I am new to this kind of thing (Blogging. I have been getting info on candidates for next weeks convention and the folks on this webpage seem to have a lot. I read this morning that John Bonifaz had accepted monies from Jill Stein, who is his opponent. I found this suprising. In light of that information it made me wonder, Christy Mihos is supposidly going to take votes away from Healy in the general election, won’t the green party candidate for Governor, I believe Ross be doing the same to Deval Patrick if he wins the nomination? Shouldn’t the Democrats be sticking together as oppose to aligning with another party.
Please share widely!
Welcome to blogging! Be careful–it’s a great rpocrastination techinque.
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In response to your comments, I’m glad that Greens consider Bonifaz worth donating to. I wish that there were more progressive Dems running who would appeal to Greens and others on the left end of the spectrum. I’m sure that Galvin has accepted money from plenty of Republicans–probably more than Jill Stein gave Bonifaz.
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Bonifaz also points out that he signed Stein’s nomination form–AND GALVIN’S. Is Galvin complaining that Bonifaz may be tainted by his connections to the incumbent whom he’s challenging?
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Frankly, the whole thing strikes me as a red herring. I’m glad that Bonifaz is running, and I hope that he defeats Galvin in the primary. But if he doesn’t, I’m glad that Stein will still be there to push his from the left. If the Democratic Party wants to treat association with the Green-Rainbow party as a taint, they’re just going to drive lots of driven progressives away.
You may recall in 2002, we had a clean elections law passed by a ballot vote of about 2-to-1. Finneran didn’t like it, and got the legislature to refuse to fund it. John Bonifaz stepped up to the plate and sued the state, and eventually got the courts to force the state to fund candidates who had qualified for clean elections funding.
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In that case, Bonifaz represented Warren Tolman, the Democratic candidate for governor who went the clean elections route, as well as several other candidates who tried to use clean elections and were thwarted by Finneran. For standing up to Finneran and defending the clean elections law, Bonifaz earned their support. Warren Tolman, like Jill Stein, has donated to Bonifaz’ campaign.
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This isn’t about “collusion” or partisan politics, it’s about John’s history of leadership on clean elections, earning the support of others who believe in the same ideals.
I forgot to mention that “Warren Tolman, and several other candidates” includes Jill Stein. She was a clean elections candidate, and thus one of the people Bonifaz represented against Finneran.
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On the issue Grace Ross’s campaign taking votes from Deval Patrick in November, it came up in some contexts at the nominating convention in March, and my personal strong support for Deval was the reason I voted for just running a “down-ticket” slate. I remember one speaker pointing out that as annoying as the spoiler argument is now, it could be devastating to party if the descendent of the Rainbow Coalition could be blamed for the causing the first viable African American candidate for governor to lose.
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That said, I support the party’s decision to nominate Grace and Wendy, and I think they bring important voices to the debate, and will become highly important as the only left-of-center campaign if Tom Reilly is nominated.
This wouldn’t be a problem at all if we had Instant Runoff Voting! Any votes the Greens might “take” from the Democrats – that is, voters who prefer the Democratic candidate to the Republican, but choose to vote Green – would have the Democrat at #2. Instead of losing votes, we’d gain voters the Greens turn out, and voters not motivated enough to go to the polls for the Democrat but who vote Green #1, Democrat #2. The only possible “threat” from the Green candidate would be if she actually had more support than the Democrat, and could win the election.
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Why don’t we have instant runoff voting yet?
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We desperately, desperately need it. There is no downside. There are bills in the legislature. Come on, let’s just do it already! Not having it is crazy.