Contact:
Peter LaVenia, co-chair
chair2@gpny.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
518-495-8001
With 32% of precincts counted and more to come in,
the New York State Green Party declared victory at 11:30 PM on election night. The votes cast for Howie Hawkins and Gloria Mattera will secure the Green Party a ballot line for the next four years, and represent support for the "Green New Deal." Support for other candidates is also promising, with Comptroller candidate Julia Willebrand receiving 3% of the vote, and US Senate candidates Colia Clarke and Cecile Lawrence coming in third in their races respectively."This is the best showing ever for statewide Green Party candidates. It is the culmination of months of hard work on the part of many party members, and the candidates themselves. Voters are fed up with Democrats and Republicans taking their votes for granted, and are open to hearing ideas from a party not beholden to Wall St. and special interests. Howie Hawkins campaigned tirelessly to promote the idea of a Green New Deal, funded by progressive taxation on the wealthy, and using the stock transfer tax we already collect to fill the budget gap. Voters who heard the message understood that Howie's platform made sense, and that it's the austerity plans of Cuomo and Paladino that are nonsense," said Peter LaVenia, co-chair of the NY State Green Party.
"The strong showing by all of our candidates means voters have finally seen how little difference there is between the Democrats and Republicans. People support Green ideas when they hear them: ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, single-payer universal health care, living wage jobs, renewable energy - and in this election we see they are linking our candidates to the issues they care about most. This is a building block for the future. We are going to use this victory to elect Greens statewide, starting at the local level and moving on up to the state," stated Eric Jones, co-chair of the NYS Green Party.
"While this campaign is over, we're not waiting around for the next one to begin - there's too much work to be done. The Green Party intends to be an independent force in NY State politics for working New Yorkers. Andrew Cuomo and the State Legislature are on notice - this is one party that doesn't sell its ballot line for influence," said LaVenia.
4 comments:
Howie Hawkins past the 50,000 votes threshold a little after midnight giving the Green Party ballot status in New York State for the next 4 years.
Howie Hawkins has 56,868 votes with 97% reporting
Congrats to Howie Hawkins and the Green Party. I'm looking forward to seeing what the Green Party can do with this ballot line.
The NY-25 Congressional race was a lot closer last night than it was projected to be. Nate Silver--one of the best forecasters around--had Maffei up by 10 points. Maffei ended up squeaking out a 50.6% - 49.4% win. I'm sure a Green Party candidate for NY-25 would be looked down on as a "spoiler" in 2012, but I hope that the GP can find someone to run in the race. It was a squeaker of a race for a reason, and that reason had nothing to do with Buerkle's "credentials."
We did it! Thank you!
We got the Green Party a ballot line for the next four years with over 50,000 votes. Thanks to everyone who worked for this.
We will continue to campaign for the Green New Deal of full employment, single payer health care, fully funded schools and colleges, a ban on hydrofracking, a clean energy transition to head off climate catastrophe and put New Yorkers back to work -- and progressive tax reform to pay for it, starting with ending the $16 billion Stock Transfer Tax rebate to Wall Street speculators.
Cuomo has promised to take a meat cleaver to state employees and social services. He has declared war on the labor movement. He had indicated he will move ahead with hydrofracking next year after the DEC writes regulations. The Greens are the opposition to all this.
Now we must organize ourselves into a much better organized and financed Green Party that can effectively take up these challenges. We will be getting back in touch with everyone who contacted the campaign about this in the weeks ahead.
~ Howie Hawkins
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