non-ballot qualified parties to enroll in those parties with boards of elections. But according to Hawkins, the potential for a successful suit now is shrouded by details by one brought earlier this year by the Green Party in Alaska. For now, Hawkins will be working to find ways for local Greens to get noticed.
The media is concentrating into fewer and fewer corporate giants, who cover elections as horse races and beauty contests, he observes, and neglect serious candidates from upstart parties who race real issues and policy alternatives.