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Hawkins' Federal Case
by Walt Shepperd
Syracuse New Times |
When he started wearing a tie for last year's mayoral debates the signal was clear. Howie Hawkins had struck a nerve with his priority issue of establishing public power and he was eliminating distractions from the message. He is a local electoral tradition, campaigning annually in a T-shirt for whatever office seems relevant, the Green Party purist pushing the party line, his positions making wonderfully common sense but seemingly a world away from practicality. But in a tie, talking public power, Hawkins emerged as an urban populist with a dream people from every point on the political spectrum wanted to buy into.
As Election Day neared, the combination of issue and image fostered an emerging mantra: "If only he was a Democrat, I could so vote for him." But Hawkins is not now and never will be a Democrat. Co-founder of the Green Party nationally, he represents what is refreshing in American politics: He doesn't say things to win votes; he says things because he thinks they are true. And while, in the tradition of third-party politics, winning the election is not so much the point as is getting issues adopted by the major parties, with so much favorable public response last year even Hawkins, 53, began pondering the possibility of winning a tight three-way race.
But the race turned two-way tight with Republican challenger Joanie Mahoney coming within 2,000 votes of incumbent Matt Driscoll, whose Democrats held an 18,000 edge on the city's voter registration rolls. Hawkins pulled only 5 percent of the 2005 vote, but by the end of the debates both Mahoney and Driscoll were agreeing that, with the issue of public power, he was definitely onto something.
The issue is now a focus on the Common Council, where efforts are under way to get funding for a feasibility study into Driscoll's proposed budget. Watching the returns roll in last November, Hawkins was asked if a 2006 campaign for Congress was the next logical step. He would rather manage the campaign, he reflected then, but on May 8 he announced he would be seeking the Green Party nomination for U.S. Senate, promising to provide a progressive alternative to the pro-war, pro-corporate agenda of incumbent Democrat Hillary Clinton.
"Clinton has been a consistent war hawk on the Iraq war and, indeed, all the wars initiated by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush," he charged. "She is more responsible than any other person in America for killing the single-payer national health insurance bill that had about 100 members of Congress as co-sponsors in 1993."
For Hawkins, the vote count will be important in this election because it will offer an opportunity to demonstrate support for ending the war. "It is not just the peace vote that is open to alternatives," he added. "So are the millions without health insurance, the workers who are losing wages and benefits and their very jobs, the environmentalists who see no program to address global warming, and the women and people of color who are losing their recently won rights." Stumping statewide for public power should help build a momentum that will help locally, and for this campaign he promises to wear a tie and a jacket.
Hawkins has run well statewide as a Green. He received almost 50,000 votes for state comptroller in 2002 and was on the ticket for that office in 1998 when the late Grandpa Munster, Al Lewis, and Alice Green polled more than 50,000 gubernatorial votes to give the Greens official party ballot status for the next four years. Green, who polled 25 percent of the vote last year in a Green Party campaign for mayor of Albany, welcomed Hawkins' senatorial announcement.
"Howie Hawkins has always been willing to speak truth to power," she observed, "to organize for justice for those who are oppressed. He has worked closely with communities of color in Syracuse and statewide on issues such as environmental justice, living wage jobs and criminal justice reform. Unlike the incumbent, Howie will speak up on issues such as universal health care, affordable housing and opposition to the war."
David McReynolds, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004, noted, "Along with many other New Yorkers I am delighted to hear that Howie Hawkins is running. I've known him as a democratic socialist, as an environmentalist, as a strong voice against war and the security state, and as someone who knows that a new politics means being inclusive of all races, of being concerned that we reach out to labor, to all the rank-and-file citizens who have been so badly beaten down by the present system."
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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