Cobb or Kerry, but not Camejo
October 14, 2004
I am not fond of the Democratic Party. Senator Kerry in particular offers no hope to me. Yet I understand the "Anybody But Bush" sentiment; anyone living through the Bush years should be able to understand it.
I see no point to the "independent" Nader/Camejo campaign, and in particular feel people need to be warned about Peter Camejo. Progressives who cannot bring themselves to vote for Kerry should vote for David Cobb.
Many Green voters are going to vote for David Cobb, the Green Party nominee, in states like California where Kerry has a clear lead. I cannot vote for a Kerry who has promised to out do Bush in enlarging the military and bullying Islamic countries. Kucinich or even a Dean might tempt me in a swing state; Kerry would not.
David Cobb has good reasons to run: Greens need to keep their infrastructure in place, or a Green future will wither away. The Green Party is still working to get permanent ballot access in most states.
Progressive voters should reject the Nader/Camejo ticket. It is a ticket to nowhere. Nader and Camejo are hoping to help George Bush beat John Kerry. In 2000 I don't think Ralph Nader meant to be a spoiler. The campaign was meant to give Progressives somewhere to be other than the Democratic Party slave quarters. Ralph and his supporters dreamed of an upset, of getting to a point in the polls where Ross Perot had once been, then blasting through and actually winning the presidency. That wild dream is dead.
Peter Camejo has shown himself to be unworthy of anyone's vote. People outside California don't know his story. He's a millionaire Green whose previous activism had ended in a run for President in 1976, as the Trotskyist-Communist candidate. Without having run for a local office, much less won one and governed well in it, he ran as the Green Party candidate for governor of California in 2002. He supported the almost-immediate recall of Gray Davis, which led to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Peter Camejo is a top-down kind of guy. It took California Greens a while to figure that out. Peter brought many Mexican-American voters into the Party. In some ways his campaigns for governor were brilliant. But his teaming up with Nader has brought out all the character flaws that were harder to see during the campaigns for governor.
It all began in back in 2003. The first marker was Peter's placing himself on the ballot in the California Presidential primary. Ralph Nader had already decided to run an independent candidacy in the Fall of 2003. The California Green Party attempted to place Ralph Nader on the ballot for the March primary. Ralph requested that his name be withdrawn. He claimed this had something to do with FEC fundraising laws, which was not true.
What Ralph had decided he needed was no Green Party presidential candidate at all. Instead of honestly telling Greens that at the time, he plotted in secret with Peter Camejo and a few others. Camejo (and in New Mexico, Carol Miller) would run as a "favorite son" candidate. Well-known to California Greens, Camejo would win the primary and control California's over-sized delegation. Voters who wanted the Greens to duck and support Kerry, as well as Greens who wanted Ralph only if he actually ran as a Green, would be faked out and rendered impotent. At the same time Camejo told the active Greens who would actually be sent to the convention that they would be free to vote their consciences after the first ballot at the convention.
It almost worked. But David Cobb, probably the best campaigner this country has seen since Bill Clinton, made a non-stop effort appealing to Greens at state conventions around the country (most states don't allow Green primaries). David came to Milwaukee with the single biggest chunk of delegates. Another chunk of delegates wanted no Green to run at all. Camejo hoped to bully people into supporting having no Green nominee and instead endorsing the independent Nader/Camejo ticket. His bullying backfired. In an infamous incident Camejo went nuts and started screaming at the California delegation members that they were not to vote for Cobb. Many of them did just that, giving David Cobb the nomination in the second round.
Camejo and Nader then compounded their mistakes. They were in trouble in California, but were too arrogant to realize it. Camejo had been offered the VP position because he had promised to deliver California. But the Green Party of California has hundreds of active members, and most of them are thoughtful. A number of members of the California delegation who went to Milwaukee to support Nader/Camejo came back thinking they needed to take a good look at David Cobb. Now he was the Green Party nominee, and now that they had seen Camejo's character flaws up close and personal.
