EXTRA: On to Pa.! Then Mich.?

Jill Stein seems to be determined to make a bigger splash post-election than she did on Election Day.

How did we shift from this ...

Stein was the Green Party’s nominee for president, and she did poorly enough that even Libertarian Gary Johnston came out looking more credible than her. But Stein is now the one taking on the effort to challenge voter tallies in hopes of finding more Electoral College support to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

IT WAS STEIN’S group that challenged the election results in Wisconsin, and on Monday said it would do the same in 100 precincts in Pennsylvania – willing to bet she can prove that places like Erie, Reading and Scranton/Wilkes Barre didn’t band together to produce more votes than did Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Considering that Trump supposedly took 49 percent of Pa. votes and Hillary Clinton took 48 percent, it wouldn’t take much of a shift. Although to have Stein, whose own campaign garnered a whopping (heavy sarcasm intended) 0.82 percent of the vote, in charge of the movement now still seems a stretch.

It would take a shift of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in the Electoral College to impact the actual outcome of the presidential elections; which I still say is a big stretch to have to make in a matter of days.

I’m still not getting my hopes up on such an outcome.

BUT IT WOULD be a crowd-pleaser personally to learn that the Great Lakes states – my own home region – didn’t suddenly go stupid. Since the Trump types would have us believe that Illinois and Minnesota were the lone states that didn’t see the wisdom of the isolationist message they were pushing.

 

... to here in eight short years?

I’d like to think those Midwestern states around the Great Lakes know better, particularly since one of the factors that led to Barack Obama’s solid electoral victory in 2008 was that he managed to unite ALL the Great Lakes states.

Even Indiana – which usually is knee-jerk Republican and this year takes “pride” in being the first state officially called for the Trump camp! – managed to see the merits of “hope” and “change” back then.

Which the Trump camp seems to think was part of what made America not so great – in their estimation!

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Will recount appease anyone? Or do we have to wait for ‘President’ Simpson?

Our neighbors to the north seem to want to be the political guinea pig, so to speak, of the presidential election cycle. Officials in Wisconsin are talking of wanting to recount the roughly 2.9 million ballots cast in that state for U.S. president.
 

Should we count down the days to Simpson administration?

The theory is that enough flawed votes can be found to shift the Nov. 8 election results from the 48 percent for Donald Trump and 47 percent for Hillary Clinton so that Hillary winds up prevailing.

HILLARY CLINTON WOULD wind up getting the 10 Electoral College votes from Wisconsin that will be cast Dec. 19 in Madison.

If you want to believe the wild-eyed fantasies of political zealots, a shift in Wisconsin could also motivate people in Michigan and Pennsylvania to take a closer look at the votes cast in their states to see if all those people in rural parts of those states really were large enough to overcome the votes of places like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Detroit.

If you really could prove such a large scale of improper activity caused that many votes to be counted wrong, you’d be alleging a criminal conspiracy on an unheard of scale and one that literally would call for the incarceration of Donald J. Trump.

Which would be ironic considering he was the one who got his followers all whipped up into a frenzy at the thought of “locking up” Hillary Clinton.

YES, I’M BEING over-the-top here in my choice of language, because I think it highly unlikely that anyone could prove such a large-scale illegal act occurred. And also could do so in the short amount of time required to have any effect on an election.

STEIN: She wants to recount Wisconsin

If somebody comes along in mid-February with the “evidence” that says something criminal took place to tamper with the elections, it won’t mean a thing. Trump would already have been sworn in by then, and would actually have presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for anything.

He’d have to be impeached and removed from office, and I doubt the Republican ideologues would be willing to do a thing that would undermine their own political power. In today's political mentality, Richard M. Nixon himself would be safe.

For what it’s worth, the talk of a recount in Wisconsin is being led by Jill Stein. She was the Green Party presidential nominee, and for what it’s worth she only got 1 percent of the vote in that state. Heck, even Libertarian Gary Johnston (at 3 percent) cleaned her clock, so to speak!

CLINTON: Willing to play along w/ recount

ADVISERS TO HILLARY Clinton have said the former Democratic candidate for president will support talk of a recount, but doesn’t expect there to be any significant shift in voter tallies.

