Most of the precincts in New York City are now reporting, and this much is clear: The Green Party of New York’s candidate for mayor has done very, very badly. With 88.77 of precincts providing results, “Reverend” Billy Talen, a performance artist who ran on the the Green Party line, has gotten just 0.84 percent of the vote.
The Green Party of New York needs to consider the meaning of this result. Perhaps the pathetic performance is not because of the corporate political machine. Maybe the lack of media coverage isn’t to blame. Maybe voters don’t want a performance artist who pretends to be a preacher to run one of the most powerful cities on Earth. Maybe the Green Party of New York needs to stop playing around like a troupe of clowns, and get serious.
In Portland, Maine a Green Party incumbent won re-election to the City Council.
But in California, Green Party congressional candidate Jeremy Cloward got 2,314 votes. Eep.
Because you said that the Mayor candidate bombed, does not mean he bombed.
A. Know one really knows the vote count yet. Because, the Democrats and Republicans who work the polls and the BOE don’t do a careful count of third parties until the recanvass. You don’t even know the real number.
B. Even with this preliminary figure, our performance artist of 2009 did much better than our academic of 2005. Improvement is important in a third party.
C. In an eight way race, the green candidate came out 4th. So, why don’t you pick on the other 4 minor parties who did worse?
D. After the Republican and Democrat, who speant millions of dollars, the only other person to top the Green Party candidate for Mayor was the Conservative guy. And, he didn’t do that much better.
So, maybe the Green Party performance in NYC was not a miracle. But, it was an improvement from our last race; it got some attention for important issues like gentrification and corporate influence; and, it was a heck of a lot better showing than several other third parties and other candidates put in.
Politics in this country has evolved (through careful corporate manipulation over many years) into two camps: the Republican and Democrat card (two sides of the same coin – support of the wealthy) and everyone else (independents, commies, socialist-labor, green, etc. – to advocate for the rest of us). The “in” powers (Rep & Dem) have made it LEGALLY almost impossible to compete with them (read Nader on this) and control the media, which doesn’t give much time to other than the BIG TWO.
Now that the government is implementing a POLICE STATE, don’t expect anything to get much better going forward.
i used to think “we” could change things for the better by using the political process. i was naive. The whole system is rigged and change only happens when the powers that be WANT it to happen – which is rare (since they like it the way it is: they’re protected, make money on it being this way, and they get to exercise their power over us). Not only that, but after the 911 event, i’m convinced that they’ll resort to ANY means to keep it this way.