As the Cobb campaign got underway in California, its most important aspect was that it was not about David Cobb. It was about being Green Party, being grass roots, not needing to be bossed around by stars and experts. Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo have never understood that. They have always acted as if each of them, as a brilliant individual, is more than a match for the collective wisdom of the activists in the Green Party.
The Nader/Camejo campaign was run with paid staff, and their first job was to get the ticket on the ballot in California. That required a massive effort to get 250,000 signatures. The effort failed. Only then did Ralph made a phone call to one of his paid staff members in California, Forrest Hill (who is also a long-time Green Party activist with a good record). He ordered Forrest to get the California Green Party to remove David Cobb from its ballot line, so that Nader could, now, run as a Green in California.
Nader, Camejo, Hill, and Green Party supporters of Nader thought that would be a slam dunk. They continued to believe that because Camejo had done well in the California primary in March, he still had the support of about 90% of California Greens. But it was August, and many Greens now heard of Nader's flirtation with Pat Buchanan and accepting money and aid from Republicans. Many knew he had refused to be considered for the Green Party nomination.
Hill asked the California Coordinating Committee (CA CC) to do the dirty work. But though dominated by friends of Peter Camejo, most CC members knew that was beyond the powers delegated to them. So Hill changed his proposal to calling a statewide special nominating convention. Again the CC balked at doing that without asking a wider circle of Greens. Confident that Cobb had no support, the Nader supporters were able to pass a motion to poll the county organizations to get permission to hold the special convention.
While Cobb was touring elsewhere in the country, his band of supporters in California started campaigning to keep David on the ballot. They had four major talking points. Cobb was the Green Party of the United States nominee; Nader was not even registered Green. A special nominating convention was unnecessary since Nader supporters had agreed at the previous statewide meeting that if the Green Party US chose a nominee, they would not further contest the ballot line.
One of the Ten Key Values of the Green Party is personal responsibility. Cobb supporters argued that the supporters of the Nader campaign had been personally responsible to gather enough signatures to get him on the ballot. Their failure to be responsible did not imply a special convention needed to be held. The final point: Nader/Camejo just weren't all that popular anymore. That's why they were not able to get the signatures they needed.
The results of the polling of the counties surprised the Nader supporters. There was little support for giving Nader the ballot line. The motion went down in flames.
Even then Peter Camejo could have recovered some of his dignity by wishing the Cobb campaign well and concentrating his fiery tongue on lashing Bush and Kerry. But Peter's dark side seemed to grow stronger by the week. His new mania was that the Green Party process used to nominate David Cobb was undemocratic. In addition, Peter proclaimed that Cobb and his supporters were really Democrats. For people like Peter Camejo, a process is only democratic if Peter Camejo comes out a winner.
In a nutshell what Peter and friends argued about democracy was that: (1) the California primary vote should have been the main determinant for sending delegates to of the Green Party US convention, and (2) by voting for Peter for President in the primary, it was clear they were voting for the Green Party US to not have a nominee and instead to endorse the independent ticket of Nader with Camejo as his vice-presidential running mate. Peter Camejo, Forrest Hill and Carol Miller argued that the 48 states that did not have Green Party primaries should have had only the most token votes at the Green Party nominating convention. Aside from being a ridiculous argument, it infuriated activists everywhere. It is now hard to find a Peter Camejo supporter in the Green Party outside of California.
Peter's reasoning on the Democratic Party infiltration of the Green Party has about as much substance as a Joe McCarthy rant against communist infiltration of the Army dental corp. Basically, the logic is: I (Peter Camejo) am the true Green. David Cobb and his followers do not bow down and follow my lead when I make a proclamation. Therefore, they must be Democrats. Further, some of them think that a lot of people who voted for Nader in 2000 are going to vote for Kerry this time.
Camejo denies that former Nader supporters are going to vote for Kerry (or Cobb); he calls it capitulation. Actually listening to former Nader voters is not something Camejo is interested in. He demands that they shut up and vote for him.
In summary: I am voting for David Cobb. I can understand progressives holding their noses and voting for Kerry. But Nader and Camejo have gone astray and deserve no ones vote.