Hawkins/Mattera for NY

Releases first video ad

In releasing their first video ad today, the Green Party said that, if their lawsuit for ballot access fails, they will mount a write-in campaign for Howie Hawkins for Governor and Gloria Mattera for Lt. Governor to get back their ballot line in New York by obtaining 2% of the vote this November.

The 2-minute video ad contrasts Hawkins’ working class roots and progressive policy orientation with the major parties’ corporate funding and policies.

With Democrat Kathy Hochul holding a commanding lead over Republican Lee Zeldin and progressives unhappy with the Governor's positions on a host of issues such as climate, health care, and racial justice, the Greens are confident that there are enough votes to restore the ballot line.

The Green Party said it was similar to their race against Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2014, when the party pulled 5% of the vote with their strong campaign against fracking, Cuomo's attacks on unions and school spending, and Cuomo’s shutdown of his anti-corruption Moreland Commission after its investigations led back to his own office.

“A vote for our ticket is a vote for clean, honest government as well as progressive reforms,” Hawkins said. “Hochul is the epitome of pay-to-play corruption, including the second Buffalo Billion, this time for the benefit of the Buffalo Bills’ billionaire owner and her husband’s casinos and stadium concessions, and the state contracts worth hundreds of millionsgiven to donors who gave hundreds of thousands to Hochul’s campaign. Zeldin is an insufferable hypocrite and fraud who repeats Trump’s Big Lie that Biden won the 2020 presidential election by fraud when Zeldin himself committed fraud by sprinkling photocopies of petition sheets worth over 11,000 signatures throughout his petition to create another ballot line for himself.” 

“Our Green ticket is the only progressive vote in this race. A vote for the Green ticket is a vote for an ecosocialist Green New Deal to build out 100% clean energy in the next ten years and for an Economic Bill of Rights, including universal public health care, a guaranteed minimum income to end poverty, a $20 minimum wage, affordable housing and child care, tuition-free public college, and progressive tax reform to pay for them. We are also campaigning for pro-democracy reforms to create an inclusive multi-party democracy based on fair ballot access, ranked choice voting for statewide offices, and proportional representation in the state legislature,” Mattera said.

A hearing on the Green Party’s ballot access lawsuit, filed jointly with the Libertarian Party, is scheduled for September 6 before the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The lawsuit argues that the highly restrictive ballot access law enacted in 2020 is unconstitutional because it violates 1st Amendment political rights and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The Greens had expected to be able to nominate by convention in 2022 based on the ballot status they achieved by their vote in the 2018 election. The Green Party said their case against the 2020 ballot access law that eliminated the Green Party’s secure ballot access in 2022 is underscored by the fact that all eight attempts to qualify a gubernatorial ticket by independent nomination petition failed to submit the required 45,000 signatures in 42 days. The pre-2020 standard was 15,000 signatures in 42 days. Except for the post-war 1946 election, 2022 will be the only year since 1891, when state-authorized ballots were first used, that only the Democratic and Republican candidates for Governor are on the ballot, unless the Greens and Libertarians win their lawsuit.