Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention 2000 and Nader 2000

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The Association of State Green Parties nominated Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke for president/vice- president at its June 23-25, 2000, presidential nominating convention in Denver. The convention was attended by over 300 voting delegates from 39 states. Nader and LaDuke were nominated with 92% of the vote, with the remainder being split evenly between Jello Biafra and Stephen Gaskin. Convention delegates also approved the first national Green Party platform.

This document (which subsequently served as the founding platform of the Green Party of the United States, in 2001) was based on the Ten Key Values and was the result of the platform process designed and led by Platform Committee Chair Steven Schmidt (NM). (The Left Green Network had composed their own version of a values statement, but Schmidt et al. did not draw from that document in writing the founding Green Party platform.) The first national Green Party platform was the result of the 1995 strategic plan presented at the Green National Gathering and intended to provide the basis of a national campaign. It did: Nader was one of the first to read the platform and declared in his first acceptance speech that the Green Platform he had in his hand was the reason he was running.
At a press conference on July 20, 2000, Nader stated, “The Green Party platform hands-down is the most thorough, justice-saturated platform of any political party platform of the day. Reminds me of some of the great platforms of many decades ago when parties – at least one – stood tall for the working people of this country.”
Jim Hightower was the keynote speaker at the Green Party presidential nominating convention. Other speakers included Manning Marable, Helen Caldicott, John Anderson, Ann Northrop, and Medea Benjamin, as well as representatives from Green Parties in other countries. Over 1200 people attended the final nominating session, including representatives from Green Parties in 15 countries as well as from Green Party Federations of the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
The convention was a big success in bringing the Green Party message to millions of Americans who had never heard of it and demonstrated that the Green Party could be a viable alternative to the two- party duopoly.
Early-History-Nader-Puppet.jpg
The momentum of the Nader/LaDuke candidacy built on the protests in Seattle against the WTO in December 1999 – and from the streets of Philadelphia and Los Angeles during the R2K and D2K protests against Republican and Democratic Party conventions in the summer of 2000. Nader/LaDuke appeared on 44 state ballots in November 2000 and received 2,883,105 votes, 2.7 percent of all votes cast. This strong showing further accelerated the development of more state Green Parties and solidified the electoral orientation of the Green Party movement overall.
A record 286 Greens ran for public office in November 2000. Forty-six were elected, including a second Green City Council majority, this time in Sebastopol, CA.