If anything, she says she wants the recount to assure the American public that nothing illegal actually took place – and the fact that she got some 2 million more votes than Trump but still lost is merely a quirk of our electoral system. Perhaps Trump should have kept his mouth shut during the election cycle and not the idea in anyone’s mind that elections could be “rigged!”

One which is meant to protect people from tyranny by the masses – it is meant to prevent any one group from becoming too powerful. Although it could be argued that it sure didn’t work back when it was black people who were the minority who were abused by the political masses.

The fact that it is working to protect the one-time majority from being overcome by a growing part of our society sucks. But it is the set of rules by which our system works.

I HAVE TO admit to being skeptical of a recount because this isn’t 2000. That election cycle by which George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore but won the Electoral College anyway was a close battle that literally came down to one state.

TRUMP: Shouldn't have said elections 'rigged'

It’s a shame that Florida got resolved by the Supreme Court of the United States cutting off any efforts to do a serious recount – it created the perception amongst many that the Bush presidency was less than legitimate. Although Trump's crazed behavior (particularly his claim that foreigners who had no business voting cost him the popular vote) threatens his own legitimacy.

Trump will be able to claim a legitimacy in that he garnered the support of the segment of society that flexed its muscle to ensure it can continue to bully those not like themselves. Or course, there is one thing for us to look forward to – and that it is that episode of “The Simpsons” from 2000 that jokingly told us a Donald Trump presidency was in our future.

Could it also mean there’s a “Lisa Simpson” out there somewhere waiting to succeed Trump and set everything straight again?

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Are we being clownish in panic?

What is it these days with clowns?

Is Bozo now an ominous figure?

It seems that those face-painted figures of merriment and cheer are now becoming an ominous figure to way too many of us.

I REALIZE THERE have been a slew of crimes taking place in many places where a clown-like figure was at the scene. Which, to me, means that some lowlife with way too much time on their hands is taking to copying someone else’s stupid stunt.

Not that we have an epidemic of criminal clowns. Just too many people who are bored. But it’s getting to an absurd level. To the point where I really think people are going into panic-mode at the very thought of someone in face paint.

Just on Tuesday, I saw a video snippet on the Internet that depicted what looked like it could be the set-up for a drive-by shooting. We see from inside the automobile as a person pulls out a pistol and takes aim at a pedestrian passing by.

That pedestrian is a clown, which means we’re supposed to be cheering on the gunman as he takes out that mischievous character in a hail of gunfire? What next, we watch a gang-rape and cheer on the guys who are forcing themselves on some woman?

PERHAPS WE PRETEND that we’re Donald Trump, and that the woman is all too eager to have us force ourselves upon her. Then again, the Trump persona is so clownish in demeanor to begin with.

Now on Wednesday, I’m seeing serious news reports about how McDonald’s is making efforts to scale back the use of their famed marketing gimmick – Ronald McDonald himself.

But it seems that corporate officials think that all these criminal acts will cause people to react negatively to anything even remotely clownish – which could impact their bottom line on selling chicken nuggets, filets o’ fish and even the occasional Big Mac that they still sell.

What else is notable on the southwest shoreline of Lake Michigan these days?

CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN!:  I fell asleep early Tuesday night, so much so that the San Francisco Giants had a 5-2 lead over the Chicago Cubs, and the Cubs were so ineffectual in the eighth inning that the game seemed over.

 

We're still waiting!

So I missed the ninth inning rally that produced the 6-5 victory that averted the need for a Game Five to be played Thursday night at Wrigley Field. It also means the Cubs have now matched the same level of success they achieved in 2015 – when they made it to the last level of the National League playoffs before losing.

To the New York Mets, who this year couldn’t even make it past the wild-card play-in game of the playoffs.

Four more wins by the Cubs means that the late Steve Goodman’s year about the Cubs last winning in “the year we dropped the bomb on Japan” finally becomes obsolete. Then again, it is the Cubs. Nobody should be counting on the National League championship until we have that pennant in hand.

VOTING STRATEGICALLY:  Former Illinois Commerce Commission Chairman Phillip O’Connor tells the Chicago Tribune he’s voting for Jill Stein to be president. Not because he cares about the Green Party, but because he’d like the Greens to get enough votes to qualify for established political party status come the 2018 election cycle.

