On August 2, Daily Kos reported that conservatives are responsible for paying “all but $30” of the costs for getting the Pennsylvania Green Party statewide candidates on the ballot. The truth is that Pennsylvania Green volunteers got 30,000 signatures (just as they did in 2004, when the party got on with an all-volunteer effort), and the remaining 65,000 signatures were paid circulators.
The $30 relates to the bank account of the Luzerne County Greens. There have been plenty of monetary contributions from Pennsylvania Greens themselves to their own ballot drive, but it went into the state party’s bank account.
Daily Kos should consider that the real motivation of the conservative donors who contributed to the paid petition effort was not so much to get the Green Party on the ballot, as to trick the Democrats into acting like a bully. The Democratic Party of Pennsylvania has fallen into this trap, with the announcement today that the party will challenge the Green petitions. In 2002, the Pennsylvania Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Ed Rendell, actually signed the statewide Green Party petition, to show that the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania was confident, open-minded, and not afraid of competition. Rendell was elected. The face of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in 2006 has changed.
Right on, Richard! You hit it right on the head.
I think this is an excellent analysis. I particularly appreciate Richard pointing out the Democrats’ hypocrisy; they’re supposed to be the party of labor, but they’re acting like only capital counts, and labor is invisible.
Some PA Greens collected more than 1,000 signatures apiece. But apparently their contributions don’t count for anything because they were in the form of hours of frustrating labor rather than dollars.
I ask again: were there no progressives willing to kick in a few bucks to support a candidate with whom they agreed? I can understand it if a big chunk of money came from Santorumites. But all of it?
And this:
Daily Kos should consider that the real motivation of the conservative donors who contributed to the paid petition effort was not so much to get the Green Party on the ballot, as to trick the Democrats into acting like a bully.
is just silly.
Your disingenuousness is getting in the way of your self-righteousness.
Note: I realize that progressives may have contributed money to the STATE party and not the county party. Fine. Why then did Romanelli’s latest FEC report show that his campaign has $17.20 in the bank? Is the state party not supporting him?
Spin this as you will: Romanelli’s ENTIRE campaign war-chest has come from the most right-wing contributors imaginable. Romanelli’s claim that those contributors are just trying to open the debate, and that they respect his positions, is a post-hoc justification that is laughable in the extreme.
At this point I’m not sure which is worse: his funding his run for Senate exclusively from right-wingers, or his bullshit rationalizations for it.
(Oh, and maybe someone should start looking at who’s been funding the state greens as well. I wonder if there’ll be any surprises there.)
It would be illegal for the Green Party of Pennsylvania’s state committee to give money to the Romanelli campaign. To do that, it would have to set up a federal committee and raise money for it seperately.
So my point stands. No progressive in PA (other than Romanelli himself) seems to have contributed to the Romanelli campaign, either through the county or state Green parties, or to the campaign directly.
And we should take this guy seriously WHY, exactly?
Many Green candidates do not begin raising campaign funds until their ballot access drives are over, because until then, they are not sure whether they will be able to carry forward as candidates.
And the Romanelli campaign was not the benificiary of the donations; the Luzerne County Green Party’s federal committee was. They in turn used the money to get all the Green candidates (not just Romanelli) on the ballot. You will note that the Green Party of PA also spent money on the ballot access lawsuit, reproducing blank petitions, etc.