Forget the ’spoiler effect,’ vote Stein for governor
by Shirley Kressel
contributing writer
Tuesday Feb 16, 2010
The sudden rise of Scott Brown, a little-known state legislator, to a last-minute, resounding victory over a presumed shoo-in Democratic replacement for the “Kennedy seat” tells us more about the frantic state of the electorate than about either candidate. People want to “t’row da bums out” over and over until a decent public servant comes along.
Ideally, a candidate for our next important race, the gubernatorial election, would emerge who sees beyond the politics and the demagoguery, beyond the opportunity for personal power-mongering. This would perhaps be someone who has been in the civic side of politics for a long time, and who knows how the economic system is tearing us apart as a society, bleeding our resources and destroying the planet we leave for our children. Of course, such a candidate would be an underdog, a dark horse, without a fat campaign fund. Yet, ideally, the candidate would feel morally compelled to run, to bring out ideas that the others will not, to give people a vision of what might be, to provide a real choice.
Fortunately for us, such a candidate, Jill Stein, has entered the race.
Stein is a person of accomplishment; she is a physician and public health researcher, co-authoring “Environmental threats to Healthy Aging” and “Toxic Threats to Child Development.” A leader of the Mass Coalition for Healthy Communities, she keeps her eyes on the long-term, big-picture issues, working with experts in green jobs, local economies, public health, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and industry. I have known her for many years; her focus has always been on creating a just and sustainable society. She is a fount of knowledge, real knowledge, not just politically expedient factoids, about her web of interests. And it is a web, because more than most political figures, she understands acutely the interrelationships of all these issues, and the reason why they cannot be treated in isolated bits. Jill Stein is an inspiring figure who persists against all odds, because she knows the stakes.
I hope the media will not renege on their critical mission of broadening the public forum, as they often do, misusing their powerful tools to skew the race, or to predict it in a self-fulfilling prophecy. In her Feb. 10 appearance on the WGBH Emily Rooney Show, Stein questioned the right of journalists to exclude candidates from coverage and from debates, and thus to decide which political messages the public is entitled to hear; Rooney responded, “Well, yeah, we’re the editors.” Rooney, as well as The Boston Globe in its coverage of Stein’s Feb. 10 declaration speech, cited Stein’s low 3.4 percent vote total in her 2002 gubernatorial run but didn’t point out that she beat out the Republican with 20 percent of the votes in her 2004 run for state representative, and got over 350,000 votes for her 2006 run for Secretary of State-despite the incumbent’s refusal to debate and the press’s refusal to give her fair coverage. Why ascribe credibility only to candidates who are well-known-even if they’ve been part of the problem? Let the public judge all available candidates, based on their ideas and accomplishments.
Jill Stein will not be the beneficiary of millions of dollars from corporations and lobbyists, that’s for sure. Grassroots fundraising is difficult, time-consuming, and ultimately cannot match the big bucks of the business world. This should improve, not detract from, her credibility. Why settle for only the best candidates corporations will buy for us?
Her platform, on www.jillstein.org, explains her priorities: revival of local economies with secure, livable-pay jobs rooted in an environmentally sustainable green economy; preventive health care and Medicare-for-all insurance; fair taxation both by progressive burden distribution and by eliminating the “corruption tax”-and the honest, open government required to make public officials our servants, as they should be. And she, unlike the others who spout the same words, means it.
But our electoral system is designed to screen out challenges from outsiders. They are called “spoilers,” and citizens are admonished that votes for them will be “wasted,” or worse, they will end up throwing the race to the candidate they like least (the “Nader effect”). In the Senate race, independent Joseph Kennedy was exhorted to drop out lest he “steal” votes from Brown. In the Boston mayoral race, many people found candidate Kevin McCrea a refreshing alternative, the most progressive, transparent, and visionary. Indeed, he defined the issues of the campaign, and revealed more inside information than any of the three insiders. Yet, at the primary polls, I heard good-government liberals say they would vote not for McCrea, but for Sam Yoon, the progressive with the better chance of winning. Indeed, McCrea’s four percent could have put Yoon in the finals. On the other hand, some number of Yoon’s votes could have gone to McCrea and boosted his chances in a future contest, with perhaps a greater overall impact in the long run.
This voting system is a fatal flaw in our democratic process, depriving us of accountability. The two dominant, and now all too similar, parties can take turns wreaking havoc with our society, our economy and our environment, while the public has no real alternative.
We need ranked-choice, or “instant runoff,” voting (see my previous column, “Instant runoff voting gives voters more choices”) so we can vote our conscience without risk and make our wishes know to whoever wins. But until we have that reform, let’s not outsmart ourselves. Do you want to vote strategically, cleverly, to foil the other ideological team, regardless of repeated bitter disappointments with your own team’s “leaders?” Or do you want to vote for the person and the vision you really want? All this strategic voting has left us with a corrupt and effete government that no one trusts, and has discouraged runs by people who would break out of the rut.
Many people unexpectedly voted for Brown as a protest vote. When people are voting for their “nightmare” candidate as a protest, the whole notion of a “spoiler” is obsolete. In truth, the mainstream candidates are so similar on most issues that they are in effect taking votes away from each other.
This race does not fit into the old paradigm. People are declaring their independence from the old two-party system that has long since betrayed our basic needs, values and democratic principles. Interestingly, some Republicans are supporting Stein because she is “conservative” in the sense of conserving our basic democratic and civic values. The “pay-to-play” politics on Beacon Hill is spoiling our jobs, health care, taxes, and environment. Stein’s motto: “We intend to be the ’savers,’ not the ’spoilers’!”
We’ve spent decades narrowing our choices in order to be “realistic,” holding our noses when we enter the polling booth, voting against the lesser of evils. Where has it gotten us?
At this point, the only realistic strategy is to vote FOR someone you really want.
And really, hasn’t it always been?
Shirley Kressel is a landscape architect and urban designer, and one of the founders of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods. She can be reached at Shirley.Kressel@verizon.net.
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