But can she take 5 percent of the vote come Nov. 8?

Because if there’s a Green Party candidate for governor, he figures it would help take votes away from whomever the Democrats try running against Bruce Rauner.

Keep in mind that with all of this year’s presidential electoral chaos, the Libertarian Party likely will get enough votes to get established party status of their own. Which some fear would take votes away from Rauner.

All of which means that the level of nonsense we’ve been enduring from this year’s presidential election cycle has the strong potential for lasting after-effects. Something else we can blame Trump for.

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Green Party people never got organized enough to be taken seriously politically

So it lasted all of four years – Illinois’ stint as a place where we have three official political parties in place.



Bury next to Washington, Solidarity parties?

The Green Party in our state, which got recognized as an equal to the Democrats or Republicans when their gubernatorial candidate in 2006 managed to get 10.4 percent of the vote, was relegated back to fringe party status (with all of the extra work required to get candidates on ballots) as a result of Tuesday’s elections.

RICH WHITNEY, THE Green gubernatorial nominee, only got 2.7 percent of the vote for Illinois governor – falling short of the 5 percent minimum required by state law. All of the Green candidates running for statewide office got about 2 to 3 percent of the vote.

Locally, the BIG NAME for the Greens seems to be Tom Tresser, who was their nominee for Cook County Board president. He managed to get 4 percent. Greens may have got established party status this week in New York and Texas, but they flopped in Illinois

If you want purely symbolic “victories,” then look at Illinois’ First Congressional District. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., easily won re-election. But in the city portion of that district, Green nominee Jeff Adams actually beat Republican Ray Wardingley (2.16 percent to 1.97 percent) among those people who just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for an ex-Black Panther Party member (the REAL Panther party of four decades ago, not the nutcase group that now uses that name).

But it really is a stretch to call that a victory. The bottom line is that in a year when many voters would have enjoyed having a legitimate alternative to either of the established political parties, the Green Party showed it was not up to providing it.

IN THE ILLINOIS governor’s race, people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for either Gov. Pat Quinn or state Sen. William Brady, R-Bloomington, by and large were looking to independent candidate Scott Lee Cohen (character flaws and all) more than they were to Whitney and crew.

Now I know the hostile response I’m going to get. Whitney somehow maintained his political purity by not stooping to the level of Cohen, who had he not pumped several millions of dollars of his own money into his campaign fund would have been just as poor as the Greens.

One Green Party nominee I encountered on Election Night, Kenneth Williams, who was running for an Illinois House seat (he got 17.1 percent of the vote) in the south suburbs, went straight for that angle in his own Campaign ’10 analysis.

“The (Whitney) campaign didn’t have the kind of money to draw attention, and that caused people to start excluding them from the debate,” Williams said. “It shows how the establishment, the media, can set the agenda and keep our ideas from being heard.”

I EXPECT THAT line is going to be repeated often – the Green Party was picked on. Had it been included in public debates and had people gone out of their way to hear the group, they would have loved the idea. It is the establishment that is biased against them.

The problem with that attitude is that it is likely the reason why Green Party types won’t be able to get organized enough anytime in the near future to regain established party status – even though, theoretically, they have some nice ideals.

Williams himself admitted that for the Green Party in Illinois to be considered fully legitimate, it was going to have to start winning elections. “If we could get five party members or more elected, then there really is a new political party in this state.”

The Green Party, as currently structured, isn’t even coming close to winning. In some cases, their candidates are no more legitimate than the perennial Libertarian Party people who always seem to run for office and take 1 percent of the vote on Election Day.

COHEN: He vanquished the Greens!

ULTIMATELY, WHAT IS the point of a political party if it doesn’t have a structure that can help candidates to win elections? Take Cohen, who outpolled Whitney even though he had NO political party structure behind him. Maybe the real reform is to do away with political parties and have all candidates run independent – even though I know full well that will never happen.

Now I know some people might wonder what the big deal is about “established political party” status. Regardless of what happened Tuesday, the Illinois Green Party still exists. I won’t be surprised if Whitney runs again for governor at some point in the future. There may well be candidates on future ballots with the “G” after their name, rather than the “D” or “R.”

