"Grandpa" Al Lewis and Malachy McCourt were never regulars in People Magazine or US Weekly, but they were big enough names for the Green Party to pick as the gubernatorial nominees in the hopes of getting a little rubbed-off celebrity sheen. The strategy was simple: hope that the spectacle of these men running for office (they also once approached the more famous, but now deceased actor Ossie Davis about running) would be enough to push the party over 50,000 votes, giving them the ballot access to let the real work of politicking at the local level begin. 

It worked in 1998, when Lewis cleared 52,000 votes, despite losing a series of court cases trying to get listed on the ballot with the nickname he had held onto since his days acting on The Munsters. Looking back, the Greens see this period as a sort of golden age, allowing them to dig into the local races where they wanted to be involved without having to worry about complicated petitioning processes. 

The golden age lasted four years, until Stanley Aronowitz's 2002 run for governor fell short of the 50,000 mark. They were back in the wilderness. And in 2006, McCourt, for all his witty columns and bit acting parts over the years, could not bring them back. 

This year, Green activists are taking a different approach as they hope to capitalize on the same kind of voter dissatisfaction that is energizing critics of the Obama administration.

"You've got the people on the right, this Tea Party movement," said Eric Jones, one of the co-chairs of the state Green Party, "and there's just as much disillusionment on the left."

To start, they have ditched the idea of plucking another person from the D-list for the gubernatorial race. Though nothing will be official until the party convention, coming up in the middle of May, the prohibitive favorite is Howie Hawkins, a man best known for running as the 2006 Green candidate for Senate against Hillary Clinton and for unloading trucks during the night shift at his local UPS facility. 

According to Jones, the decision to go with one of the party faithful is about a larger strategy for the Greens. 

"People within the party are sick of not being taken seriously," said Eric Jones, one of the co-chairs of the state Green Party. "When we took these celebrity candidates, there's always kind of a backlash. It's kind of a double-edged sword: you're more likely to get media, to get the name out there, but you're less likely to get the issues out there."

Those issues, according to the Greens, will be government and electoral reform, in addition to progressive taxation, a carbon tax and other standards of leftist politics. They take inspiration from this month's elections in Britain, in which the Liberal Democrats surged out of their own eternity in the wilderness to being a major player, with their strong showing in this month's elections and the hung Parliament ahead.

"This election, we're really defining success as getting that ballot line back. We're not under the illusion, except on an off chance, that any of our candidates are going to win," said Peter LaVigna, a political science doctoral student at SUNY Albany who serves as the other Green state co-chair. "Our role, if we get the ballot line, at the local level and the state level, is to be kind of a shadow government like they have in the U.K., bringing up issues and talking up issues. That's really the way that third parties start to have influence."

Despite the lack of a ballot line, Greens have had a few successes at the polls. Currently, the mayors of Victory and Greenwich are registered with the party, as are a few local council and school board members scattered around the state. There is a 57-member state committee, with the bulk of the members from New York City, though there are representatives as well from Albany, Chenago, Delaware, Genesee, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Steuben, Suffolk and Tompkins counties. 

Where they are now, according to the Greens, will be their lowest point. Though, like in 2006, the gubernatorial election is likely to be dominated by a popular Democrat headed toward a big win, they think that Hawkins will be able to carry an anti-Andrew Cuomo, anti-Republican message that will resonate in the current political climate, getting them to 50,000 and allowing them to escape what LaVigna refers to as the "period of stagnation" in the eight years since they lost the ballot line. 

Potential puns on the party name aside, the Greens have never been flush with cash. As of the January campaign finance filing, there was just over $8,000 in their account. They are hoping some new recruits being drawn to the party and enough media attention will help change that, powering through the process of gathering 15,000 valid petition signatures over the summer to put Hawkins on the ballot. They may also strike a strategic alliance with the state Socialists, who, according to LaVigna, are considering cross-endorsing Hawkins and helping carry petitions. 

Gloria Mattera, the party's secretary treasurer, said that the party is preparing to reach out beyond the 22,000 enrolled members, identifying Green-friendly voters from a database amassed over the years. The party will hire a statewide petition coordinator, she said, but the real work will be done through past associations and word-of-mouth connections on the local level. Social media, they hope, will help as well. 

"We're probably scarce on metrics at this point in terms of how we can do the polling and door-to-door work," she said, "but that really comes at the grassroots level from pockets of green activists around the state."

The Greens seem likely to field a full slate, with the race for the United States Senate nomination the only one currently being contested. 

Hawkins has been putting together the pieces of his gubernatorial run since last November, when he returned home from a night in jail on a civil disobedience charge to find a number of messages on his answering machine encouraging him to run. He had lost a race for council in Syracuse two days earlier (he got 41 percent), but, he decided, he was already raring to go again. 

Though he admits that his race is less about getting to the Executive Mansion than raising issues and getting ballot access back, Hawkins does have some campaign proposals, such as ratcheting up the stock transfer tax to 100 percent to pay for WPA-style infrastructure projects and creating a single-payer health care system at the state level. 

Among the clear sore points for Hawkins and other Greens is the Working Families Party, which has co-opted a lot of the ground on the political left once occupied by the Greens, but has had a much more effective political operation that has allowed it to gain primacy. 

"They're not independent, they're a satellite party of the Democratic Party," Hawkins charged, complaining that the WFP is able to do what it does thanks to the money drawn from union PACs and Democratic candidates. "They're a conduit for corporate cash—they get hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Schumer campaign or the Clinton campaign for their field operation."

Hawkins also criticized the WFP for cross-endorsing with the Democrats and Republicans. The decision not to do that, he said, is what sets the Greens apart and, in his opinion, makes them stronger. 

"They haven't really taken our ground," Hawkins said. "Fusion creates confusion, but it doesn't create independent politics, where the power of ordinary working people is independent—which is what you need if you're going to challenge the two corporate parties. If you're a faction, they'll take you for granted."

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ABOVE: Howie Hawkins is a different kind of Green gubernatorial candidate: issues-oriented, not D-list celebrity. Photo by Barry Sloan