Green Party Only Progressive Choice, Urges Write-in Vote for Governor
Green Party Remains the Progressive Choice in Gubernatorial Election
Urges Write-in Votes for Hawkins and Mattera
With Kathy Hochul rapidly shifting to the right in her struggling effort to hold off Lee Zeldin, the Green Party called on voters who support a progressive agenda to write in Howie Hawkins for Governor and Gloria Mattera for Lt. Governor.
“A write-in vote for the Green ticket is the only way to vote for a progressive agenda. That includes the NY Health Act for universal health care, the Green New Deal for serious climate action, the Economic Bill of Rights for economic justice, and reproductive freedom. It means standing up for an inclusive democracy based on fair ballot access, ranked choice voting, and proportional representation,” said Hawkins, a retired Teamster from Syracuse who first called for the Green New Deal in his 2010 campaign.
The Greens dismissed as Orwellian the usual call by the Working Families Party for progressives to protest Hochul’s policies by voting for her on their line.
“Decades of the Democrats campaigning as the lesser of two evils has just shifted the political debate in our country further to the right. Voters need to vote their hopes for their families and their community, not their fears. People need to stand up to Trumpism by voting for what they believe in,” added Gloria Mattera, a health care worker from Brooklyn.
The Greens said it was stunning that the main hallmark of Hochul’s tenure since replacing the disgraced Cuomo as Governor has been her aggressive strong arming of campaign donors, not even bothering to hide that she is selling access to her office.
“We need a Governor who will fight for working families rather than the wealthy, who will stand up for immigrants and communities of color. We need to address economic inequality and poverty, starting with a statewide $20 minimum wage. As Governor, I will make New York a world leader in preventing climate collapse, pursuing an EcoSocialist Green New Deal that halts new fossil fuel use while rapidly phasing out existing pollution, starting with environmental justice communities,” said Hawkins.
Mattera added that “when the head of the UN says that world leaders are not doing enough to prevent climate collapse, they’re talking about NY. The Greens support public power as a way to speed up the development of renewable energy such as offshore wind and solar. We will raise $20 to $30 billion a year for clean energy and an Economic Bill of rights by making polluters pay and taxing the rich.”
Hawkins won more than 100,000 votes in 2018 for Governor, double the number needed to guarantee the Green Party an automatic place on the statewide ballot. But Cuomo and the Democrats at the height of the COVID crisis rammed through radical changes in the ballot access laws to prevent independent smaller parties from running for statewide office.
“Our country is facing a dark moment. Many people are struggling both financially and emotionally to recover from the COVID pandemic. Democracy is under attack in the U.S. by both major parties. The heated partisan rhetoric is spurring the rise of right-wing terrorism and hate crimes. And the need to reform our police departments has been overshadowed by hysteria about a so-called rising crime wave. The Green Party offers a different path than that of the two major parties and their corporate financiers,” offered Mattera.
The Greens blamed the tabloids and the two major parties for overstating the problem with crime in New York, which has been in a steady decline for two decades. Data shows the crime rate in New York for 2022 is expected to be lower than in 2019, when the state violent crime rate was lower than the national violent crime rate average by 5.48% and the state property crime rate was lower than the national property crime rate average by 34.91%.
“Criminal justice reform has been a hallmark of the Green Party since our first statewide race in 1998. The minimal reforms enacted in recent years were just the first steps needed to dismantle our Jim Crow system. We need to ensure that everyone feels secure, regardless of the race, sexual orientation, or economic status. We need to demilitarize our police and redirect funding to mental health and community programs while implementing community control of the police,” said Hawkins.
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