Green Party Chaos
Originally Published 7/10/2020 at The Trickle Up
In the eyes of many progressives, the outcome of the Democratic Party’s nomination and the process itself was not only predictable but an unmitigated disaster. During the Iowa caucus, the Fyre Festival of caucuses, we had coin tossing to determine who won a precinct, a sketchy software that was meant to tally votes, and a premature victory speech by CIA plant, Pete Buttigieg, who shamelessly gloated, while it was still unclear as to who won Iowa. We saw Elizabeth Warren stay in the race long enough to split the progressive vote and halt Sanders’ momentum, and predictably Sanders conceded to Biden later that month.
Candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Castro, and Andrew Yang were almost completely blacked out by the corporate media, and if they weren’t blacked out, then media outlets like CNN and MSNBC committed several gaffes regarding their image and names and most of those gaffes, although incidental, were incredibly racist. The mainstream media was fixated on candidates like Warren whose progressive politics were purely performative and milquetoast moderate Amy Klobuchar. So obviously a candidate’s success typically correlates with the media and so the candidates who don’t cater to the liberals’ sensibilities or go out of their way to attack President Trump weren’t going to covered. The rigging in the democratic party is subtle at surface level and is much more subjective than what’s currently happening in the Green Party.
Well the Green Party sure has appeared as if it’s emulating the Democratic Party this time around. Even upon observation alone, it appeared to me that the Green Party somewhat effortlessly sorted the candidates into two groups. The “qualified” groups and the “unqualified” groups. This happened in the Democratic Party as well with Sanders, Biden, Warren, and Buttigieg at the forefront for the last half of the campaign season. It’s kind of remarkable how a mayor was able to infiltrate that group, but I suppose anything is possible if you don’t refuse any billionaire that just happens to stumble into your wine cave.
I followed Ian Schlakman shortly after I got back on Twitter and my interest in UBI was brewing. He was very well-versed in domestic and foreign policy and I loved his approach to politics. He was one of the Green Party candidates that was placed in the “second group” despite having a decent Twitter game, a notable presence in the Green Party, and he was very active on the ground. Ian Schlakman along with Chad Wilson, Dennis Lambert, Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry, David Rolde, and Jesse Ventura weren’t given fair treatment and they all expressed that they felt there was either rigging going on or an unfair bias in this campaign season under the Green Party.
Now rigging can be a rather vague term and it can be used rather loosely in the political world, but Schlakman along with Dennis Lambert, Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry, David Rolde, and Chad Wilson have done a rather thorough job in regards to detailing what exactly they meant by rigging in a joint statement that was released via Schlakman’s medium page. The five Green Party candidates put together a joint call to action demanding, ballot access, visibility for all active candidates on the party along with their questionnaires, along with other demands, which can be found hyperlinked in the previous sentence.
The GPUS has had a generally good reputation in regards to fairness of media coverage, ballot access, democratic elections, but the Green Party sent out an email on the 6th of October that they were going to remove a majority of the candidates off the official Green Party website, which plays a crucial factor in name-recognition for all the candidates. If someone was undecided and they saw that a candidate was up on the website one day and gone the next they’d assume that that candidate had either dropped out or that the candidate was beneath the ones that were still on the website.
It’s rather bizarre considering primaries didn’t start until the Spring of 2020 and yet a majority of the Green Party candidates were getting essentially canceled on the 4th of November, well ahead of the primaries ensuring the obscurity of the second group of candidates . All seven candidates should’ve remained on the website until they drop out of the race or until the primaries have concluded.
It’s important to note that Green Party co-chair Andrea Mérida Cuéllar is also serving as Howie Hawkins’ campaign manager, which is a complete conflict of interest and she should’ve at least stepped down or recuse herself from that role. It’s the equivalent of Tom Perez openly managing Biden’s campaign, while serving as Chair of the DNC. Dario Hunter told journalist, Primo Nutmeg in an interview that the state parties held events exclusively for Howie Hawkins even when other candidates expressed interest in joining those said events, and this deprived them of being able to accrue more supporters.
Hawkins has been given a ton of leeway by the party that would’ve led others to be disqualified. Hawkins is somehow both the nominee for the Socialist Party as well as a candidate and probably soon-to-be nominee for the Green Party, which is literally in violation of the Green Party’s Party Affiliation rule for Presidential candidates. This is what the rule states:
Candidate is not a registrant or otherwise a party member of any state or national level political party in the individual’s primary state of residence except for a state party which has affiliated with GPUS, or a party forming for the intent of GPUS affiliation in a state where there is no GPUS affiliated state party.
So if Hawkins somehow doesn’t manage to clinch the nomination for the Green Party, then he’ll inevitably be running against them in the national election, which is remarkably odd to think about, especially considering the preferential treatment towards Hawkins when he can possibly end up being the opponent in a matter of months.
I have frankly no idea what the Green Party sees in Hawkins. Hawkins can become quickly belligerent in an interview, he’s a Russiagater, and he’s devoid of any semblance of charisma. Also his fundraising has been anemic considering he has only raised $185,183, which is far behind pace-wise in regards to Jill Stein’s $3.5 million. Hawkins is emblematic of the type of underwhelming candidates the Green Party produces every other cycle, but he might be the worse of them. The thrice gubernatorial candidate couldn’t even garner two percent of the vote each time he ran and when he ran for mayor of Syracuse, he couldn’t even break four percent.
When Jesse Ventura announced he was running for the Green Party, things looked like they could finally change. The Green Party could finally grow and nominate someone who has actually held office and has high-name recognition. Jesse was not only a former mayor, but he was the former governor of Minnesota, and is generally well-liked among everybody on the political spectrum, which is such a rarity for the typically polarizing Green Party candidate.
The opportunity to evolve from mediocre to formidable is such a seldom one in the world of third parties, so when Jesse was told he had no path to victory although the convention next month would likely be a brokered one, it ended up with him dropping out of the race along with other reasons, although he did accrue delegates. His name is listed as other under the 2020 PNC delegate spreadsheets, which is fitting because it seems as if they’ve tried to blot him out. The Green Party website itself is covered with pictures of Hawkins and his running-mate, Angela Walker, which only adds validity to claims of rigging.
Dario Hunter retweeted Primo Nutmeg a couple days ago saying, “ 35% of the popular vote, but supposedly 54% of delegates. How’s that for proportional representation?
The Kentucky Green Party might’ve been one of the most odd things yet. In the General election in 2012, over 6,000 Kentuckians voted for the Green Party. In 2016, almost 14,000 Kentuckians voted for the Green Party. In 2020, the Kentucky Green Party had only six votes, and five were for Hawkins and he received four delegates. This is obviously highly suspicious because it seemed like Kentucky’s Green Party base had obviously been growing over the years, which leaves questions surrounding ballot access for this primary and whether it was purposefully kept under wraps by Green Party insiders.
The Green Party Convention starts today and it concludes on the 12th. Hopefully Dario Hunter will be able to address the delegates in a courageous manner regarding the rigging that has taken place. In a party that preaches equality, and preaches against the anti-democratic nature of the duopoly and the parties that the duopoly consist of, they’ve sure made hypocrites of themselves and have left Green Party-curious people like myself discouraged and disheartened. I still don’t think the Green Party is irredeemable because it has the infrastructure and values that dissuade corporations from wanting involvement, but there’s still corruption there that needs to be weeded out. But we needed that corruption gone yesterday because we’re frankly running out of time and with the fossil fuel-funded candidates competing against each other, we’re guaranteed another four years of crony capitalism, unfulfilled promises, inadequate healthcare, and our pleadings falling on deaf ears.