But it relates to the fact that Illinois has lesser requirements for candidates of established political parties to actually get on the ballot. People running on something that is not an established political party are required to show more support – in the form of valid signatures on nominating petitions – in order to justify their political presence.

Considering how many electoral boards that determine ballot presence and rule on challenges to candidates are establishment-minded, I’m sure Green candidates liked the idea of having a lesser standard to meet. Now, their candidates are going to face stricter challenges. They’re going to have to work harder. I suppose we will see if they’re up to it, although I expect we’ll find they produce fewer candidates.

BECAUSE IF ALL we get from Green Party people in the future is whining about how unfair life was that they couldn’t keep their established party status, then perhaps we are justified in writing them off.

Illinois Green Party -- 2006-2010. R.I.P.

  -30-

Green Party doesn’t have any …

Green, as in cash. Which helps pay for all the equipment needed to hold campaign rallies, and cover the cost of all those posters to promote oneself, and also to buy the airtime on television across Illinois – all to generate enough attention for one’s campaign so as to get voters to go out and cast ballots come Election Day.

The Green Party doesn’t have much in the way of finances, and it is showing in the fact that they’re lagging. In a year where the political pundits want to believe that voters are eager for change, any change, no matter how reckless, nobody is seriously looking to the Green Party candidates to provide that change.

HECK, IN ILLINOIS’ gubernatorial election, Scott Lee Cohen with all his personal baggage gets taken more seriously than does the Green Party nominee.

That fact is what caused Rich Whitney (who doesn’t seem to accept the fact that the only reason anyone voted for him for governor in the 2006 election cycle was a political fluke that is not about to repeat itself) to send out e-mails in recent weeks to the Green supporters asking for whatever donations they can make.

He needs the money to buy the airtime to draw attention to himself, or else he and the other Greens are going to be exposed on Nov. 2 for the irrelevant political movement that they have become in the Land of Lincoln.

Of course, that won’t stop the Green Party candidates in this state from shouting and screaming to try to force people to pay attention them. Already, the Green candidate for U.S. Senate is getting pushy with NBC news.

FOR ONE OF the events that is passing for a debate in that campaign is a live Sunday morning broadcast on NBC News. Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk are appearing together on “Meet The Press.” Nobody invited candidate LeAlan Jones.

The official reason is that he’s too insignificant. He’s not drawing enough in the polls to show that he deserves to be included. Neither is Cohen. But he’s not whining about it. He’s just planning another expenditure to buy attention. Perhaps he could buy commercial airtime during the “Meet The Press” broadcast on WMAQ-TV that day?

That just leaves Jones out as a “fourth wheel,” which is pretty much typical of his Green Party colleagues – none of whom have a serious shot at winning their statewide or regional political posts.

In fact, the big question I have when it comes to the Green Party in Illinois is if their candidates will all do so poorly that none of them will hit the 5 percent standard (Whitney got 10 percent in 2006) that is required for the Green Party to remain recognized as an official political party in Illinois.

WILL THE GREENS be relegated to the political dump heap of independent and fringe party candidates – one step above the Communist Party, but floating below the Libertarians? Which would mean their candidates would have to struggle to even get on the ballot – let alone win!

It wouldn’t be the first time that an attempt at creating a third major political party sank back into nothingness. Who else remembers the Harold Washington Party – which used to be a legitimate entity that put forth slates of candidates in our local elections.

But the party (which Washington himself had nothing to do with, he was a loyal Democrat his entire political career) eventually turned into nothing. Which is what I seriously expect to happen to the Green Party in Illinois – Born: 2006, Died 2010, R.I.P.

It is not exactly unfair. Any political party that picks as a candidate for Congress a person who has run past political campaigns as a Republican, a Libertarian, an independent and a Democrat (Rev. Anthony Williams, who is Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s, perennial opponent) comes across as the dumping ground for everyone else’s political failures and a place for the politically delusional to congregate.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think most people in this state understand what the Green Party is about; for which I blame the Greens themselves. They haven’t done a thing to educate the public as to what they stand for, which is why they haven’t moved beyond the image of Ralph Nader to become a real political party.

There is the stereotype of the aging hippie and some naïve kids who haven’t outgrown their idealism yet. But there also have been the reports this campaign cycle of Green candidates using campaign tactics and issues meant to appeal to the more conservative voters. I’m probably not the only person in Illinois who is confused about what the party has become.

