Fournier for Congress

My fellow Greens and I received enough votes to secure a ballot position for the party in 2010 in all but one of Connecticut’s five congressional districts.  I’m grateful to all who helped me achieve our goal here, especially Mike DeRosa, Richard Duffee, Vic Lancia, David Bedell, Walt Dunnels, Hector Lopez, Dave Ionno, Albert Marceau, Ralph Ferrucci, Joanne McCormick, Bridget Gohla, Miriam Kurland, Marge Schneider, Dave Schneider, Ruth Fournier and Paula Zeiner.

Two and a half percent was more than I expected but less than a young, good-looking, articulate, self-assured candidate would have received. I saw and heard myself enough times to get an impression of the candidate, and I definitely don’t have star power. I’m grateful to have had a part in the historic step we Greens took, but my modest accomplishment tells me that we should begin recruiting now for next time. I believe the First District returns prove that good writing can net you about 2% of the vote. Good hair is another matter altogether.

America is in deep trouble. It’s not just the economy. Our way of life is falling apart in front of us. We used to be a nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Today we’re a homeland, divided, forced to present ID to enter a public building and forced to tolerate outlaws in public office.   Good-bye, Liberty!  Good-bye, Justice! 

Democrats and Republicans in Washington put us in this mess and they have no plans to change course. They’re going to keep on waging war, keep on making secret deals, keep us burning oil, keep on spying on us, keep on making the rich richer while the poor get poorer.

We didn’t vote for this. We didn’t vote for two wars. We didn’t vote for a trillion dollar blank check for bankers. We didn’t vote for a health care casino that leaves millions sick and broke. We didn’t vote to neglect the levees in New Orleans or to assemble mercenary armies for deployment to our streets. Democrats and Republicans in Washington, stuck in the 20th Century, gave us all that.

I’m running with the Green Party, because I’ve left the the 20th Century behind. In the 21st Century, we don’t do war. We do public works instead. We don’t do clandestine deals. We do the public interest instead. We don’t subsidize bankers, and we don’t coddle irresponsible debtors either. We don’t make people shop for health care. We join the rest of the industrialized world and make it a tax-funded entitlement. We work like hell to end fuel-burning and restore the earth, sooner rather than later.

As a lawyer and a professional persuader, I plan to put intense pressure on Democrats and Republicans to clean up their act. Restoring our republic is a dirty job, and I’ll do it if I win this election.

I may be the only one of the five Green Party candidates for Congress who agrees with the League of Women Voters’ decision to allow only Democrats and Republicans to take part in the “debates” that group plans to sponsor.

The fact that the League demands anything more than ballot access (which requires weeks of petitioning and thousands of signatures) is instructive. To accommodate all of the candidates, the League would have to set up one or possibly two extra microphones at each debate, hardly enough of an inconvenience to justify the exclusion of any of them and an imposition far outweighed by the value of additional voices. The League seems to have taken the position, arbitrarily, that two points of view are all the voters can handle. I have a hard time currying favor with a voters’ organization that demonstrates such a low opinion of voters.

To keep interlopers out of its debates, the League sets a fund-raising threshold that peace-and-justice advocates can never achieve without compromise. As a voluntary association, the League has the right to do this. If this assembly of upper-middle class voters allowed us to participate, they would risk the system that keeps them flush.

Our promise to shake things up seems to resonate with voters, and any one of us might win if voters get wind of our message. The reason Greens can’t meet fund-raising thresholds is that our advocacy is reserved for policies that will benefit people at the bottom of the economic ladder and cost those at the top. You can’t raise money from people who don’t have it, and most of the people who have it won’t donate to somebody who wants to reduce their holdings.

I’m OK with that. The people with money are used to paying others to do things for them, and that’s the way they do politics. They fund organizations like the League and the Democratic and Republican parties, and these groups do what’s expected of them. This gives us a government of indentured incumbents, and it preserves the status quo ever so tenuously.

I’m OK with this because I know that the have-nots outnumber the haves twenty-to-one and can oust the government whenever they choose. Working people can’t finance political campaigns but they can vote. To get me elected, they would have to do a little extra work, but they’re workers, and they have the means.

There won’t be a lot of yard signs or TV ads, and our point of view won’t be debated, but voters who want a new government can certainly spread the word, by mouth and by email, that Greens have candidates who haven’t sold out. Need proof? Greens collected thousands of signatures but couldn’t raise enough money to make the League of Women Voters’ cut. Thanks, League.

Just got word through Connecticut Green Party co-chair Mike DeRosa that the Secretary of State has certified a sufficient number of petition signatures to put all five Congressional candidates on the ballot:  Richard Duffee for Fairfield County, Harold Burbank for Northwestern Connecticut, Scott Deshefy for Eastern Connecticut, Ralph Ferrucci for Greater New Haven and me for Hartford/Torrington.  It’s a full slate of Greens for the first time ever.   Find a link to the candidates’ websites in the column to the left.