| When I think of the U.S. Green Party -- and it's not that often -- it strikes me that over the time I've known of them, underlying the Greens' strategy has been the presumption that American society is on the cusp of a sudden, transformative enlightenment. They seem to me fueled by a vision that on some election day, all the disaffected citizens and the perennially disappointed liberal voters will suddenly and finally vote "for their own best interests" – which naturally means, for the Greens.
It's a nice idea, and as an idealist and a bit of a (e)utopian, I will admit that I was once swayed by that notion myself, and was a registered Green during the 2000 election. If I didn't blow it on sending in the absentee ballot, I would have voted for Nader, too.
Since then, I've come to be more than a little skeptical of a political strategy which depends on sudden, massive and violent upheavals of public opinion, and the horrifically casual way that Nader and the Greens dropped an electoral bomb in 2000 did a lot to alter my perspective. (The attitude that "politics is just a game" has also, in the years of Bush/Cheney rule, become singularly unappealing to me, though it certainly still persists in some quarters.)
All of this, though, is a bit of (tortured) setup for a metaphor and a bit of hot-off-the-presses news. If the Greens pioneered the nuclear age of progressive third-party politics, laying waste to cities and fostering a "mutually assured destruction" policy with the Democrats ("nukyular" will be your legacy, friends), today yesterday may have been the start of the fusion age: the peaceful use of the ballot to build progressive coalitions has just dawned with SB 1311 being signed into law.
Notwithstanding any other provision of the general statutes or any special act, the nomination of a candidate by a major or minor party under this chapter, for any office shall disqualify such candidate from appearing on the ballot by nominating petition for the same office, unless (1) such petition is circulated by an existing minor party with the same party designation at the time of such nomination, and (2) the minor party is otherwise qualified to nominate candidates on the same ballot. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit any candidate from appearing on the ballot as the nominee of two or more major or minor parties for the same office.
Or, in simpler terms from our friends at the Office of Legislative Research:
Under the bill, a party that has not attained minor party status for the office in question, but has for at least one other office on that ballot, may cross-endorse a nominated major or minor party candidate by petitioning such candidate's name onto the ballot.
What this means is that minor parties can cross-endorse any candidate on the ballot if they already have a line on that ballot – previously, you needed to have run a "spoiler" at least once for that specific office before you could cross-endorse in future races.
When I first read this bill, I thought it would only allow minor parties to endorse on machines where they already have a line. For example, Working Families has a line in the 5th CD, and what I assumed was that they could then cross-endorse candidates at will on every machine in the 5th.
But when I asked around, what I learned was that this changes things in a far more dramatic fashion: SB 1311 allows minor parties to cross-endorse in up-ballot and down-ballot races – meaning that a party qualified in just one small district now can endorse for every race that overlaps that district, (including statewide races), and a party qualified for a a line statewide can now cross-endorse in every Congressional, State Senate, and Assembly district (as well as in any municipal elections in that same year.)
This is a tremendous boon for fusion-centric parties like Working Families, and it could certainly help our friends the Greens if they decided to stop dropping bombs and start practicing coalition politics.
I should also mention that the Connecticut for Lieberman Party now can cross endorse in every single race in every single town, statewide, in 2010. Quite a birthday present from Granny Rell, wouldn't you say?
With public financing and this new fusion law in place, grassroots politics in Connecticut are going to be an entirely different thing starting next year. |
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