Green Candidate for Maine Governor Withdraws
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I am withdrawing from the Governor's race
to work with our Legislative candidates
March 15, 2010
Dear Supporters,
I am announcing today that I am suspending my campaign for governor, and will instead focus my energies towards building up our party by helping to elect Green Party candidates for state, county and local office.
Despite having more than 60 volunteer petition circulators working on my behalf, we fell short of the required 2,000 signatures from Green Independent Party members needed to put my name on the Party's primary ballot.
While I will not be on the November ballot as a candidate for Governor, the Party’s candidate recruitment efforts were very successful. We have quality candidates who can win elections, and who will make a major difference in Augusta. Strong local candidates are the backbone of any political party, and our efforts on behalf of these local candidates will do more to build the party than a gubernatorial race would have.
A major problem in my campaign's signature-gathering effort was physically locating the small number of Maine voters who are enrolled in the party. While Democrats and Republicans have several hundred thousand party members from whom to solicit a signature, the Green Independent Party has fewer than 30,000 active voters. In addition many of those on the list are young, urban and mobile – including a high percentage of college students – who had joined the party four years ago and have since moved.
Green Independents from 93 towns and all 16 counties signed those forms in the 74 days we had to gather the signatures. But it was slow going. It was hard to find our members. Not only had many of them moved, but with the popularity of cell phones, only about a third of them had listed phone numbers.
Another factor is the general public’s current disgust and distrust of government.
The two-party turmoil in Washington and Augusta has taken its toll. We found many people turned off by the gridlock. It was hard to get people engaged in January and February over something they didn’t perceive would affect them until June or November. The fact that as of last week only one of the seven Democrats and just four of the seven Republican Party candidates for governor had filed their nomination papers tells me that this is a universal problem.
In addition to voter apathy, our volunteers were also initially diverted from signature gathering by the additional requirements of the Maine Clean Election Law, requirements imposed by the Legislature in 2009, after I announced my candidacy.
By eliminating the requirement that parties had to run a gubernatorial candidate in order to maintain party status, the Democrats made it clear they did not want a Green Party candidate for governor on the ballot this year, and furthermore, if there was a Green Independent candidate, they did not want that candidate to be well funded. So they also made major changes to the Clean Election Law that discouraged small parties from taking advantage of that process.
The most onerous change was the new requirement that Clean Election candidates for governor must raise $40,000 in private funding – under much stricter requirements than those imposed on traditional gubernatorial candidates – before qualifying for public funding.
Basically the Legislature said that in order to not be dependent on private campaign funds we had to be dependent on private campaign funds. It’s an illogical requirement that flies in the face of the intent of the law and is disrespectful of the citizens who voted to approve the Clean Election Act.
On top of that, the $40,000 had to come from Maine registered voters, who are already paying for the Clean Election Act through their taxes. Thus those who supported the law were subjected to a system of double taxation if they wanted the law to work as intended. This was an irresponsible act on the part of the Democratically-controlled Legislature.
I believe having members of the Green Independent Party serving in the Legislature would provide needed checks and balances on the two-party system. That’s why I will work hard to get our party members elected. I encourage you to work with us towards this goal.
We’re not the party of big government and we’re not the party of no government, we’re the party of good government. The Green Independent party offers what we believe most Maine voters are looking for – independence from the two big-money parties, and a government based on local control and sustainability.
Thank you to all who have supported my efforts thus far. I am sorry if I disappointed you in my failure to obtain a spot on the primary ballot. We considered mounting a write-in drive to gain the nomination – it would have taken 4,000 Greens to vote in the primary and write in my name – but in the end our campaign team concluded it was more important for the party to put all of our energy into local Legislative races.
You’ll find a list of our party candidates on my web page. Please check to see if there is a candidate in your district and volunteer to help. Some of these candidates will be running as Clean Election candidates, and have until the third week in April to collect their $5 qualifying contributions. Please help them out in this regard. And remember that they all will need contributions, either seed money or general campaign funds so please help out there, also.
As for my gubernatorial campaign, we have a small campaign debt to retire. Additional contributions to help retire that debt would be appreciated.
My best to all of you, I will stay in touch.
Lynne
Bummer. I was hoping that the Greens would help to drain the clean elections swamp.
Williams had given up trying to qualify as a Clean Elections candidate a month ago or so.
I wonder if any Democratic legislators will try to bring back the 5% vote requirment for Governor or President in either of the last two general elections for a party to retain its official ballot status before the current Legislative session ends.
