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Colleagues, as you may know, though it feels like we have an automatic ballot access, the minimums for maintaining minor party status, according to state law, are either that we have at least 1,000 registered Greens in Colorado or that our statewide candidate has to get 1% of the vote.I wondered whether we're under any statutory pressure to maintain minor party status and therefore are compelled to consider a gubernatorial or other statewide candidate, and whether the U.S. Senate race counts as a statewide race. Our senate candidate achieved 1.34% of the vote (http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CO/63746/184388/Web01/en/summary.html). So I reached out the the Secretary of State's office and got a response:
Hi Andrea, You have well over 1,000 registered voters, so I don’t anticipate your party losing its minor party status anytime soon. If you did not have over 1,000 registered voters, we would review the results of your candidates for statewide office, and US Senate would be considered a statewide office for the purposes of the review. Joel AlbinBallot Access ManagerElections DivisionColorado State Department
This is great news. This does create a question, though: do we sit out of the gubernatorial races in 2018? If so, what do we do instead? State house and senate will be up, and I am still of the mind that just one or two Greens in the legislature, given the evenly-split members of both capitalist parties, means that legislation has to skew left to pass. So do we focus on a few house races we can win, especially where the Ds are too afraid to run?We should talk about this and see if we can come to consensus on a strategy. The truth is that we are really in no position to support any candidate on a local level, even though Poudre really deserves accolades for the amount of work they did. Some of these races are winnable, but they really do need a strong base. So what needs to happen to build it?I have ideas based on my own experience as a former elected official. What are your ideas?
As much as I rag on some green parties for being a social group only, I think being in the community and offering classes, seminars, etc on topics which intersect with Green politics like deep ecology, social justice and the importance of peace is a very good strategy to help get the Green Party in the forefront of people's minds. Too often, people think we're a one-issue party and while that one issue is very important, Green politics is about so much more. When combined with a party that is working hard for the people, I think it'll be easy for us to gain more inroads.This is also important because I think that people who don't know much about the Green Party see us as a bunch of naive nutters who only spoil elections and have no clue that we can't win. This is tragic. However, if we can get people in the door and put our best foot forward, we can gain more support.That being said, Robert Lee Worthey has announced that he plans to run for governor. When I was contemplating a gubernatorial run, I was contemplating him for my Lt. Governor running mate.
I definitely think base building is helped by showing up at grassroots actions and being part of the movement. I love that Longmont gets involved in the local fracktivism. I like to say that the Green Party is the electoral tactic for grassroots movements.
I personally recommend that we sit out all statewide and federal races in 2018. We do not have the structures in place to run a legitimate candidate at that level. I believe any success we have at that level will only come after we have secured seats in the State Legislature. I am also of the opinion that we are just a handful of Green State Reps/Senators away from being able to seriously pull legislation in a progressive direction. A focus on a few competitive local races would allow the Party to use the campaigns to continue to build up support for Local Parties and to focus the collective power to have a greater effect on races that we actually have a shot in.
I agree the state party is not in danger of losing minor party status. In addition to the information provided above by Andrea and the Colorado Election Division, the votes Arn Menconi received for U.S. Senator 2016 guarantee our minor party status and ballot access for eight more years, regardless of the number of registered Greens in Colorado.
The Green Party of Colorado benefitted greatly from running Green candidates for statewide office in 2014 and 2016.During my tenure as the Green Party nominee for Governor of Colorado, April to November 2014, Green Party registrations grew 25%. During the same period in 2016, with Arn Menconi as our nominee for U.S. Senate, the Green Party of Colorado grew 50%.My point is that running a statewide candidate is a highly effective way to increase Green registrations.
A little clarity and perspective:Bob Kinsey got 38,884 votes in 2010 for U.S. Senate. He raised too little to report to the FEC.Arn Menconi got 36,805 votes in 2016 for U.S. Senate. He reported something like $19k to the FEC.
There is a correlation there for sure, but A) Could those resources have been better utilized on running local races, that in effect would have brought us even more Greens and B) Those are times where our numbers should naturally go up(Times of great political awareness, mid terms and general election). As Arn has pointed out on many occasions, we aren't able to fully support state-wide candidates. It would be a disservice to a good candidate to haphazardly run them, and equally a disservice to the Party to run a candidate who is knowingly unable to be competitive. It's embarrassing watching ineffectual, incompetent, half-baked campaigns flounder.
I think the correlation for 2016 probably should be Jill Stein herself, as well as the DNC, in the way they sold out Bernie Sanders.There have been two significant bumps in voter registration: post Super Tuesday and during the #Demexit period.We really haven't seen all that much fall-off, either.
I agree that running a candidate for governor in 2014 helped the party registration numbers. I don't see any remarkable benefit from Jill Stein's campaign, which is sad, because I liked her a lot as a candidate. I have attached two pages. Please let me know if they do not show.One page shows the secretary of state's data for the month of January in every year back to 2004. Green registration was fading then, but it shows an upward jump in each presidential election year for the past three elections. There was no bounce from the 2006 mid-term election (look at January 2007) and no bounce from the 2010 mid-term election (look at January 2011) but there was a good bounce from the 2014 mid-term election (look at January 2015). Then the party bleeds members as Greens switch to Dem by January 2016, the date by which they have to be registered as Dems in order to caucus for Bernie Sanders in March 2016. After Bernie doesn't get the nomination, they return to the Green Party, and the January 2017 numbers are right where you would expect them to be given the trend over previous years. The trends for Larimer County (that's the Poudre Valley Greens) and Denver County follow the same pattern. The percentages, shown in the graph below it, follow the same general trend as the raw numbers above, although the lines are flatter.The other page shows the numbers for the month of January after a presidental election, with an equation fitted to the data. Simple regression is a fabulous fit. R-squared of 0.977. That's for the raw numbers. For the percentages, the R-squared is 0.981. I can get the R-squared for the raw numbers up to 0.999 with a non-linear Gaussian curve and up to 1.0 with a polynomial cubic or quadratic regression. But essentially it's gradual, steady improvement in a straight line. The most striking changes are the drop and recovery as Greens desert to caucus for Bernie and then return to the fold when he doesn't get the nomination.
We've run three candidates for governor in the state party's history.Phil Hufford in 1994: 1.5% of the vote, 16,908 votesRonald Forthofer in 2002: 2.27% of the vote, 32,099 votesHarry Hempy in 2014: 1.34% of the vote, 27,391 votesIf running a candidate were the reason why voter registrations grow, then why don't we have 27,000 registered Greens?People can vote for any candidate without switching parties.
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