Green Party candidates offer other choices
Posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Kennedy
The only reason that Arkansas voters have a choice in congressional races in the upcoming election is that Green Party candidates are challenging incumbents, party officials said Monday.
More than 50 people, mostly University of Arkansas students, gathered in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development on the Fayetteville campus to hear the Green Party candidates for U. S. Senate and the 3 rd Congressional District.
Rebekah Kennedy, a Fort Smith attorney, is challenging U. S. Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat. She received more than 4 percent of the vote in 2006 when she ran for attorney general as the Green Party candidate. She lives near Greenbrier.
Pryor has sided with President Bush more than he has his own party, she said.
Congressional leaders from the two major parties are "so worried about security that they can't afford to be concerned with liberty," Kennedy said. The nation's most important security issue is the crisis of climate change because the resulting food shortage will lead to wars that cause Americans to be killed.
"People who are desperate don't sit down and die quietly," Kennedy said.
She said poverty is the most important security issue in Arkansas because one out of 30 people are going to food banks for staples.
She also said federal funding for education is necessary for poor states like Arkansas to close the gap on states with better tax bases to fund local schools. She said," It's a no-brainer to stop building coal-fired power plants."
U. S. House race Abel Noah Tomlinson of Fayetteville, a UA graduate student in political science, is running against U. S. Rep. John Boozman, R-3 rd District. He has served as a senator on the UA's Associated Student Government and is a member of the Fayetteville OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology. He blamed both President Bush and Boozman for the nation's economic woes because of the vast expense of the Iraq conflict and huge tax cuts for the very wealthy. "These folks are radical extremists. This the first war where we ever cut taxes," he said.
The economy is failing, banks are closing, the dollar is falling, unemployment is increasing, foreclosures are rising, corporations are outsourcing jobs and the world faces global warming, he said. The nation is at a "sink or swim moment," he said.
"This is not about left or right. It's about right or wrong," Tomlinson said. "If you want to change war to peace, vote Green."
Tomlinson warned students," If it gets much worse, you could have a hard time finding a job."
Both candidates spoke in favor of better conservation and investing in improved efficiencies and alternative energy sources to reduce our nation's dependency on foreign oil. Battle for ballot space
Mark Swaney, the faculty advisor for the Campus Greens, explained the serious difficulties the party faced in getting these candidates on the ballot. The laws made it impossible to get a Green Party congressional candidate on the ballot in 2006 so the party sued in federal court and won.
He said it was even harder this time because the state Legislature made the rules even more difficult by shortening the period allowed to gather signatures on a petition. Voters don't have much of a choice in this state, he said.
"We really have only one party in Arkansas (the conservative party )," he said. "Democrats in Arkansas would be Republicans in any other state."
Arkansas' conservative party has a big Democratic wing and a little Republican wing, he said.
"It's been a long time since we've had any real choice in Arkansas," Kennedy said.
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