Re: [Marxism] Cynthia McKinney names her VP candidate

[Craig Brozefsky <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Mark Lause" <markalause@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Greens.  Although we have no local McKinney campaign, the coalition
> around her candidacy elsewhere seem to be people with little or no
> real roots among the Greens. 

I can only speak from my experience in the ILGP, but there is deep
support for her candidacy here.  Rich Whitney, gubernatorial candidate
from 2006 whose 10.4% of the votes made the ILGP an established party,
is the head of the McKinney delegation from Illinois.  I have been
working with many long-time Greens who are excited about the McKinney
campaign.

She got 1,513 votes, just under 50% of the total, in a four way race,
where Howie Hawkins (the Nader stand-in) got 464.  The remainder of
the votes went to Kent Messplay and Jared Ball, with over 300 each.
This was an open primary, where anyone can pull a GP ballot.

The number of ballots pulled as significantly larger than the set of
ILGP members (there is no registration in IL), and our preliminary
analysis indicates that many new people pulled GP primary ballots.  I
was elected GP commiteeperson for my ward, which had the highest GP
primary turnout of any city ward, most of the GP voters were totally
unknown to us, and largely latino.

These two points together make me think that the ILGP has strong
support for McKinney within it's existing activist core, but there is
also a groundswell of support for the party, and McKinney, from
outside the "membership".  More votes were cast for McKinney in Cook
County (Chicagoland) than there are current ILGP members.

As one could guess, organizing a presidential candidacy in Obama's
home city, is quite difficult.  We did raise over 5k dollars statewide
for her already, and are hosting the national convention where it is
expected she will win the nomination because she already has a
majority of the delegates.

> And a lot of the former Greens involved (again) around the Nader
> campaign have washed their hands of the GPUS.

This is not my experience here.  I am aware of one active member who
has voiced similiar opinions to Mark, he's a reader here too, so he
can comment.  At the national level I know there were others.  I do
not know what is going on in other state parties.

The ILGP welcomed Nader's submission of signatures to get on the
ballot here in Illinois.  We are decidedly non-sectarian.  We are
collaborating with the local PSL group, and have PSL members running
for state representative (John Beacham and Heather Benno) on the ILGP
ballot line.


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