Candidates for the 2004 Green Presidential Nomination: Cobb, Glover, McKinney, Mesplay, Nader, Salzman: Brief Sketches / Info
[I just realized that it appears that I wrote this, when in fact I did not. This came to me via one of the many Green Party lists I’m on, and I appear to have accidentally posted it without attribution to the original author, for which I sincerely apologize. -Thomas, 1/26/2004]
Candidates for the 2004 Green Presidential Nomination
(Included here are the original six who spoke or sent statements to Green
Party of the United States (GPUS) July 2003 conference indicating interest
in, or leaving open the possibility of, running as the Green presidential
candidate, plus Mesplay, whose later entry was announced in GreensWeek,
http://www.gp.org/greensweek/index.html
Candidate
Contact information
Biography / State Green Party affiliation if applicable
David Cobb (announced candidate)
cobbweb@greens.org
www.votecobb.org
722 Ninth St. Apt #1
Eureka, Ca 95501
707-269-0984 (home/office)
713-444-6592 (cell)
State party affiliation: previously TEXAS (recently relocated to CALIFORNIA)
(biography provided by the candidate)
David Cobb serves as the General Counsel for the Green Party of
the United States (GP-US) and helped to found the Green Party of Texas
(GPTX) in 1999. He was the GPTX candidate for Attorney General in 2002
and is seeking the Green Party nomination for President in 2004.
David had a successful law practice until early 2000, when Ralph
Nader asked him to manage the Green Party effort in Texas. He coordinated
the ballot access drive in Texas, helping to collect over 76,000 signature
in 75 days! When he ran for Attorney General in 2002 there were only 4
local chapters of the GPTX. At the conclusion of David’s campaign, there
were 26 chapters. David proposes that the Green Party run a presidential
campaign in 2004 that is dedicated to helping to build the state parties.
He serves on the Steering Committee of Democracy Unlimited of
Humboldt County (www.monitor.net/duhc) and as Campaigns Director for
Reclaim Democracy.org which are both citizen’s groups dedicated to
contesting and challenging the illegitimate corporate usurpation of our
Constitution and our government.
David lectures and facilitates “Rethinking Corporations/
Rethinking Democracy” seminars and workshops across the country, which
explore the social, legal and historical context of how corporations have
become the dominant institution of our times. These seminars focus on how
corporations have become unelected governing institutions, and how we can
provoke (and win) a nonviolent democratic revolution in response.
Paul Glover (announced candidate)
http://www.ithacanews.org/greenpresident.html
Box 365, Ithaca, NY 14851
(607) 2727-4330
paglo@lightlink.com
State party affiliation: NEW YORK (biography provided by the candidate)
Paul Glover is prime founder of Ithaca HOURS,
http://www.ithacahours.com, a local
currency, the Ithaca Health Fund,
http://www.ithacahealth.org , Whole Ithaca
Stock Exchange (WISE),
http://ithacanews.org/wise.html , the
Ithaca Trolley Authority,
http://ithacanews.com/9208.html , Citizen
Planners of Los Angeles, and other groups. He is author of Hometown Money,
http://www.ithacahours.com/hometown.html ,
Ithaca Power (fuel system),
http://ithacahours.com/archive/ithacapower,
Los Angeles: A History of the Future,
http://www.ithacahours.com/losangeles.html He is publisher of Ithaca Community News,
http://www.ithacanews.org , and is employed by
the Ithaca Health Fund.
He was declared “Ithaca’s Hero” by the Ithaca Times Readers’
Polls of 1995 and 2000, and its “Best Mayoral Candidate” 2003. He
received an award from the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission in 1996
and received a Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship in 2001. During 1978 he
walked across the United States, entirely on foot, from Boston to San
Diego. He is 56 years old. He holds degrees in Marketing and in City
Management. Here is his
resume:
http://www.ithacanews.org/glover.resume.html .
