Oakland Green Party stalwart Aimee Allison was among those publicly recruiting Democrat Ron Dellums’ to enter Oakland’s mayor’s race. While Dellums is a progressive Democrat, the chief argument for a Green Party has been that the corporate control of the Democratic Party requires candidates untainted by this connection. Is the Dellums’ contest an aberration, or in an era of Republican dominance have the Greens decided to support the leading progressive regardless of party label?
Ron Dellums entry into the Oakland mayor’s race is great news for the East Bay and for progressives nationwide. Dellums may not be well known in San Francisco (he was Director of a Hunters Point youth program in 1965, but he then crossed the Bay and San Francisco still has never had a left-wing African-American Supervisor or Mayor), but his election would provide a spark for a deeply dispirited black and progressive community locally and across America.
Dellums won election to Congress through a primary challenge to an incumbent Democrat who supported the Vietnam War. Dellums’ anti-war, anti-Establishment background, his support in Oakland’s African-American community, and his lifetime devotion to progressive causes makes it understandable that Aimee Allison, the Gulf War veteran, recent City Council candidate and public face of Oakland’s Green Party, publicly pushed to get him into the mayor’s race.
But the Green leader’s support for the longtime Democrat is also surprising. Matt Gonzalez and other high-profile Greens have stressed the importance of supporting Greens for key elective offices. While Gonzalez has endorsed Democrats for Supervisor, Assessor, and other offices, the Oakland Greens are strongly backing a Democrat in a high-profile race where the Greens could have run one of their own.
And Dellums is no nominal Democrat—when he faced the voters every two years for nearly three decades as a Congressperson, his signs always said “Ron Dellums, Democrat for Congress.”
A Mayor Ron Dellums will not be grooming young activists to run as Greens. His past proteges—Congressperson Barbara Lee and Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson are the most prominent—are loyal Democrats.
So while Dellums’ candidacy and potential election will help build progressive politics, and likely produce new progressive African-American political leadership, it will not boost the Green Party. In fact, a progressive Democrat mayoralty would further marginalize the Green Party.
Allison’s support for Dellums comes at a time when the Green Party is at a crossroads.
Nationally, the Party is suffering the fate that third parties endure when the major party in power is furthest from them ideologically. A vote for a Green Presidential, US Senate or Congressional candidate is seen as keeping right-wing Republicans in control, a problem not faced when Democrats are in power.
Socialist Party Presidential candidate Norman Thomas had a terrible showing in the 1932 election, because nearly everyone who agreed with him voted for Roosevelt so as to oust Hoover. The Green Party faced a similar scenario in 2004, but the Party then split over whether to contest John Kerry for votes in swing states. This rift, which resulted in Green activist Peter Camejo trying to overturn the result of the national Green Party convention, has yet to heal.
At the state level, the Green Party is irrelevant. With the Democratic-controlled Legislature pushing such progressive measures as gay marriage, raising the minimum wage, and focusing on issues of concern to organized labor and immigrant rights groups, the Greens have little traction in state Assembly and Senate races.
In addition, with every progressive constituency eager to defeat Schwarzenegger in 2006, a Green Party Governor’s candidate in 2006 will be a non-starter.
In San Francisco, longtime Green Party activist Ross Mirkarimi is the District 5 Supervisor but the Party’s registration numbers are declining (as are those of the two major parties). Voters unhappy with the Dems and Reps are responding by declining to state a party, rather than register Green.
A major impact of the San Francisco Green Party has been the shifting rightward of the city’s official Democratic Party apparatus. With so many local activists registered Green, Democratic Clubs and the SF Democratic County Central Committee are likely more conservative now than at any time since the late 1980’s. Mayor Newsom has such firm control of what once was labeled the city’s “Democratic Machine” that even Prop D, a moderate Muni reform that simply conforms the MTA appointment process to that of most other city commissions, was officially opposed by the local Party.
Despite the Party’s institutional problems (including its failure to create a meaningful grassroots fundraising operation), Gonzalez’s mayoral race and Mirkarimi’s victory shows that Greens know how to mobilize for electoral campaigns. That’s why it is good to see Green Party leader Allison ready to rumble for Ron Dellums.
Does the backing of Democrat Dellums signal a strategic shift by Greens? That depends on whether progressives join the Greens because they believe Democrats are the greatest evil (the Camejo view) or as a signal to Democrats that they risk losing votes unless they promote a progressive agenda.
As America moves further to the right than seemed possible as recently as 2000, most Green activists likely fit into the latter camp. The Dellums candidacy shows that Greens are likely as desperate as progressive Democrats to elect unapologetically progressive candidates whatever their Party affiliation
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