A vision for the new year from Ohio's Logan Martinez

National Priority Proposal for the 2006 Election

2006 will be a crucial year for the party and the country. We need to focus our energy by mobilizing our people and organizing our resources to make a major impact. The goal of Ohio's proposal is to make 2006 the best year ever for the Green Party. It will take the state parties, the CCC, and the NC working together to make it happen. The proposal is a suggested national election strategy, leaving it to individual states to decide how they might implement it and allowing a great deal of room for innovation.

The Green Party encourages states to put together a slate of candidates, to the best of their ability, to achieve their strategic goals. A state slate might include a variety of offices. 48 states will have statewide offices, state senate and state representative elections in 2006.* The priority for 2006 will be to encourage states to run candidates in these races to build a block of Green voters across the country and to win seats. Early recruitment of candidates is important in making this happen. (In some states filing dates are fast approaching.) We suggest that states consider running candidates for their state House of Representatives, the first rung of state government, the People's Houses. This will be an effective way to challenge the system. In most states, representative districts are relatively small in size and lend themselves to grassroots, door to door neighborhood outreach. The Green Party has won two state representative seats thus far, in California and Maine. We can win in several more states if we make the effort.

Building a Green Wave for 2006 - The Coordinated Campaign Committee and the Steering Committee will develop a comprehensive mobilization plan to recruit and use volunteers to support our candidates. Our potential for 'people power' has, for the most part, been under utilized and we need to organize ourselves and our supporters to maximize our impact to win races.

(Seeking ballot access is mutually compatible with this effort. We suggest that the Ballot Access Committee and the states working on ballot access for next year devise a working plan for moving forward. Where it's applicable we need to organize regional mobilization to support states working for ballot access. Expanding the number of states that have ballot access is a national priority. )

We ask the Coordinated Campaign Committee [CCC] and the Steering Committee to research and report on the feasibility of establishing two pledge funds to support Green Party candidates. We propose that the first help Green congressional candidates and the other statewide, state representative, state senate and local candidates. Raising money is essential to successful campaigns. We can to do much better. (By setting up a pledge fund we believe we can, for the most part, bypass the legal hurdles.) We should investigate all possible avenues to increase national fundraising efforts to support candidates and the party. If we are going to make 2006 a breakout year, we must all work hard to build internal and external unity to make it happen. Ohio's proposal calls on the sc and ccc to develop proposals for mobilizing volunteers and for fundraising. But those will be future proposals and will be voted on separately.

We need to focus (but not exclusively) on doable races, city, town, and village councils and state representative seats. These races are potentially winnable and are the building blocks for the future. With a major effort we could win several state representative races which would go a long way to build the party. To be competitive next year, we need to begin mobilizing now.

Build the Green Wedge! Run with the Greens! Run as a Green!
In Solidarity, Logan Martinez Dayton OH / 937-275-7259 /

* Virginia and New Jersey both had governor, state senate and state representative races this year. Next year both states hope have greens running for congressional and other key races.