Kent Mesplay, Gail Parker, and Joe Schriner faced off in the first ever online Green Party presidential debate sponsored by Laptop America and My God Given Rights. The debate was two hours long and commercial free. You can listen here.
Thanks to Third Party Watch.
The Green Party debate had over 2,000 live listeners. They voted Gail Parker as the winner of the debate.
Her strong message of “More Green Party Candidates, Less Apathy” is appealing.
Calling for 435 Green Party U.S. House and 33 GReen U.S. Senate candidates in 2008 is moxy!
Suggesting the Green Party could nominate Bloomberg!
Brilliant!!
Bloomberg does not match the Green Party ideologically though. He would never be the GP candidate.
What happened to “Jihad Cindy” McKinney?
Mayor Bloomberg may not “match the Green Party ideologically” at the present time but the Green Party is the only realistic vehicle for him to run a victorious presidential campaign. He does not have a sufficient enough political base to be a successful independent candidate.
At the current time, it is all moot anyway. Mr. Bloomberg is not an official candiate for president. One may as well speculate about Alan Keyes entering the race for the Constitution Pary nomination, or Fred Thomson entering the Republican Party race.
Mike Bloomberg has all but thrown out his arms and declared “I’m running for president.” Unity08 is pursuing both him and Chuck Hagel & the media is full of speculation about that duo running as a ticket. As for Fred Thompson, there’s no “speculating” involved…..he has filed an exploratory committee with the FEC and is a candidate in everything but legalese. He’s at the top of several polls of Republican primary voters. As for Alan Keyes…..why would anyone care?
Back to Bloomberg…….the only “realistic vehicle” he needs is the $500 million dollars he’s prepared to spend of his own money. Ross Perot certainly didn’t need a small third party apparatus behind him. Once Bloomberg enters and starts drowning the media markets with cash, he’ll build a political base faster than you can blink.
I’m always amazed by the way people who are pro-third party overestimate the influence, abilities, etc. of the GPUS, while at the same time underestimate the importance of the Green ten key values to any talk of any celebrity seeking the GPUS nomination. And this is a long time GP member saying this.
Michael Bloomberg is either going to run as a full independent or nominally as an independent and form his own party in states where that makes ballot access significantly easier (e.g. Maryland). The idea of him duking it out with a laundry list of complete unknowns and cranks for the GPUS nomination – a party in which he has shown contempt, if anything – is hysterical.
As for Cynthia McKinney, she’s signalling strongly that she will seek the nomination, and there is a movement among GPUS activists for a Nader/McKinney ticket. Personally, I think if she can keep her foot out of her mouth & emphasize her congressional record, she’d be a fine progressive candidate.
“for which” he has shown contempt, that is. Personally I have contempt for my own proofreading skills. 🙂
No one is seriously talking about Bloomberg as a Green candidate anyway. That is just some talk being stirred up by the “Independent Greens” of Virginia to draw attention to themselves. No doubt they like him because he makes part of his daily commute on the subway. (They seem to think “rail” is the solution to everything from the Iraq war to the health care crisis. Rail and exclamation points.)
In any case, to the extent that independent candidates are drawn to the Green Party, it’s not our “political base” but our ballot lines that they’re generally after. And that’s one thing Bloomberg can afford to buy.
Don’t forget that rail is also the solution to (don’t laugh) the minimum wage issue, at least according to one of the candidate questionnaires Gail Parker filled out for the Virginia gubernatorial race last year.
This was one of the most amusing documents I have ever read in over thirty years of third party activity, and when you study third party candidates you run into some very amusing documents, trust me. Her answer for literally every question, from the minimum wage to the environment to taxes, was “more rail.” (If you were to ask her her exit strategy for the Iraq mess, I have no doubt whatsoever that she would answer “build more trains,” with several exclamation points, of course.) And the major media, to the extent they paid any attention to her at all, kept associating the phrase “Green Party” with her thanks to her _capo di tutti cappi_, Carey Campbell.
Virginia had a U. S. Senate race last year.
Virginia’s last governor’s race was in 2005.
My bad, substitute “US Senate” for “gubernatorial” in my post. Thanks for the correction.
Gail Parker is not a Green by any stretch of the imagination.