The Ecology Party will be represented at a national convention with like-minded state parties on the weekend of August 16th, with an agenda of establishing common platform ideas and to nominate a presidential candidate. We are interested in the preference of all Ecology Party members. If you are registered ECO, please contact us: chair [at] ecologyparty.org.
The Executive Committee currently finds support for only one candidate who consistently abides by the ideals of the Ecology Party of Florida. Ralph Nader has spent a lifetime working to protect and improve our environment. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and The Environmental Protection Agency would not exist without his selfless dedication. Mr. Nader is also well aware of the effect corporate America has on our society, and the influence that corporate money has had in allowing the continuing destruction of our habitat and our political system.Index to Articles
Kenric Ward - More Voters Declare Their Independence
Kenric Ward - Anyone... Except Ralph Nader
George Bennett - Nader Slams "Two-Party Dictatorship"
By Kenric Ward
Article published on TCPalm website.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
For all the crowd-swooning ecstasy of Obama-rama, for all the partisan primaries on the Treasure Coast, for all the young people registering to vote, the two-party system is losing its grip.
Republicans have surrendered the most ground here. While still holding sizable advantages in Martin and Indian River counties, their majority margins have all but disappeared. In St. Lucie County, where Democrats dominate, GOP registrations actually fell 8.3 percent.
Yet for all their positive press, the Democrats haven’t exactly been a juggernaut. According to the latest figures from the state Division of Elections, a smaller percentage of Floridians call themselves Democrats than they did eight years ago (44.3 percent in 2000; 40.7 percent in 2008).
So where are the voters going? Independent parties and non-partisan affiliation.
As the accompanying chart shows, non-partisan and “other” parties are by far the fastest-growing segment of the local electorate. Since 2000, independents grew at five times the rate of Republicans in Indian River County. They quadrupled the percentage of Democratic gains in St. Lucie County. Their registration gains in Martin County nearly matched those of the two major parties combined.
Of course, these robust increases don’t mean independents are poised to topple two-party hegemony. That would be tantamount to betting Ralph Nader will be our next president. The institutional inertia of America’s political duopoly is so strong that it’s a de facto monopoly.
Just as Republican and Democratic leaders (buttressed by a bipolar media) quash competition by framing the presidential debates as two-party affairs, Florida’s closed primaries slam the door on independents.
To which more people are saying, “So what?”
Though ensuring their virtual banishment from primary elections, an
ever-growing number of Floridians is opting out of the two-party game. Today, roughly one in five Treasure Coast voters is registered with a minor party or no party at all. Here are their totals, and how they stand in relation to the second-place party in each county:
• 19.7 percent in Indian River (16,683 voters; 11 percentage points behind the Democrats).
• 21.1 percent in Martin (20,746 voters; 7 percentage points behind the Democrats).
• 22.5 percent in St. Lucie (32,791 voters; 12 percentage points behind the Republicans).
To its credit, Florida is relatively open to minor political parties. The state currently recognizes 27 of them — ranging eclectically from the Florida Whig Party to the Prohibition Party to the Ecology Party (whose ballot line Nader may run on this year).
The diversity of Florida’s minor party roster has boosted third-party registration by 118 percent since 2000.
Democratic and Republican bigwigs may mock such nascent declarations of independence. But as their registration edge continues to erode, the joke is on them. With the national parties’ messages blurring into insipidity, more voters are viewing Republicans and Democrats as a bland choice between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi.
As party ties loosen, Florida’s GOP could have the most to lose this year. Being the dominant statewide organization, its office holders are particularly vulnerable to rising anti-incumbent, anti-establishment fever.
The St. Petersburg Times reported this month that state Sens. J.D. Alexander, R-Winter Haven, and Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, aren’t even using the word “re-elect” on their fliers or signs.
Meantime, more candidates are running “NPA” (no party affiliation) and minor parties are filling out longer slates.
To those who say independents are “throwing their votes away,” a swelling chorus responds that continually settling for the “lesser of evils” merely perpetuates an unresponsive two-party regime. Besides, a vote on principle should never be considered a wasted vote. The real waste is in rewarding bad behavior and expecting better results.
“The only thing you have is your vote,” says Cara Campbell, chairman of the Fort Lauderdale-based Ecology Party. “If you just give it away to the least worst, you give the big parties no incentive to change.” Campbell means fundamental change, not the fakery peddled by Barack Obama, who’s collected more corporate contributions than John McCain.
A recent Wall Street Journal headline declared: “The State of the Union? Furious.” Is the party over for the Republicans and Democrats? Not anytime soon. But for voters jaded by petty partisanship, let down by unfulfilled promises and tired of mindless red and blue punditry, it’s just not as much fun anymore, and they’re starting to leave.
By Kenric Ward
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Bloggers already are deriding him as the second coming of Harold Stassen. Democrats, who accused him of swinging the 2000 election to the Republicans, now dismiss him as a crank.
Isn’t it interesting how many political pundits presume to tell Ralph Nader he shouldn’t run for president? I don’t recall anyone proffering such sage advice to candidates from either of the “major” parties.
Democrats, obviously, are the most exercised. Party faithful will never forgive Nader for George W. Bush. They postulate that Bush’s 537-vote victory in Florida wouldn’t have been possible without the 97,488 votes Nader won here.
Though widely held, this argument has obvious holes. Seven other minor candidates each garnered more than 537 votes, including three left-leaning Socialist/Workers/Labor parties.
Then there’s the damning and irreducible fact that Al Gore couldn’t even carry his own state, Tennessee, or Bill Clinton’s state, Arkansas. Either would have been sufficient to keep a Democrat in the White House.