I may be one of the few who cares enough to try to find out. Most people, I would suspect, merely write them off as a hopeless case, and move on to other candidates.

Which is the reason why nobody’s coughing up the kind of contributions needed to help fund campaigns (since the types of people who are wealthy enough to pay their own way are most likely the ones who view the Green Party faithful as everything that is wrong with our society), or willing to include them in their debates.

JUST AS JONES isn’t being given equal time with Kirk or Giannoulias, it is unlikely that Whitney will get to appear as an equal candidate with either Gov. Pat Quinn or Republican challenger William Brady. I’m sure it is just a matter of time before Whitney issues another whiny e-mail to complain.

Personally, I’ll try not to yawn with boredom too loudly at his complaint before shifting my attention span to something else.

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Ballot slots – a race to be last

It’s one of those so-called “rules” that political people tend to give too much credence to – the idea that ballot slots make a big difference when it comes to getting votes on Election Day.

There were those hundreds of people who showed up at Illinois State Board of Elections offices Oct. 26 at 8 a.m. in hopes of getting the top spot on the ballot for each government position. In coming weeks, the state will conduct a lottery to break the ties to figure out whose name gets to be listed first.

BUT THERE ARE those people who believe that the next-best thing to being first is to be last. The idea is they don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a list of candidates.

Hence, some people who want to run for electoral office made a point of waiting until as late as they could Monday afternoon before filing the nominating petitions that are necessary to get a ballot spot for the Feb. 2 primary elections.

Take the Republican primary for governor – a campaign that is going to become a bloodbath between the old guard of the party and the conservative ideologues who think they have a superior vision.

Jim Ryan, the former state attorney general who lost a gubernatorial bid back in 2002, filed his nominating petitions to run for governor Monday at 4:18 p.m. Yet that’s not going to be good enough for him to get the bottom spot – Chicago business executive Andy McKenna filed petitions at 4:25 p.m.

THERE WAS A similar race to be last in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate from Illinois. Corey Dabney of Aurora thought he’d be able to get that bottom slot by filing petitions at 3:51 p.m., only to get beaten out by Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson at 3:59 p.m.

Now I know some political people look down on the people who wait – I once had a political candidate tell me with a straight face that anyone who didn’t have their nominating petitions ready to file with the state at 8 a.m. on the first filing day was somehow unorganized and not worthy of a vote on Election Day.

There is some evidence that the candidates who held out for the final day of filing are not going to be among the front-runners, although some of them were candidates for the state Legislature and for judicial posts who are counting on the fact that there won’t be much attention paid to them – and that they might be able to slip their way into a political post.

Somehow, I don’t think that Sylvester “Junebug” Hendricks is going to achieve political office. He filed his nominating petitions Monday at 4:11 p.m. to run for the Republican nomination for an Illinois House of Representatives seat on Chicago’s South Side.

WHAT CATCHES MY eye about his petitions is that he gives his home “address” as a post office box. Officially, he’s homeless. But, of course, we’re talking about a homeless man who has his own website – at http://sylvesterjunebughendricks.com/.

He’s also not the typical Republican official in that his website indicates he has a strong interest in urban issues and even is a supporter of President Barack Obama (his website indicates that Hendricks is an “Obama-can”).

Somehow, I don’t think state Rep. Will Burns, D-Chicago, is quivering in fear at the thought of the Junebug campaign – even though the freshman senator is at the point in his career where he is most vulnerable to an electoral challenger.

So when it comes to candidates being political stragglers, who was the absolute last to file their petitions?

INSOFAR AS STATEWIDE campaigns are concerned, two of the candidates for lieutenant governor were holdouts to the final minutes of the day.

Thomas Castillo of Elmhurst probably thought that getting his petitions for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in at 4:49 p.m. was late enough. But he got beaten out, in a sense, by state Rep. Mike Boland, D-East Moline, who filed his lieutenant governor nominating papers at 4:51 p.m.

Three candidates for a Cook County judicial subcircuit (Tracey Stokes, John Chwarzynski and Radusa Ostojic) filed their petitions to run as Democrats at 4:58 and 4:59 p.m.

