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“Five, Six, Seven, Eight, That was not a Real Debate”
By Walt Shepperd
Syracuse City Eagle |
They had been cordoned off by New York’s finest, but close enough to the front of the studios of WABC television to be heard by those involved, “One, two, three, four,” they chanted. “Clinton voted for the war. Five, six, seven, eight, that was not a real debate.”
Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Howie Hawkins was with them on the street, not in the studio debating his opponents on the Nov. 7 ballot, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John Spencer. In more that a decade of running for office to promote Green concerns, Hawkins had experienced his share of exclusions from public face-to-face candidate confrontations. But after last year’s mayoral campaign, a seemingly endless series of candidate forums and debates, Hawkins had emerged without much voter support, but with a consensus of those who followed the verbal jousting that he was the only one of the three candidates who really had anything to say.
“If only hw was a Democrat, I could vote for him,” was an oft heard mantra last political season, so as the current Senate campaign approached anticipation spread across party lines that the homeboy was going to get a chance to beat a nationally ranked Hillary Clinton on prime time television. Beat her badly, some salivated. But when it came time to fill out the line-up cards, Hawkins found himself excluded. The League of Women Voters withdrew its sponsorship of the debate because the group considered Hawkins a bona fide candidate.
“The League of Women Voters action was the biggest break this campaign has gotten,” Hawkins said after returning from New York City. “By sticking to their principles they got people’s attention.” The LWV had also insisted that the Greens’ Attorney General candidate Rachel Treichler was qualified to participate in a WCNY, but Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo withdrew rather than face her and the debate was cancelled.
Hawkins, who had often campaigned in a T-shirt and sneakers in the past, wore a suit and tie to the demonstration, but forgot his shoes and felt slightly uncoordinated. But that afternoon he was back in his Teamsters T-shirt and sneakers at the Brooklyn Peace Fair where there were no suits in attendance. He noted that he was having fun, but getting outraged at the same time at what he sees as the erosion of democracy, in which his exclusion from the debate scratches the surface.
Hawkins met with the other minor party Senate candidates Libertarian Jeff Russell and Socialist Equality Party nominee Bill Van Auken to protest the media’s failure to cover their anti-war positions, even though the latest CNN poll showed 64 percent of Americans, including a majority of New Yorkers, oppose the war. Hawkins and the Green Party actively opposed the invasion of Iraq and advocate an immediate withdrawal of American troops.
Hawkins also advocates repeal of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism bill and the Patriot Act. He supports dismantling the Department of Homeland Security because it concentrates intelligence under the president and undermines the various intelligence agencies’ independence to give honest intelligence.
“The rest of the world laughs when American claims it is a democratic nation,” he maintained. “The first step is to require fair elections: non-partisan administration of vote counting with a verifiable paper trail, equal access to the media and debates, proportional representation in legislative bodies, instant run-off voting for executive offices, and public campaign financing. You cannot have democracy if you don’t have an independent media. We need tough rules prohibiting the concentration of media ownership. The airwaves are public property, but they are being used to enrich a handful of corporate owners while prohibiting a diversity of viewpoints from being heard.”
Hawkins has taken heart from a recent Zogby poll which indicates he is running almost even with Spencer among independent voters with 21 percent, only three points behind the Republican candidate. “We’ve got them on the run,” Hawkins said. “The highest number of votes for an independent progressive for U.S. Senate in the state was 210,000 in 1950 for W.E.B. DuBois on the American Labor Party line. The most votes a Green ever got in New York State was 244,000 for Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential race. The Zogby poll projections indicate that I’ll do be |
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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