A number of local Greens have gotten their absentee ballot and wondered why there are Conservative Republican Judges running on the Green Party's line. Have we endorsed them? No. The Green Party has not endorsed any of these candidates for Judge in any local race this year. What happened was the result of what played out earlier in the year in which we told you about during the Primary season.
For any other race, if a non-Green wants to run for office on the Green line, they need to get petition signatures of Greens, like we do, but then they need a "Wilson Pekula" which is written permission by the county party's chair(s) that the person can run on that line. What we discovered this year is Judges are exempt from that law. They do not need permission to run, just the petition signatures. Usually, the fact that we need such few signatures to get on the ballot works in our favor. In this case, it is the opposite.
If we find out about a non-Green Judge trying to get signatures, our only recourse is to find a Green to run against them in the Primary. We put out a call for Greens to run in the places we knew about, but there were no takers. A Democrat, Chris Ciaccio, approached the party and asked if we would be OK with him running for Surrogate Court on our line. We interviewed him and found him to be a good choice, so we "endorsed" him, but he lost in the Primary for the Green line to the Republican.
So, yes your ballot has Conservative Republicans on the Green line. No, we were not able to keep them off. No, we do not endorse any of them and ask that you actually DON'T vote for any candidates for Judge on the Green line.
Are there Greens on your ballot you SHOULD vote for?
Of course. In a recent development, a seat on the Monroe County Legislature opened up and one of our co-chairs, Chris Edes, will be running to fill the seat in the 25th Legislative District. If you haven't seen your ballot yet and want to know if you are in that district, you can click here to find out.
And then there is Howie Hawkins & Angela Walker. We cannot stress this enough. It is imperative that every progressive in Monroe County votes for Howie Hawkins for President. As you can see, the Green Party and our values are always under attack. If it is not by conservative judges, it's by Democrats. In this case, this year's state budget, written and passed by Democrats, increased the threshold for 3rd parties to remain on the ballot to an unacceptable level. So if Howie Hawkins does not get 130,000 votes for President, the Green Party will lose it's ballot status.
The same new law makes it extremely more difficult to run as an independent so this effectively means there will be no more local Green candidates to choose from in Monroe County or the rest of New York State. We will have LESS choice on the ballot when we need MORE.
Here's what you can do to help save the Green Party:
Vote for Howie Hawkins & Angela Walker. (It's a safe vote as the Dems have NYS wrapped up)
Like the Howie Hawkins campaign FB Page.
Follow Howie on Twitter and Instagram.
Share, retweet, and like all of the campaign social media.
And of course, donate to the campaign.
It's pretty simple, the Green Party has always been under attack by the two corporate parties. Will you help protect us?
