New Haven Independent

“As Elizabeth Taylor said to her seventh husband, ‘I won’t keep you long.’” So began l Thornton’s yes, brief but still eloquent remarks as he addressed his party’s statewide nominating convention Saturday morning at the union hall on Chapel and James streets. The atmosphere was amiable, contentious, humorous, and yet also passionately serious as Thornton, a retired executive with SNET and more recently co-founder of Efficacy, a drug policy reform organization, termed the misguided “war on drugs” the “dinosaur in the living room of our national life.”
“I am by no means a single-issue candidate,” he said, “but the deliberate dismantling of the misguided drug laws and the incarceration system will free up billions of dollars to ameliorate housing, to improve education, environment, and create new fundamentals for a sustainable society.”
Also tossing their hats in the Greens’ ring for the party’s first-ever attempt at statewide office, in brief remarks, were Ralph Ferrucci (at far right in photo), running for the U.S. Senate, Mike DeRosa (far left in photo) for secretary of state, S. David Bue (second from right in photo) for state treasurer, and, Nancy Burton for attorney general.
(Before the convention, the New Haven Advocate’s Tom Gogola got a scoop by visiting the future and observing how the Green candidates would conduct themselves once elected. Click here to read his report.)
Although nobody ran against them for the nominations —- finding candidates to run for statewide office has been a challenge for the party — the proceedings were still passionately democratic, and a two-third vote of Green Party members in attendance was still required. There were mail-in ballots also to be tallied, and there also could be nominations from the floor.
“We have rules of civil conduct to conduct these elections,” said longtime Green stalwart Charlie Pillsbury, who was master of the convention’s ceremonies. Pillsbury urged everyone to participate, “even the FBI agents who might be in the audience.”
First there were questions of the audience-delegates, which were often related to the practicalities of non-professional politicians running for office in a state where, according to DeRosa, the laws and the whole system are designed to keep the third voice silent: “Next week I’m convening a group with the ACLU,” he said, “and we are going to sue in federal court to give us and all third parties access to public monies for the campaign. It’s a draconian violation of the protections of the 14th Amendment that we cannot.”
In the same pecuniary vein, Ferrucci was asked by one “delegate,” that is, registered Green Party member in good standing in the audience, “How are you, as a working person, Mr. Ferrucci, going to run a statewide campaign? That is, how big is your war chest?”
“We don’t use the term ‘war’ chest,” Ferrucci replied. “Let’s call it a peace chest, and, frankly, it’s about as big as a shoebox. But I’ve run campaigns before on $800 and gotten 2,000 votes. It’s getting focus on the issues that matter — universal health care, for example,” he said, citing the fact that he personally has not had health insurance for the past ten years. He said “the issues are so serious you don’t have to be able to afford a TV ad to engage the dialogue. You just have to knock on doors and get out there.”
Bue, from Westport and, distinguished from the others through being a relative newcomer to Green politics, has decades of experience in financial planning, with a major emphasis on socially responsible investing. His disarming admission that he got lost coming to the union hall (“I didn’t see very many cars when I drove by the hall, so I thought it was the wrong place and I continued on into New Haven!”) did not inspire initial confidence in the good-natured assembly of some 60 Green activists. However, Bue recovered in time to offer thoughtful suggestions on steps that can be taken to address the underfunding of teacher and other pension funds statewide.
The only candidate who could not personally field questions was Attorney General hopeful Nancy Burton, an outspoken public interest lawyer who was in Ukraine to mark the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on this, Earth Day. In videotaped remarks, however, she threw down the gauntlet: “Nominate me and I will mothball the Indian Point and Millstone nuclear power plants — shutting down these twin menaces will be my first priority.”
To her critics who say she might have a hard time doing that because at the moment Burton is disbarred in Connecticut (though not in New York), her taped remark made clear 1)her disbarment was really a long-term suspension that ends in November 2006, in time to take the oath of office; and 2) she wears her disbarment, which she claims was due to her judicial whistle-blowing at the sexism, racism, and other deficiencies in the state judiciary, as a badge of honor.
Well, after the votes were counted in a cigar-free room, and the high-wire tension ameliorated by the generous helpings of pizza (ranging from vegetarian to vegan, of course), were these outspoken candidates elected?
Yes, indeed.
What then do these newly minted candidates do next?
According to Tim McKee (who has an eerie facial, but no other, resemblance to Karl Rove), the candidates are going out tot he convention of the Green Party of the United States and throw themselves into the debate; to put the issues that people should be talking about on the table — nuclear power, prisons, drug policy, race, and poverty.
“Cliff Thornton,” he said, “is in demand as a speaker, and he will be out there having two to three engagements a day. This is going to be a real campaign.”
And what would be the best-case scenario? “Look,” he said, “we’re talking about things that are appealing to Democrats and Republicans. We are a real third choice. If we get 5 to 10 percent of the vote, and we can, we will be a force to reckon with in statewide politics, and even if we don’t win (!), the publicity on the state level will recruit us more people to run on the local level, and that’s where it all happens.”
Clifford Thornton struck the same note. After quoting Elizabeth Taylor, he charged the supporters to remind the state’s voters that “when there are more agencies engaged in arresting, judging, incarcerating, and surveilling people than there are in helping to take care of them, then we have problem.”
“And,” he concluded, “let’s be inspired by Margaret Mead,” who, Thornton paraphrased, “reminds us that in all societies small groups of ordinary, thoughtful but committed people can change the world; it’s the only way it’s ever happened.”
The first African-American to run for governor of Connecticut did not omit adding: “All we need now are two things: signatures and money.”
To provide either, or get more information, e-mail this address.
Permit your reporter this closing opinion: Anyone who quotes Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret Mead in the same speech must be taken very seriously.