Although the Wisconsin Green Party is one of the oldest state Green Parties in the U.S., it has never run a candidate for Assembly in Madison, Wisconsin (in Wisconsin, as in New York and California, the lower house of the legislature is called the Assembly). However, Ben Manski recently declared his intention to run for the 77th district seat as a Green Party nominee.
The 77th district has been represented since 1984 by Spencer Black, who is the leader of the Democrats in the Assembly, but he is retiring. Already, before Manski announced, the race was getting publicity because open legislative seats are so rare in Madison. See this story. Thanks to Green Party Watch for the news about Manski. Here is the wiki article about Ben Manski.
This is great news. Ben Manski is an able and dynamic American. He will be a strong and refreshing voice for democracy, voter rights, for social justice, for community self help and for ecological sanity in the campaign for the state Assembly. It is timely and significant that a man of his caliber and Green Values-credentials is running for the legislature — his example will be followed by many more in Wisconsin. His campaign ties in with an increasing acknowledgment by Green Parties in many other states that campaigns for state legislature must now be very high among Green priorities.
Go for it Ben. Legislative races are probably the most fun if you like door to door campaigning.
Ben Manski,
Thank you for doing this. It is this action, running candidate for state legislative office, that we, the Green-Rainbow Party in Massachusetts, have established as our priority for 2010-2012. The positive response to the failures of 2008, was a year long study by an ad hoc Strategy Planning Working Group, and recommendations based thereon by the Candidate Development and Legal Committee of the GRP. While not all the goals were accomplished, we or on the move with two candidates for the Massachusetts House from the Berkshires. The opportunities are very good this year, and we were able to foresee it, because of the general discontent with the duopoly in many state governments where the purchase of legislation is obvious to the electorate. But we were thinking more about the consequences of Obama in the White House. Let me know when I can be of help.
Elie Yarden,
Cambridge, MA