Cynthia McKinney (not announced)
http://www.cynthia2002.com/ (her Congressional campaign website, listed above, has a lot of info about
Cynthia McKinney, including contact info)
The draft McKinney website is at: www.votemckinney.org
(biography excerpted from Politics1.com at
http://www.politics1.com/greens04.htm
Outspoken former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has expressed an
interest in seeking the GPUS Presidential nomination in 2004 — as she also
seeks to regain her old US House seat in the 2004 Democratic Primary.
McKinney — who remains a Democrat — served four years in the Georgia
State House and then ten years in Congress before her re-election defeat in
the 2002 primary. While she compiled a solid progressive voting record,
controversy has dogged her during her political career [particularly
concerning her questions about 9/11 and her support for justice for
Palestininans]. . . Despite these controversies, McKinney has a good
relationship with the Greens and is apparently interested in the
Presidential nomination — and in simultaneously regaining her House seat.
. . . She has spoken at various Green events around the country in 2003 to
keep testing the waters and has also said she plans to regain her House
seat — but she also accepted a part-time college adjunct professor
position in mid-2003. Her father soon after said that he expects she will
most likely run for Congress in 2004 as a Democrats instead of seeking the
Green Presidential nod. No official word from McKinney herself as to
whether or not she disagreed with her father’s latest statement.
Kent Mesplay (announced candidate)
mailto:kentmesplay@yahoo.com 8556 Lynx Rd, San Diego, CA 92126
Campaign website should soon be up (try a search using Kent’s name in a
week or two)
State party affiliation: CALIFORNIA
(biography excerpted from one provided by candidate)
Kent Mesplay, 41, is the fourth-generation descendant of a
Blackfoot/Irish couple. A natural-born U.S. citizen he grew up among
indigenous people in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, speaking
one language and culture outside the house and another inside. He was
home-schooled during his first eight years of life and then attended
boarding school for two years before returning with his family to his
father’s home state of Colorado. Kent values education, having earned a
Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering (biomechanics; prosthetic science) from
Northwestern University.
A long-time California resident (since 1977), Kent first became
active with the Greens in 1995, serving as appointed Treasurer to the San
Diego Green Party County Council and, as co-chair of their Communications
Committee, he put on a press conference for Ralph Nader at the Hotel del
Coronado. Kent helped place Ralph Nader on the California ballot, voting
his support at a Green Party State Meeting in Berkeley in 1996. Currently,
he works as an Air Quality Inspector with the San Diego Air Pollution
Control District, acting to enforce and ensure business compliance with
Federal, State and Local air quality standards in a manner tailored to
balance economic and environmental concerns.
Carol Miller (announced candidate)
mailto:carolmiller@newmexico.com or
mailto:carolmiller@cybermesa.com
Ph. 505-660-5988 (day), 505-689-2361 (evening)
State party affiliation: NEW MEXICO
(biography excerpted from Politics1.com at
http://www.politics1.com/greens04.htm
Carol Miller, a public health administrator, first rose to
prominence in the Green Party in 1997 as a Congressional nominee in a
special election. In that race, she captured an astounding 17% of the vote
(one of the highest percentages in GPUS history) . . . . She ran again in
1998, but her numbers fell (3rd place - 4%) . . . . Since then, Miller has
remained active within the Green Party and in the 2000 Nader for President
campaign. She briefly was a Green candidate for State Treasurer in 2002,
but withdrew from the race. Miller was a commissioned officer in the US
Public Health Service in the 1980s and in 1993 served on the White House
Health Care Task Force. She also served two terms as President of the New
Mexico Public Health Association and served six terms on the Governing
Council of the American Public Health Association. An advocate for rural
communities, she founded the Frontier Education Center — a group for which
she now serves as Executive Director. Miller has expressed an interest in
the 2004 Presidential race and has recently started speaking to Green
gatherings around the nation. In addition to health care reform, Miller has
also focused much of her activism on environmental and peace issues.