Yet the absolute “loser” who hopes that it makes him into a “winner” may very well be Richard Mayers of Chicago. He is a Green Party type and he plans to use that political entity for his electoral aspirations this campaign season.

NOT THAT WE know yet which office he plans to seek.

He filed nominating petitions seeking the Green Party slot for governor, a seat in Congress and for a slot as a party state central committeeman.

He gives an address on the Southwest Side, but the Congressional post he’s seeking is the North Shore seat being abandoned by Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. – who hopes to move up to the U.S. Senate seat now held by retiring Roland Burris.

Does this mean he’s willing to move if elected? Does this mean he’s throwing his dreams to the wind, hoping to see where they land and what he can get?

THERE’S ONLY ONE thing I can say for sure.

The fact that he filed his nominating petitions right at 5 p.m. (closing time) means he was the absolute “last” candidate for the 2010 primary – which most likely will be his only achievement for this election cycle.

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Nader wants to get on Illinois ballot

Call it the pairing of the political malcontents – the Green Party and the Libertarians are combining their efforts in Illinois to back the 2008 version of consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s presidential fantasies.

The activists who worked to get nearly 50,000 signatures of support on nominating petitions for Nader (out of hope that at least 25,000 of them are found to be valid, thereby qualifying Ralph for a spot for president on the Illinois ballot) are a combination of the two factions that in theory are ideological opposites.

GREENS IN THEORY are people who push for a pro-environment, highly liberal vision of government, while Libertarians in theory are people who would like to have no government because it often interferes with their socially conservative views on many (but not all) issues.

The two factions have one thing in common – they think the current two-party system is messed up, and they are more than anxious to have a third person to vote for when they walk into their polling place Nov. 4 to cast ballots for president.

Nader’s allies filed their nominating petitions at the Illinois State Board of Elections offices in Springfield, hoping that the powers that be with the two established political parties do not figure out a way to knock off enough signatures of support to kick Ralph off the ballot.

Under the rules governing elections, officials with the established political parties now have one week to decide whether they want to challenge his ballot position on grounds that the signatures of support are not valid.

MY GUT FEELING says Nader got enough signatures that any challenge will amount to little more than political harassment. He will be on the Illinois ballots along with Obama and McCain – and Nader already is going after Obama, claiming he is changing his mind on everything from NAFTA to public spending limits for political campaigns.

Now nobody seriously expects Nader and his running mate, former San Francisco board of supervisors member Matt Gonzalez (who even by California standards is considered a touch eccentric), to win the Electoral College process and actually becomes president.

Nobody even expects him to win any states, or to get any significant number of votes in Illinois.

This is more about giving the people who just can’t bring themselves to vote for Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama a person to support. If in the process, Nader manages to advance public debate on their pet issues, then so much the better. He will have achieved something, in their eyes.

IN FACT, ONE look at Nader’s campaign platform makes it very clear he doesn’t expect to get much real voter support in Illinois – or anywhere in the now-flood-covered Midwest.

Besides calling for health care access reforms, Nader is campaigning against the concept of ethanol – the motor fuel that is a blend of byproducts made from corn. Nader is following the West Coast party line that says federal subsidies to encourage ethanol production are actually doing more these days to drive up the price of food.

That may get him a couple of votes in San Diego, but in the rural Midwest, it will hurt him. Farmers in the regions surrounding Chicago have always liked the idea of encouraging ethanol production because it means that someone else will be interested in buying their corn crop so it can be turned into motor fuel.

Rural Illinois farmers will see Nader as a guy who wants to take money from their pockets, particularly at a time when many of them have suffered severe financial loss due to the Mississippi River flooding that has wiped out their crop altogether for this year.

URBAN ILLINOIS (A.K.A., Chicago) will care less about this issue, other than to see Nader as someone who is spending precious time worrying about something that won’t drive down the price they pay for gasoline.

So the real trick in Illinois will be to see how little Nader gets in the way of votes. When he ran for president in 2000 (the year he allegedly cost Al Gore the presidency), just over 103,000 people cast ballots for Ralph.

But this year, Obama is expected to dominate the Illinois political scene – in large part because of his hometown Chicago popularity. Cook County, Ill., gave Obama nearly 70 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary (his largest primary victory margin anywhere in the United States), and some people are convinced he will do equally as well against McCain in the general election.

