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In September 1998, the New Mexico Green Party proposed that an ASGP Presidential Exploratory Committee be established for the 2000 elections. The ASGP Coordinating Committee passed the proposal on October 30, 1998, and on December 20, 1998, the ASGP Steering Committee appointed a seven-person committee, chaired by David Cobb (TX). On February 22, 1999, the Committee sent a letter and a questionnaire to the following prospective presidential and vice presidential candidates, asking if they were interested in running on the Green Party ticket in 2000 and, if so, how they would envision conducting the campaign: Wendell Berry, Jerry Brown, Lester Brown, Noam Chomsky, Ron Daniels, Ron Dellums, Lani Guinier, Dan Hamburg, Woody Harrelson, Paul Hawken, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Winona LaDuke, Bill McKibben, Cynthia McKinney, Carol Miller, Toni Morrison, Ralph Nader, Ron Ouellette (requested the questionnaire), John Robbins, and Jan Schlichtmann. On May 10 the committee also sent the letter and questionnaire to Harry Belafonte, Julian Bond, Joceyln Elders, Kurt Schmoke, Studs Terkel, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and General Lee Butler.
Brown, McKibben, Chomsky, Guinier, Hawken, Miller wrote back declining, but they each graciously thanked the ASGP for its outreach and offered sympathetic statements of support for the Green Party project. Nader replied:
If I seek the nomination – a decision that will not be made until next year – and receive that designation, I will pursue a dedicated and thorough campaign that meets the Federal Election Commission requirements. Such an active campaign will have the objective of strengthening our nation’s democracy by strengthening the Green Party movement at the local, state and national levels; by emphasizing 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. If there are Greens who support my seeking the nomination, I encourage them to expand the number of volunteers and increase the time spent working to build the Green Party this year in order to advance the Party’s “Key Values” and to increase the likelihood of ballot access in all fifty states.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- First Stirrings of a Green Political Party in the United States
- Green Politics: The Global Promise
- Early Outreach to the Bioregional Movement
- The Founding of U.S. Greens – St. Paul, MN, August 1984
- Creation of the Ten Key Values
- National Clearinghouse
- Early Debates About Green Issues
- First National Green Gathering – Amherst, MA, 1987
- Strategy & Policy Approaches in Key Areas (SPAKA)
- Greening the West Gathering – near San Francisco, 1988
- Second National Green Gathering – Eugene, OR, 1989
- Early State Party Ballot Qualification Efforts and Candidacies
- Third National Green Gathering – Estes Park, CO, 1990
- Green Party Organizing Committee – Boston, 1991
- Fourth National Green Gathering – Elkins, WV, 1991
- Green Politics Network – 1992
- Fifth National Green Gathering – Minneapolis, 1992
- Electoral Success in 1992 and Post-Election Conferences in Santa Monica and at Bowdoin College, February 1993
- 1995 – A Watershed Year for Green Party Development: The Third Parties ’96 Conference, and the Nader Factor
- National Green Gathering ’95 – Albuquerque, NM 36
- First Green Presidential Nominating Convention – UCLA, 1996; Nader’s 1996 Campaign for President as the Green Party Candidate
- Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) – 1996
- 2000 Presidential Candidate Outreach
- Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention 2000 and Nader 2000
- The Boston Proposal – October 2000
- Founding of the Green Party of the United States – July 2001
- National Committee Status Granted to the Green Party of the United States by the Federal Election Commission, 2001
Green Party Elders 