With the ides of March came an announcement from Lynne Williams that she would be ending her campaign for Governor of Maine because she was unable to obtain 2,000 signatures from Green Party members in the state.
I have some sympathy for her situation. 2,000 signatures may not sound like much, but in the state of Maine there are only some 30,000 registered members of the Green Party; this means that 1 in 15 party members had to sign Williams’ petition. Getting 1 in 15 Greens to do anything for a candidate is going to be tough. When I tried to organize a local Green Party caucus earlier this winter, only 3 out of about 150 local Greens showed up, a rate that didn’t lead to much local action other than the nominal preservation of the party. A number of registered Greens are registered Greens because they reject the candidate-driven party politics as usual of the Democratic and Republican parties, so it’s understandable that they would reject involvement in party functions. A friend of mine who was collecting signatures for Lynne Williams told me that many of the registered Greens she contacted thought of themselves more as “independents” than as “Greens” and weren’t eager to sign any petition. It’s not surprising: the official name of the party here is the “Maine Green Independent Party,” after all.
The Maine Green Independent Party continues to have ballot access even though there will not be a gubernatorial candidate on this November’s ballot. I look forward to hearing from the group what it plans to do next.
The bright side of this is that they can focus on more local races and legislative races, which is where they’ve traditionally had success. Here in PA, we’ve got a very strong state legislative candidate running in Philadelphia with the Greens. His name is Hugh Giordano ( http://hughgiordano.com ) and he’s a union organizer, so he knows how to get stuff done. I really urge you to check out his website and – if you’re feeling generous – make a donation. Or just volunteer if you live near us (if you haven’t figured it out, I’m helping the campaign, but I honestly do think this is one of the more serious Green campaigns in the nation this year).