There’s a very good chance that the 50,000 or so people who bothered to sign nominating petitions for Nader will be the only people who will vote for him come Nov. 4.

BUT WHAT THEY’RE shooting for is to get enough votes to qualify for automatic ballot positions in Illinois.
State law gives candidates running as Democrats and Republicans advantages in terms of getting on the ballot, based on the belief that the established parties have shown they have significant support among Illinois residents. Third-party candidates have to come up with more signatures of support on their nominating petitions.

Receiving a significant number of votes could put whatever party label Nader chooses to use in line to become a recognized legitimate political party, just like the Dems or GOP.

That’s the odd part of Nader’s campaign this year. He has run on the Green Party label in the past, but this year, he’s going as an independent, using a mixture of his old Green Party followers and other people who view the political establishment with distaste.

SO THAT’S THE real goal of the political malcontents – use Nader to advance their cause in hopes that the day will come that they can put together a campaign for a candidate who stands a real chance of getting elected to a government post.

Some political observers might take one look at the often amateurish campaign tactics used by these people and figure they’re never going to get to that point. But that is their dream.

And as for Nader, he’s willing to use the oddball coalition of Greens and Libertarians to feed his ego and let him make yet another run for the White House.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Ralph Nader hopes to get more votes in Illinois this year than he did in 2004, when his (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2008/06/nader-says-hell.html) write-in campaign received about 3,500 votes.

Did Nader manage to stop off at Norb Andy’s for a “horseshoe” on Monday in between his visits to (http://www.votenader.org/media/2008/06/20/Illinois/) the Statehouse and the State Board of Elections offices? Somehow (http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Sandwiches/HorseshoeSandwich.htm), I doubt it.

He might not be their actual candidate, but Green Party officials will be talking up the Nader candidacy (http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/06/23/why-isnt-nader-running-as-a-green-candidate/) when they hold their national nominating convention July 10-13 at the Palmer House Hilton and the Symphony Center.

Illinois’ Green Party has its own activity beyond supporting Nader (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/04/greens-will-go-way-of-solidarity-and.html), while his running mate, Matt Gonzalez, has a record (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/2008/02/nader-choice-doesnt-boost-latino.html) of being – to put it politely – a colorful character.

Greens will go the way of Solidarity and Washington (political parties, that is)

I recently made a wisecrack in one of my commentaries implying that the Green Party, which has acquired status in Illinois as a fully legitimate political entity, is destined to go the way of the Harold Washington Party.

That party in Chicago, along with the Solidarity Party in Illinois, experienced a few years of equal status to the Democrats or Republicans due to an electoral fluke, only to wither away when they were unable to maintain their popularity.

OF COURSE, MY wisecrack resulted in a completely serious response from a Green Party spokesman who tells me that the Green Party is here in Illinois to stay.

That reader pointed out the very thorough slate of candidates running for office on the party label. That slate was compiled earlier this week when Green officials picked people to run for office in the electoral districts to which they did not choose nominees in the Feb. 5 primary.

Hence, the Greens are not just Ralph Nader. In fact, he could very well be the least important aspect of the Green Party across the Land of Lincoln.

Ralph Nader and the Green Party will give Chicago its first nominating convention in 48 years for a political party other than the Democrats. Illustration provided by http://www.secondcitygreens.org/.

They have a U.S. Senate candidate, along with 14 congressional dreamers, several people wanting to run for seats in the Illinois House and state Senate and 26 others wishing to run for county government offices across the state.

BUT WHILE THE Obama/Clinton brawl is destined to culminate in Denver, and the people of Minneapolis-St. Paul will be swimming in a political love-fest for John McCain, Chicago is going to go Green.

Yes, the Green Party is going to have its own political convention this summer. Green Party backers from across the United States will converge on the Second City July 10-13 to heed the call for change in our electoral system, and it will culminate with Nader trying to stir up the troops to believe they have a chance to be relevant come the Nov. 4 general elections.

There goes my sarcasm, ringing like an obnoxious warning bell to tell me (and you) that none of this Green Party activity is any different than what happened with the Washington or Solidarity parties.