Ralph Nader (not announced)
Draft Nader Committee is at:
http://www.draftnader2004.com/ PO Box 190753
San Francisco, CA 94119-0753
Ph. 415-835-4778
Email: contact@draftnader2004.com
(biography excerpted from Politics1.com at
http://www.politics1.com/greens04.htm
Famed consumer advocate, liberal activist and Harvard-educated
attorney, Ralph Nader is likely to make a fourth Presidential run in 2004.
[He] ran as a write-in candidate in the 1992 NH Democratic primary, and was
the Green nominee for President in 1996 and 2000. Spending just over $5,000
(a self-imposed limit), . . . Nader was on the ballot in 22 states and
carried over 700,000 votes (4th place - 0.8%) in 1996. In 2000, Nader
raised millions of dollars, mobilized leftist activists and grabbed
national headlines with his anti-corporate campaign message. . . . Nader
was on the ballot in 44 states and finished third with 2,878,000 votes
(2.7%) . . . . In mid-2003, Nader finally confirmed . . . that he was
willing to run again in 2004. . . . [In] a 2003 news interview: If the Dems
agree not to go negative on his Presidential campaign (so he has a shot at
hitting the important 5% mark), Nader promises to encourage all the voters
who show up to vote for him to also vote for Dems for Congress and all the
other down-ballot offices to help them recapture majority status in those
legislative bodies. Unlike most of the other Green candidates, Nader is not
a registered member of the party — he’s a registered independent. Nader,
who will be 70 in 2004, . . . a former Army reservist, and a
multi-millionaire . . . . As in 2000, Nader vows that his campaign will
again “emphasize the problems of, and remedies for, the excessive
concentration of corporate power and wealth in our country, by highlighting
the important tools of democracy needed for the American people as
voters/citizens, workers, consumers, taxpayers, and small savers/investors.”
Lorna Salzman (announced candidate)
Campaign website address: LORNASALZMAN.COM
Email: LSALZMAN@RCN.COM;
Phone: 631-653-3387 / 718-522-0253;
Address: PO Box 775,
East Quogue, NY 11942 through 10/30/03…then: 29 Middagh St., Brooklyn, NY
11201
State party affiliation: NEW YORK (member, state committee until
November) (excerpted from biography provided by candidate)
A graduate of Cornell University, Lorna Salzman has been an
environmental activist, writer, lecturer and organizer since the
mid-1960s. She was hired by the late David Brower, founder and president
of Friends of the Earth (FOE), as the regional representative of FOE
and held that position for nearly ten years, concentrating on anti-nuclear
work and on coastal zone and wetlands protection on eastern Long Island. In
the mid-1980s she was an editor at American Birds magazine, published by
the National Audubon Society, and soon after became Executive Director of
Food & Water Inc., an anti-food irradiation group. From 1992 to 1995 she
was a natural resources specialist in the Natural Resources Unit of the NYC
Dept. of Environmental Protection.
In 1985 she co-founded the New York Greens, later called the NY
Green Party, and in the late 1990s she ran for Congress and the US Senate
on the Peconic Greens and Green Choice parties respectively. In 2002, she
was the Green Party candidate for the US House of Representatives in the
1st CD, Suffolk County, Long Island NY. She is a member of the State
Committee of the Green Party of New York State.
Her top priorities are: carbon taxes to start reducing fossil
fuel consumption; universal single payer health care funded through the
income tax; ending corporate subsidies and tax breaks; moving to full cost
pricing of all goods; abolishing NAFTA and WTO and drastically reforming
IMF and World Bank; reviving a nationalized rail and freight system;
promoting maximum biodiversity; shutting down nuclear power plants;
protecting women’s rights globally; redefining national security as
security in energy, transportation and public health.
She is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, and in 2000 she
received the international Earth Day Award from the Earth Society
Foundation for her committed environmental work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Additionally, it is rumored that Peter Camejo, Green Party of California’s
candidate in the recent gubernatorial recall election, is considering
throwing his hat in the ring. Peter’s website during the recall campaign
was at http://www.votecamejo.org.
Thanks and recognition to Rudy Perkins of Massachusetts for his work in
compiling this information.