From the Augusta Insider
The deadline to submit petitions to put a candidate on the ballot has passed. The major party primary field shaped up as expected. Pat McGowan, Libby Mitchell, John Richardson, Steve Rowe, and Rosa Scarcelli will run in the Democratic primary. Steve Abbott, Bill Beardsley, Paul LePage, Matt Jacobson, Peter Mills, Les Otten, and Bruce Poliquin round out the GOP primary field. The Maine Green Independent Party will not have a candidate on the ballot however. Lynne Williams announced she would be dropping out of the gubernatorial race today. Despite having 60 volunteers the campaign was unable to meet the 2,000 signature requirement said Williams.
Williams credited the shortfall to the widespread nature of registered Green Party voters in the state. Part of the problem, according to Williams, is that the state has fewer than 30,000 registered Green Party members. (A recent Green Party email touts the 34,500 registered members, the "highest total ever") Williams also cited voter apathy, lack of listed phone numbers, and volunteer efforts spent on meeting Clean Election requirements as factors in the lack of signatures. Williams pulled no punches in her criticism of the two major parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have several hundred thousand members from whom they can collect signatures, said Williams. "The Democrats need to collect one-half-of-one-percent of their registered voters, we need to collect six percent of our registered voters," Williams said. As Pine Tree Politics pointed out, this is a difficult task, but quite possible through proper organizational management. Both Johnathan Carter and Pat LaMarche were able to qualify for the ballot in elections past.
If you cannot collect even 6% of your registered voters needed to get on the ballot you have bigger problems...
www.bangordailynews.com
3/18/10
editorial
Greening the Ballot
For the first time since 1994, Maine's gubernatorial ballot won't have a Green candidate on it in November. The lone Green candidate who tried to get on the ballot, Lynne Williams of Bar Harbor, failed to secure the required 2,000 signatures of registered Greens.
Maine has been fertile ground for independent and third-party candidates. We are better off for that access to the ballot. But getting 2,000 people to sign a petition is a reasonable threshold.
www.pressherald.com
Greens' absence adds new wrinkle to governor's race
By Susan Cover Staff Writer
AUGUSTA — The absence of a Green Independent Party candidate from the governor's race means 6 percent to 9 percent of the Maine electorate will be up for grabs in November.
Related headlines
Who grabs it – or whether Greens just stay home on Election Day – is the latest political wrinkle in a race likely to be full of twists and turns in the coming months.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/greens-absence-adds-new-wrinkle-to-gover...
Robert: How many Republican candidates would have been on the ballot if the requirement were 15,606 signatures (6% of the numbers steven put on the legislative candidates page) or even great for dems. Not very many.
As a green I am of the mind that we have been forced to spend a lot of time and energy getting that 5% each gubernatorial cycle instead of focusing on legislative and local races. While i signed Lynnes petition and hoped she would get on the ballot i spent my time and energy getting two house candidates on the ballot instead, two candidates with a shot to win - which Lynne did not have.
Dan, are we talkign apples or oranges here? 15,000 was for Governor, not for any legislative seat...if you only ocllected 6% of those registered as greens, knowing you needed their support to run a campaign, removing herself from consideration was the smart thing to do.
These were two separate thoughts,
The first being that you said something to the effect - if Lynne Williams couldn't collect 6% of registered Greens she shouldn't run for the office of governor. I was merely stating that if the effort to get on the ballot was 6% of registered party members there would be far fewer dems or repubs on the ballot this year- if any at all as they would need to collect 15,000 signatures or more.
As for legislative races I think its better for the Greens to spend time and energy on local races with greater chances of victory than on a state wide seat that is a much more difficult, expensive and the like. Running more Green candidates for seats where you can conceivably speak with most of the voters will do more for our message than gubernatorial candidates do. - all of that being said its good for party recognition and general consciousness when Greens are in the debates etc.
Dan, I think yours is good general advice. Maine legislative candidates always seem to get overlooked by voters focusing on statewide and congressional district races. The best governor in the world is sunk if voters saddle him with a two-bit Legislature.
skf
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If they're this disorganized come 2012, they could fall below the threshhold and lose their automatic ballot slot and have to petition to get on the ballot just like every other independent party. Even home girl Pat LaMarche can't salvage this. Do they then register as Democrats and become a pain-in-the-*ss internal activist wing trying to make the leftwing stretch wider, which would be divisive to more traditional D's, or do they wander in the wilderness of unenrolled and ignored?