By Joseph Witt

With the Republican Party in disarray, shaken by scandals as various as they are damaging, the Democrats should be set to take back the House and Senate. Yet the Democrats are not in position to gain from Republican misfortunes. The Democrats supported the invasion of Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, and acquiesced to regressive tax policies and other awful legislation without putting up a fight.

The time is right for another third party challenge to the stagnant two-party system.

The Pacific Green Party has 13,000 registered voters in Oregon, yet this year they’ve managed to field only four candidates, three here in Multnomah County.

Chris Iverson is running against Dan Saltzman and four other candidates for City Commissioner District 3. Iverson lost an up-hill battle to get the 1,000 signatures and $5 contributions needed to get public financing for his campaign. His candidacy is a long shot against the popular Saltzman and a host of media-savvy challengers.

He wants to bring integrity to the city council, a pressing need with recent revelations regarding the cost-overruns in the OHSU tram project. “I never would have let that happen,” he says.

Other ideas Iverson has for the city include city-wide polluter taxes and a push to take the city decisevly onto biodiesel. “I want 100 percent of our school buses running on biodiesel,” says Iverson, a goal that would both boost the local biofuel industry and cut fuel costs for the city’s schools. [Note, the school buses are overseen by the school district not the city.]
Jeff Cropp is running against popular incumbent Diane Rosenbaum for state House District 42. The incumbent, a member of the Communications Workers of America, helped found Portland Jobs with Justice, worked on bringing workers and environmentalists together in the early 1990s and led the successful campaign to raise Oregon’s minimum wage. As a member of the house, Rosenbaum has fought to protect and increase the minimum wage. Rosenbaum can count on support form organized labor as well as many progressives in a very progressive district. Cropp clearly has significant obstacles to overcome.

More hopeful is Xander Patterson’s run for the Multnomah County Commission. The commission is non-partisan, so while the Multnomah Green Party endorses Patterson’s run for the District 2 position, he is not running as an official party candidate. Patterson, unique among this year’s Green candidates, has held elected office before, two terms in the East Multnomah Conservation District. He is a great believer in starting small, building a base of support, and working your way up. Patterson knows many of his constituents personally, and the Multnomah County Greens are going door-to-door to meet voters. He has an excellent chance of winning the seat, if volunteers and small contributions continue to flow into his campaign. Like several other candidates in Multnomah, he is voluntarily rejecting contributions larger than $50.

A third candidate, Joe Keating, has run for federal office in the past but is wading into the already crowded gubernatorial waters this time. He already has one election under his belt. Keating won the Green Party nomination last month, narrowly defeating financial planner and author Ed Winslow. Keating will travel the state throughout the summer. He’ll be driving a bio-diesel bus to highlight his support for Oregon’s growing alternative fuel industry and stressing the Green Party core values of sustainability and open democracy. Steve Geiger, Joe Keating’s campaign manager, thinks there’s a chance for the campaign to shift the debate this summer, as gas prices continue to rise and consumers feel the pinch. But Keating will face three other candidates this fall, and will have to work hard not to be crowded out of the picture.

What are the obstacles facing a resurgent Green Party? Geiger believes the main problem facing the Greens is lingering animosity over the 2000 election. The Greens must overcome the distrust of voters, distrust grounded in a belief that third party efforts are doomed to either spoil the election for a Democrat or somehow waste votes. This is a tall order. If the Greens mount a major national challenge this fall, it is sure to be met by new claims that Democrats, even pro-war, pro-PATRIOT Act Democrats, are better than their Republican counterparts.

The Green strategy that seems to be working is disarming in its simplicity: a return to the original, pre-2000 approach of building local parties by winning local races. This is the strategy that Xander Patterson used successfully to win his previous races. But this strategy has its difficulties as well. The Party must first overcome the indifference of its own members.
“It’s a challenge to get registered Greens to even put up a lawn sign,” says one party activist.

Perhaps local offices are not sexy orexciting, for voters or candidates, making it hard to draw in quality volunteers and donors. Nevertheless, Geiger and others see the future of the Green Party in the water boards, and school boards. “we need to show people that we can win on the local level.” The list of elected Greens in Oregon is made up of school board members and city councilors, which may be the reason so few Greens even know they have elected officials in Oregon. Xander Patterson points out that, “the issues the Greens tend to care about most are global ones,” and suggests that this is one reason so few of Multnomah County’s 7,000 registered Greens are involved in any of this year’s campaigns. How do you elect a city auditor who will fight global warming?

The other big problem for the Greens, one faced by all political parties to a certain degree, is a lack of funds and volunteers. Steven Geiger puts it succinctly: “people need to understand that things can not change unless they take a little bit of a chance themselves.” The first step into a politics is often volunteering for a candidate, or donating money to a cause.
This view is already beginning to take hold, says Chris Ivererson. He sees 2008 as the goal of today’s organizing efforts. The Greens will run more candidates, and get city funding for those running in Portland, he hopes: “2006 is just practice for that,” he says. “We need to be opportunistic. We missed a huge, huge opportunity in Portland this year, by not getting together the signatures and contributions needed for public financing. The opportunity to advertise the Green Party’s message with government money won’t come again until 2008.”

If the Greens cannot make a serious challenge, or even field more than a handful of candidates, some may question whether the party should not simply call it quits and dissolve itself. After all, a political party that fields no candidates, raises no money, and makes no alliances might be considered dead already.

Rejuvenating the party means deeper member involvement. It means loudly asking for new volunteers, making it easy for them to work in the party, and using them to prepare more runs for local offices across Oregon. Where it gets complicated is that to do that the party needs to have some laurels to inspire people this is a worthwhile way for them to spend their time. Only when Oregon’s 13,000 Greens believe they can win will they get involved in the party again.

Xander Patterson, Joe Keating, and Chris Iverson are carrying a lot of hopes. At least one of these candidates needs to win. If the Green Party can pull off one victory, it can use that victory to start the long, slow process of rebuilding itself. As the Steve Geiger says, “the biggest problem is people believe we can’t win.”

It’s time for the Greens to change that belief and in the world of politics anything can happen.

Joseph Witt is long-time observer of the Pacific Green Party. Alliance editor Dave Mazza contributed to this article. Note: The Alliance does not make candidate endorsements. The purpose of this analysis is to provide readers with an understanding of Oregon’s progressive political environment.