“If the Democrats can’t win in a landslide this year, they should just pack up and go home,” Nader said Sunday in announcing his latest presidential bid.
In saying so, the consumer advocate all but acknowledges he has no chance to win. His goal is — and always has been — to stand for those who feel used and abused by this country’s power structure, fronted by the two-party system.
Nader says our democracy is in increasingly “fragile” condition. Pat Buchanan, a former Republican operative and third-party candidate himself, goes further, calling U.S. democracy “a fraud.”
While the media and the masses bemoan “polarization” in America, political discourse has actually become more homogenized and vapid. That’s what you get when Democrats and Republicans feed from the same corporate trough.
Nader realized this back in 1992. After 30 years as a grass-roots crusader committed to working within the system — and routinely disappointed and abandoned by Democrats — he launched his first write-in effort. He ran as an unaffiliated or Green Party candidate in 1996, 2000 and 2004.
If Nader were an egomaniac, as his critics claim, he would simply sit back as the elder statesman of consumer advocacy and bask in the warm glow of favorable press. And he would be entitled. Through his various group, now operating under the Public Citizen umbrella, Nader instigated trail-blazing legislation ranging from seat belts and air bags, to food labels, radiation protection and the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Compare that record with the combined accomplishments of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Say what you will about Nader, he’s no empty suit. Indeed, his working man’s wardrobe of cheap slacks and $10 shoes is an obvious contrast to the well-coiffed Republicrats who place style over substance.
Rather than resting on his laurels and selling out for corporate contributions, Nader is putting himself on the line once again. Why? The 2006 documentary, “An Unreasonable Man,” offers an early insight into his ascetic and uncompromising character.
Raised in a politically active household where his immigrant father regularly asked young Ralph and his sisters about their day at school — “Did you learn to believe or did you learn to think?” — Nader always bridled at the rigid, mindless conformity that our two-party duopoly engenders.
As Michael Moore said in 2000, when he was on the Nader bandwagon, “If you vote for the lesser of evils, you still get evil.”
Moore doesn’t say that any more. He’s still stewing about Bush v. Gore. But Democrats need to get over Nader — and over themselves. Playing the victim is not a successful electoral strategy, as they’ve proven. And demonizing Nader merely reinforces the growing perception that today’s Democratic Party is too quick to equivocate on issues that should be rightfully theirs.
On his Web site, votenader.org, Nader lists a dozen issues that aren’t even on the table for Obama/Clinton (let alone McCain). Among them: a single-payer Medicare health program for all; aggressive crackdown on corporate crime and corporate welfare; no to nuclear power, solar energy first; an end to ballot access obstructionism (a sharp jab at Democrats who fought, anti-democratically, to disqualify the Green Party in several states in 2004).
Those who denigrate Nader are, in essence, saying this agenda isn’t worth discussing. But these issues do matter to a lot of Americans — and the country deserves a political system that’s open enough to debate them forthrightly. As of today, Nader is the only candidate attempting to give voice to the voiceless.
The more party operatives and pundits attempt to marginalize free thinkers like Nader, the louder they sound the death knell for representative democracy.
ken.ward@scripps.com
By GEORGE BENNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE — Ralph Nader, making another minor-party bid for the presidency, slammed America's "two-party dictatorship" today and said nothing will change as long as "tactical voters" limit their choices to Republican and Democratic candidates.
Nader spent more than two hours talking to about 60 people who showed up at an independent movie theater for a mid-afternoon rally that was put together on short notice. The 2000 nominee of the Green Party and the 2004 Reform Party standard-bearer said he plans to run this year as an Ecology Party candidate.
"Big business really runs this country," Nader told his audience. He said both the Democratic and Republican parties are controlled by corporate interests and won't change as long as voters support the "least worst" candidates offered by the two parties.
"When we go least-worst between Democrat and Republican, you know what that signifies to the least worst? That they can take your vote for granted because you are so horrified by the worst that you'll go for the least worst....You're not about to rock the boat and make demands on your least-worst candidate," Nader said.
Nader said voters in 2004 who adopted the "least-worst" philosophy were too timid to press Democrat John Kerry to take a strong stance against the war in Iraq.
Nader said he doesn't expect to win in 2008, but said his candidacy will build for the future and send a message to the major parties. He likened modern third-party efforts to the anti-slavery and women's rights movements of the 19th century.
Nader, 74, is a longtime champion of consumer, environmental and liberal causes. But many liberals blame Nader for the conservative Republican presidency of George W. Bush. Bush won Florida, and the presidency, by 537 votes in 2000 over Democrat Al Gore. Nader won 97,488 votes from Floridians in that race.
Nader emphatically rejected the idea that his candidacies have played a "spoiler" role.
"How can you spoil a system that's spoiled to the core?" Nader said.
In a talk with reporters before the campaign event, Nader said he was tired of "this constant, constant nagging" about his role in the 2000 election.
"The only reason people are entitled to raise the 2000 election is if they believe this country is owned by two corrupt major parties and the rest of us should just shut up and stand in line and be observers," Nader said.
Nader said Democrats have themselves to blame for losing in 2000 because the party no longer fields candidates in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Harry Truman.
"The Democratic Party is a scapegoat party. It doesn't look itself in the mirror," Nader said. "Can you imagine what FDR and Harry Truman would have done to George W. Bush?" Nader's view of the two-party system is shared by Fort Lauderdale resident Cara Campbell, who said Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are "like different flavors of vanilla."
Said Campbell: "I believe in the issues that (Nader) espouses. I don't see those issues being espoused by any of the other candidates — universal health care, corporate abuse, ending the war. They aren't going to end the war."
