Pubdate: Sun, 27 Aug 2006
Source: Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, CT)
Copyright: 2006sMediaNews Group, Inc
Contact:  http://www.connpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/574
Author: Ken Dixon, CT Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

GREEN PARTY CANDIDATES FACE HURDLES

To say the statewide slate of Green Party candidates faces a tough election 
campaign underestimates the obstacles that Republican and Democratic 
domination have built in Connecticut since Henry Dutton, a Whig, was 
governor in 1855.

Political experts and observers say the 2,200-member Green Party, while 
addressing some major issues that concern state voters, cannot get its 
message out to enough people to overcome the massive media campaigns of the 
Republicans and Democrats.

But amid the expected cacophony of attack advertising in this year's 
quadrennial gubernatorial race and the sizzling-hot U.S. Senate campaign, 
the Greens will provoke Connecticut's electorate to think beyond 
traditional party politics.

The Green Party is under funded and expected to finish no better than a 
distant third in the fall races, but the party's top-of-the-ticket 
candidates hope to use the upcoming Senate and gubernatorial debates to 
frame public discussions on national security, health care and 
environmental issues.

Clifford W. Thornton Jr., 61, a retired Glastonbury businessman whose 
campaign centers on drug-policy reform, is leading a team of advocates from 
throughout the state who believe that mainstream politics has failed 
Connecticut and the nation, letting corporate interests dominate public 
policy at taxpayers' expense and detriment. Overshadowed by the recent 
gubernatorial primary -- which, in turn, was drowned out by the uproar of 
the U.S. Senate primary contest between Sen. Joe Lieberman and upstart 
millionaire Ned Lamont -- Thornton hopes to break into the electorate's 
consciousness during the upcoming debates with Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell 
and Democrat John DeStefano Jr.

That is, if he gets invited and the mainstream candidates agree.

Thornton may have an easier time than another petitioning gubernatorial 
candidate Joseph A. Zdonczyk of the Concerned Citizens Party, who received 
only 8,792 of the nearly one million votes cast in the 1998 election.

Ralph A. Ferrucci, a 34-year-old truck driver and artist from New Haven, is 
the Green's U.S. Senate candidate, who has the formidable task of getting 
voters to notice him.

The daily mud slinging of the Lamont-Lieberman race has also eclipsed 
former Derby mayor and little-known Republican Alan Schlesinger's attempt 
to gain traction beyond the 4 percent rating in the recent Quinnipiac 
University Poll.

Ferrucci believes that voters are ready to listen to someone talk about 
issues that really concern them, such as health care.

"I want to talk about a real universal health-care system," Ferrucci said 
recently. "A single-payer plans that takes insurance companies out of the 
system and makes health care the first priority."

He said that the way elections are financed, with special-interest money 
fueling mainstream campaigns such as Lieberman's, make the fight for 
healthcare access tougher.

"The problem is universal health care and campaign finance reform have to 
come together," Ferrucci said. "You have to take the lobbyists out of 
Washington, set up public financing instead of the insurance companies and 
pharmaceuticals financing the elections."

He believes that the attack ads hurling back and forth between Lamont and 
Lieberman are turning off the electorate. "I talking about the issues that 
people care about while these commercials attack each other on what they do 
not stand for, while ignoring most of the concerns of the working people in 
Connecticut."

???????????????????? ? ? Thornton, the first African-American to run for 
governor, said during a recent interview that current national and 
statewide drug policy has created a wasteful prison culture that ensnares a 
disproportionate percentage of inner-city residents, let suburbanites off 
the hook and ignores the overriding need for better drug treatment.

"It's not that today's drug laws are racist, but it's the application 
that's racist," Thorton said. "What I'm talking about is the double 
standard for people in the justice system. Anyone that supports our present 
system is directly responsible for its results."

Thornton said that while initial signals seem to include him in the 
anticipated upcoming gubernatorial debates, he's concerned that Rell and 
DeStefano might work to keep he and other minor-party candidates like 
Zdonczyk, off the stage.

or Democrats."

He said that while the Lamont and Lieberman race has garnered national 
attention on Connecticut and the war in Iraq, the domestic war on drugs is 
being annoyed.

"Our own house is not in order and we're telling people about democracy 
around the world?" Thornton said, adding that his main platform is the 
"legalization, medicalization and decriminalization" of drugs including 
marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

"Once we put the models in place at the same time, crime and violence is 
gone over night," Thornton said, adding that drug dealers would then be 
given chances to back to school and train for jobs.

"If one does not understand racism, classism, white privilege, terrorism 
and the war on drugs, what these terms mean and how these work, then 
everything else you do understand will only confuse you," he said. "The war 
on drugs is a world destabilizer. The most-pressing issue facing the state 
of Connecticut and this country is not the war in Iraq, and I respect the 
human toll the war has taken."

Thornton expects to run the campaign for $50,000 and to at least blaze a 
trail for future Green Party candidates.

"The true test of a real leader is how many leaders he creates in the 
process," Thornton said. "I'm not talking about Lamont Light, the Lieberman 
Light or any of those rich white boys. Going along to get along makes one 
complicit."

But political analysts and observers say that beyond adding some issues to 
the campaign, third parties in general and the Green Party in particular 
have little impact.

Since the mid-1850s, there are been only two minor-party governors, 
Alexander H. Holley in 1857 and 1858 of the American Republican Party and 
Lowell P. Weicker, who invented A Connecticut Party for his successful 1990 
campaign. Otherwise, it has been a string of 31 Republicans and 15 Democrats.

Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said he 
doesn't include third-party candidates in telephone surveys unless they 
have prompted some amount of popularity.

"They have to show things like fund-raising, media coverage, participation 
in debates and other issues that they show they could significantly affect 
the outcome of the election," Schwartz said last week. "Historically, they 
have not performed well at the voting booths and they get scant attention 
in the news media."

Schwartz admitted that third parties can raise important issues that the 
mainstream politicians avoid.

Gary L. Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at 
Sacred Heart University, said last week that Weicker and other independents 
such as Ross Perot and Teddy Roosevelt, are the few exceptions to the rule 
that third-party candidates are doomed.

"And those who are successful often come out of the major parties," said 
Rose who teaches a class in political parties. Part of the problem for 
minor parties is that the two main parties write state and national 
election rules, he said.

"Even though we have a lot of independents out there, they usually identify 
themselves as Republicans or Democrats," Rose said. "It seems that the 
American people break into two broad political factions. The parties that 
have existed have also been broad enough to encapsulate the broad range of 
their interests."

Rose said the best that third parties can hope for is to shape the debate 
and possible force the mainstream pols to accept, or steal, their ideas.

"The Progressives raised the issues of civil-service reform, creating 
primary elections, providing Social Security and even minimum-wage 
legislation," Rose said. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt split from the Republican 
Party and formed the Progresive to run as independent president campaign 
nicknamed the "Bull Moose" party.

On Thornton's drug-reform proposal, Rose said he hasn't seen any polling 
data indicating that state residents are concerned about it.

"That's hardly front and center in either Connecticut or American politics 
today," Rose said. "I have serious doubts whether it gets traction in 
Connecticut."
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