One of the safest bets anybody could make with regards to electoral politics these days is to put money down on the fact that the Green Party in Illinois will wither away in 2010 – the next year that state government posts are up for grabs.

NOW THE PERSON who chided me for mocking the Greens in Illinois said the difference between them and the other two third parties I have mentioned is that both of them were based around a personality, while the Greens are allegedly based around an ideal.

This person is half right. The Solidarity Party was created when Democratic gubernatorial nominee Adlai Stevenson III had his campaign thrown out of whack by followers of Lyndon LaRouche. His attempt to run separate of the “tainted” Democrats that year resulted in a political party with legitimate status that got taken over in future years by fringe candidates who used its legitimacy to make it easier for them to get spots on Election Day ballots.

The same goes for the Harold Washington Party, which was created following the death of its namesake mayor of Chicago who wanted a third political party in the city to support the concept of African-American political candidates to run against Mayor Richard M. Daley and the tokens put up by the Republican party.

Stevenson, Washington. To that list, we must add the name of Rod Blagojevich. Let’s be honest. If not for the existence of the governor and his unpopularity in certain circles, there’s no way the Green Party would have received so many votes.

NOBODY WAS VOTING in 2006 for Rich Whitney to be Illinois governor. Most people knew nothing of the man, and certainly wouldn’t have thought him fit to hold the gubernatorial post.

What they were using the Whitney vote for was a way of showing their disgust with Blagojevich, while also refusing to support the Republican gubernatorial dreams of Judy Baar Topinka. They really were voting for “none of the above,” although Whitney got to have his name used for that slot.

Because of that, his 10 percent of the vote is double the amount of support a party needs to show to claim legitimate status. So long as the Green Party can keep finding a candidate who can win at least 5 percent of the overall vote in an election, they can keep their equal status to the Democrats and Republicans.

The reason the Solidarity and Washington parties fizzled out is that the personalities that originally inspired them for a single election had no interest in maintaining them. Stevenson has always been a loyal Democrat, while the African-American politicos who admire Washington have also returned to the fold.

THE THIRD PARTIES turned into the place for people who perennially operate on the fringe of electoral politics. That is bound to happen to the Greens.

The perception of the Green Party among many people, particularly those so far to the right on social issues, is of a group of people who have been so stoned for so many years that they don’t realize the year 1968 is over. We’re going to hear a lot of jokes about aging hippies coming to Chicago, perhaps to reprise the ’68 Democratic convention protests in Grant Park.

But that image really isn’t true. The Green Party is becoming the place for all the people who just aren’t practical about their politics, and they don’t have to be liberal.

IF THE GREEN Party were truly a liberal place, there’s no way that Chad Koppie of Gilberts, Ill., would have seriously considered using the party label to run a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Koppie is the retired airline pilot who has run so many fringe political campaigns for Senate, governor and Congress – usually to tout his pro-gun and anti-abortion views.

He’s the candidate who has aired graphic campaign ads depicting aborted fetuses and who has dumped bags of manure on the steps of the Statehouse in Springfield to protest the General Assembly’s actions.

Let’s also hear it for the Green Party’s choice for an Illinois House seat in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Rob Sherman, the atheist activist from Buffalo Grove who most recently is trashing state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, for her attack on his beliefs during a legislative committee hearing, is one of the Greens.

THE GREENS MAY have taken a pass on Koppie this time (Cathy Cummings of Chicago got the nomination), but these are the type of political people who are going to be attracted to the organization – those to whom the Democrats and Republicans are unappealing because they try to reach a middle ground on issues. These people would rather play hard-core politics around specific issues – and lose.

With a pair like Koppie and Sherman amongst their followers, the Green Party is not building up a structure that will ever appeal to the masses.

That is what makes it likely that no Green Party candidate will get 5 percent of the vote in 2010, and why we’ll be able to bury the Illinois Green Party corpse next to the remains of the Washington and Solidarity parties.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: If you care, a thorough list of all the Green Party candidates in Illinois (http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/04/07/illinois-greens-running-60-candidates-in-08/) can be found here.

Rob Sherman is using the Green Party label to run a campaign for an Illinois House seat from northwest suburban (http://www.pioneerlocal.com/wheeling/news/882275,bg-sherman-040708-s1.article) Cook County. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll ever be a colleague of state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago.