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Two secretary of state candidates talk of need for voting reforms
By Winston W. Wiley WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
wwiley@telegram.com 
Friday, September 1, 2006

Secretary of state candidate John Bonifaz listens as fellow candidate Jill Stein makes a point last night. (T&G Staff/JIM COLLINS)

"We need to get the big money out to get the people back in." - Jill Stein, Green Party Candidate

WORCESTER— Two of the three candidates for secretary of state squared off last night in a forum at the Worcester Public Library, where they discussed such issues as voter registration, initiative-petition signature drives, health care and campaign finance reform.

The candidates, Democrat John Bonifaz and Jill C. Stein of the Green Party, largely held similar positions on questions posed by a panel of three local media personalities. Democrat William F. Galvin, the incumbent, did not attend the forum.

Both Mr. Bonifaz and Ms. Stein focused many of their responses on the problem of what they called “big-money interests” controlling the political and legislative processes in government.

“We need to get the big money out to get the people back in,” Ms. Stein, the Green-Rainbow candidate for governor in 2002, said of the issue of increasing voter participation in elections.

Mr. Bonifaz, a voting rights lawyer who has made election reform his campaign theme, agreed that corporations and lobbyists have too much influence. He said campaign finance reform is needed, including public campaign financing.

“That’s going to bring more voices in and get people engaged — level the playing field,” he said. "If we start electing people who are not beholden to big money interests,” all of a sudden we’ll see things change.

Mr. Bonifaz also said making voting easier and more accessible would increase voter turnout.

He said he advocates, among other things, a voter holiday, Election Day voter registration and voting up to a week in advance of an election as ways to bring more people into the process.

He touted his legal work in cases seeking a full recount of all votes cast for president in the 2004 general election in Ohio, and the challenge he led to the Massachusetts Legislature for refusing to fund the Clean Elections Law.

Ms. Stein said she also supports an election holiday that would pair Election Day and a paid holiday commemorating the life of a historic figure who died or made a great sacrifice for the right to vote.

She said she is running for secretary of state because when she worked as a medical doctor, she saw an “epidemic of disabilities” in children. When she began working to try to correct environmental factors she believed caused the problems, she discovered that government “just wasn’t responsive” because the policies are driven by corporate interests, she said.

The secretary of state’s office, she said, should be a watchdog for democracy.

The two candidates also criticized Mr. Galvin, saying he should have done more to deal with voting rights violations investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice in Boston, Springfield, Lawrence and Lowell.

The investigation found that Latinos did not receive the appropriate language assistance at some of the city’s polls, and “thousands” of Latinos stayed away from polls because of hostility of poll workers, Ms. Stein said.

She accused Mr. Galvin of seeking to minimize the allegations rather than having his office lead the investigations so that the Department of Justice would not have gotten involved. She said foreign language translations need to be provided not just on ballots, but in the instructions for voting. And poll workers should be better trained, she said.

“They should know that people are allowed to bring a translator with them into the voting booth, and they should, in fact, be provided,” she said.

Mr. Bonifaz, who called Mr. Galvin’s absence from the forum “par for the course,” said language should not be a barrier to voting. He said he would work to ensure equal access for all.

Attended by about 25 people, and two other candidates for other political offices, the forum was sponsored by the Central Massachusetts chapter of Oiste, a statewide Latino political organization.

Maritza Cruz, co-chairman of the chapter, said that with all the other races in the coming election, the group had chosen to highlight the secretary of state position because the office deals with issues such as redistricting and election processes that are key to minority communities.

“It’s an extremely important office that oftentimes is overlooked,” she said.

Pols letting their money talk. Wealthy gov candidates pour cash into race.
By Erik Arvidson, Sun Statehouse Bureaus
Lowell Sun
8/27/2006

BOSTON -- The prize is a $135,000-per-year job running a state of 6.3 million people, with perks including lots of television face time, a spacious office with windows overlooking Beacon Hill, and an official portrait of you to hang at the Statehouse.
But to several of the people vying for the job of the state's next governor, the competition for that prize has become a test of wealth as much as political mettle.

With three weeks to go before Democratic voters will choose from among Christopher Gabrieli, Deval Patrick and Thomas Reilly to be the party's gubernatorial nominee, the 2006 gubernatorial campaign is already the second costliest in state history.
The candidates --three Democrats, Republican Kerry Healey, and independent candidate Christy Mihos -- had spent a combined $21.4 million as of Aug. 15, according to records at the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

Wealthy candidates are infusing the race with their own money, which worries some political observers.

"What this is establishing is unless you have major personal wealth or have the capacity to raise large amounts of money, you simply can't be a viable candidate," said former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. Harshbarger, now a partner in the Boston law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, ran a hard-fought campaign with Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci in the 1998 election and lost. Cellucci spent $6.9 million to Harshbarger's $5.5 million. Neither man financed their campaigns from their own pockets.
Harshbarger said the solution is at least partial public financing of political campaigns, similar to the state's Clean Elections effort which was repealed after the 2002 state election.

"Nobody is saying you're trying to take money out of politics. Money is always going to find its way into politics. The question is, 'Should it dictate who can run? Does it eliminate the choices?' " Harshbarger said.

Gabrieli, a wealthy venture capitalist, has donated almost $7.5 million to his campaign, helping to finance a $6.3 million spending spree since the beginning of April.

Patrick has donated $345,000 to his own campaign, Mihos $1.2 million and Healey $2 million. Reilly had reported contributing $1,000 to his campaign committee.

Before this year, Gov. Mitt Romney held the record for personal contributions to a political campaign, having donated $6.3 million to his 2002 campaign for governor. In that election, a record $50 million was spent by all of the candidates for governor, including both the primary and general election.

Jill Stein, a Green-Rainbow Party candidate for secretary of state, called the issue of the high cost of running a gubernatorial campaign "the elephant in the room and a glaring symptom of a system that's broken."
She said of Gabrieli, "His (poll) numbers are another case in point. There he was at 11 percent when he entered the race. Now (he's the front-runner). What changed here? How much clearer can we get?"

Phil Johnston, chairman of the state Democratic Party, called it "part of a very disturbing national trend and a problem that needs to be addressed," though he said it will be difficult to change federal and state laws to curb the effect of personal wealth in campaigns.

In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that limiting a political candidate's expenditures from their personal funds was unconstitutional. Vermont's highest court recently reaffirmed that ruling.

"This is a real corruption of American politics. The fact that one has to be a very wealthy person today to hold elective office is not what our Founding Fathers of our country envisioned," Johnston said.

Johnston noted that the costs of running a statewide or federal campaign have risen sharply over the past several decades. Modern political campaigns maintain vast databases of voters and use sophisticated technology to target them, while also employing teams of political consultants and polling resources.

At the same time,television and radio advertising costs are rising.A 2001 study by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that a television ad cost $13 per rating point in 1972, and $28 per point in 1992.

"Direct mail has gone way up. It used to cost almost nothing. But now, if you mail it first class, it's 39 cents," Johnston said.

Gabrieli has spent $4.2 million on radio and television advertising in about 4 1/2 months. That is more than the combined amount spent on advertising in 1982 by Democrat Michael Dukakis and Republican Edward King, whose TV and radio ads totaled $2.7 million.

Staff writer Rebecca Fater contributed to this report. Erik Arvidson's e-mail address is earvidson@lowellsun.com.

Green Rainbows Feeling Stupendous

Posted by Lisa Wangsness, Political Reporter, on-line Boston Globe
Thursday, August 10, 2006

The Green Rainbow Party, which was in a state of mild panic about its sluggish signature gathering efforts in early July, said last week it had more than the required 10,000 signatures to get its major party candidates on the ballot.

Now, it looks almost official. In an e-mail to his signature team this week, GRP signature drive coordinator Pat Keaney was exultant.

"I hope you're all sitting down as you read this, because I have some stupendous news -- as of today, a mere week since the signature deadline, we officially have more than 14,000 certified signatures for our candidates!!" he wrote.

He said Grace Ross and Jill Stein, the party's candidates for governor and secretary of state, checked with the secretary of state's office, which is monitoring the number of signatures certified by local clerks. They were told that the Green Rainbows had 14,522 and counting.

"Other candidates spent tens of thousands of dollars to do what we did with just ourselves and the common belief in a better future," Keaney wrote. "It's a great testament to our strength and our commitment that we are able to mobilize time and again for these signature drives."

August 29 is the deadline for turning the certified signatures in to the secretary of state's office.

Third-Party Candidate to Run For Secretary

On-line Boston Globe
Wedesday, August 9, 2006

Jill Stein announced yesterday that she has collected the 5,000 signatures necessary to run for secretary of state as the Green-Rainbow Party's candidate this November. Stein, a doctor and environmental health advocate, was the Green-Rainbow candidate for governor in 2002. A Green-Rainbow statement said that Stein believes changes in public opinion stemming from recent problems with the Big Dig have prompted a surge in interest in third-party candidates. Secretary of State William F. Galvin faces John Bonifaz in the Sept. 19 Democratic primary.

Stein running for secretary of state

By Bethan L. Jones/ Staff Writer, Lexington Minuteman
Thursday, July 6, 2006

Lexington resident Jill Stein is on the campaign trail once again, this time putting in her bid for secretary of state under the Green-Rainbow Party.

Stein ran for Massachusetts' governor in 2002 and for state representative in 2004, both times as an independent third party.

Sitting in her kitchen at her Trotting Horse Lane residence, her Great Dane sitting quietly in the living room, Stein was animated about her campaign and her efforts to fix the broken democracy she sees in Massachusetts.

"Democracy is in crisis in the state ... that has real consequences for our lives," she said.

Trained as a medical doctor and presently on leave from her practice, Stein said she became active in politics through health care. Noting the mounting evidence connecting health issues and pollution, Stein was amazed by the lack of response from the Legislature.

"This is really about engaging citizens," she said.

Her campaign, chaired by Mel King, a longtime leader of progressive politics in Massachusetts who recruited Stein to run, centers on the effort to reengage citizens with the democratic process and work to rectify the seemingly lopsided figures attributed to elections in the commonwealth.

According to Stein, approximately two-thirds of political races are non-competitive with only one candidate running. Massachusetts has the largest budget for lobbying per capita out of the 50 states and there are approximately seven lobbyists per one legislator on Beacon Hill. With these numbers, "it's no wonder there's a lot of influence that gets extended for moneyed interests."

Stein is highly critical of the backroom system of negotiating bills, releasing them from committee and voting on them within 24 hours, giving the public, or the legislators, little time to read and comprehend them before they are voted into law.

Stein called the recent healthcare reform bill a perfect example of the technique she hates. The more-than-100-page document was released from committee and voted on hours later. Stein said the bill is an "insurance company windfall" and does not meet the needs of citizens who prefer a simplified, single-payer system. She added the continuing rise in health care costs is "breaking the backs" of communities like Lexington, but the bill, which was not actively debated, will not resolve the town's issues.

"There's no embarrassment," these bills are being negotiated behind closed doors, said Stein. "That's a real problem. We've seen this happen over and over again."

As the secretary of state oversees lobbying, Stein said she would have the ability to curb the influence of lobbyists on legislators and having disclosure of who was being actively lobbied.

She also is invested in reinstating the Clean Elections legislation which was voted in two to one by voters but repealed by the legislators. She also wants to put instant run-off voting in place which reduces the effect of poll-splitting.

"It's good for candidates to run," she said, explaining the system by which voters rank candidates. If there is no majority winner, a recount can be instantly put in place without another election and will more accurately represent the majority of the voters. The system is already used in Cambridge and San Francisco and the state of Vermont. "The outcome will reflect the will of the voter."

Stein said she has learned a lot and is in a different place than her 2002 election. Building on the groundwork from that campaign, she is once again energizing a grassroots campaign. Stein is spending her time traveling around the state speaking to residents and sharing her views and plans.

"I'm excited about a winnable race," said Stein, referring to the fact no Republican candidate is running, thus eliminating the idea of vote-splitting. "It's going to be great ... the discontent that's out there is very powerful."

Stein said the focus of her campaign right now is gathering the needed 5,000 signatures to put her on the ballot by the deadline of Aug. 1.

"We're off to a good start," said Stein.