California Greenin':
A Report from the Electoral Front

A SPECTER HAUNTED CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS this fall, and it wasn't Bush, the post-9/11 swing to the right, or politicized funerals in Minnesota. It certainly wasn't Republican hopeful Bill Simon, who did everything he could to lose his bid for governor short of endorsing Democrat Gray Davis. The specter was Green, embodied in a socialist stockbroker named Peter Miguel Camejo and a handful of effective Green Party organizers who may have altered California's political landscape for some time to come.

In the short run, the election-night gods smiled on California's Democrats. For the first time in recent memory a party won a clean sweep of all seven of the statewide positions, and the Democrats now rule two branches of government in California, reversing the trend toward Republican wins of the 1980s in the face of a growing Hispanic electorate, the decline of certain military industries, and the ascent of the arguably more cosmopolitan high-tech sector.

While Hispanics make up about one third of the population and added some 1 million to the voting lists during the 1990s they currently constitute just 18 percent of registered voters. But their numbers as residents and voters are growing. In addition to these difficulties, the state GOP faces one other peculiar problem, namely that the majority of primary voters in the party are too right wing to elect a social moderate like former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan (who lost the primary election to Bill Simon thanks in large part to the calculated pre-primary pounding on the more moderate of the two Republican by the Davis camp). It appears likely that Bill Jones, the incumbent Secretary of State, will be the last Republican to have been elected to a statewide position until there is another significant demographic shift, or unless movie star and putative candidate Arnold Schwartzenegger runs for governor and can draw out support normally absent from the polls. We'll see if the hard-liners are as unforgiving with the socially moderate Schwartzenegger in any gubernatorial run in 2006.

But it was an especially good night for the Greens, where Venezuelan born Camejo collected just over 380,000 votes, or about 5.3 percent of the votes cast on November 4 -- more than tripling the votes for Dan Hamburg's Green Party gubernatorial run in 1998. Others on the ballot did even better, with controller candidate Laura Wells collecting more than 400,000 votes for a total of about 5.8 percent, and treasurer candidate Jeanne Marie Rosenmeir edging over 5 percent, too.

Camejo also took 7 percent of the Hispanic vote, higher than his support among whites. That was also a 1000 percent increase for the Greens among Hispanics and the party's first serious inroad into a non- white community. He garnered 16 percent of the vote in San Francisco, beating out the Republican for second place. In Mendocino County, Camejo did even better, finding favor with 16.38 percent of those who voted. Camejo did very well in several other north coast counties where the aging veterans of the "back-to-the-land" movement and their Reggae loving coming-of- age children have been flexing considerable political muscle for the past decade.

Witness the successes the party has seen in local races, where 26 more Greens (out of 67 hopefuls fielded) join party incumbents on city councils, school boards, hospital districts and other administrative bodies around the state to bring its total of elected officials to 62. Prominent among its officeholders are San Francisco Board Supervisor Matt Gonzales, Board of Education member Sarah Lipson, (who ran citywide) and members of numerous city councils including those in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Alameda, Santa Monica, Nevada City, San Bernadino, Point Arena, Sonoma, Arcata and Santa Barbara. Greens even hold a majority on the Nevada County school board.

"It's pretty much established that the Green Party has become the third party in California," Camejo told the Sacramento Bee following the election. "It's not that there aren't other parties, but the Green Party by far is the largest. You just don't see any other party getting 16 percent of a county."

Some of the Greens' statewide success was peculiar to this one election, with Camejo taking advantage of two weak "major" party candidates. Camejo acknowledges this, telling the Oakland Tribune following the election that "There's no question we have made some important headway here . . . but we also had the wind at our back because of the unpopularity of both major-party candidates. There were one-time advantages we had this time that won't be there the next time around."

And unpopular both Davis and Simon were. Davis's "third way" approach has not resonated well with progressives who see no reason to compromise with the right in what is widely viewed as the "new" California. He has repeatedly vetoed bills meant to address the environment, civil liberties (including measures designed to end racial profiling by the state's Highway Patrol), and open government; and has been implicated in a number of allegations of unethical fund-raising. Although the deregulation that caused the energy crisis of 2000 predated his initial election, he presided over the crisis and addressed it by pouring even more state money to those in the power industry who caused the problem. Consequently, the budget is deep in the red for the first time in a decade and the state's short-term economic outlook is bleak.

CERTAINLY MANY OF DAVIS'S PROBLEMS were of his own making. He alienated Latino voters, most recently by vetoing legislation allowing undocumented workers to obtain driver's licenses. He originally pledged to sign the bill, then reneged, and has since renewed his promise, claiming that he only rejected it because he didn't want "murderers and terrorists" to get driver's licenses.

This was the last straw in what Camejo called "a series of betrayals" for many Hispanics. In an interview I did of him on KMUD, a north coast community radio station, Camejo described what he saw as an enormous dissatisfaction with Davis in the Hispanic communities. Following the veto on October 5, Radio Unica, a Spanish language radio station based in Los Angeles with a wide base of listeners, held an eight-hour marathon on the question of "why we aren't voting for Davis." Many telephoned in to voice support for Camejo. Some twelve thousand listeners went to the station to sign an anti-Davis petition. Although it was not scientific by any means, Los Angeles-based Spanish talk radio KWKW polled its listeners in October and 70 percent of the callers supported Camejo -- suggesting that the politically active portions of the Spanish speaking community were moving away from Davis.

On November 5, the Velasquez Institute, a Southwest-based voter education effort, and the Los Angeles Times conducted exit polls that showed Davis receiving 65 to 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, down from the 78 to 85 percent he collected in 1998.

Simon, too, ran a ragged campaign, benefiting at the last minute from the surge in Republican enthusiasm nationally. He lost all hope of actually winning the race when he repeated misinformation fed him by COPS (a police organization that supported Simon) that accused Davis of illegal fund-raising. The group supplied a photograph of Davis allegedly receiving a check from a donor in the lieutenant governor's office, a violation of law. However, the wall depicted in the photograph was almost instantly recognized as something other than the office wall in Sacramento. The shot was actually taken at a Santa Monica Hills private residence, whose owner has since sued Simon for slander.

This stunt alone would have probably destroyed his re-election chances, but stacked upon it were: his mismanagement of campaign funds necessitating lay-offs of more than half his staff in August; his earlier refusal to disclose his tax records; a unanimous civil jury verdict for fraud against a family business; indictment of his investment firm for falsifying records; and the fact that he went through four campaign managers before settling on the one responsible for the COPS stunt. His social views were far to the right of many Republicans. And even his debate performance was uninspired. His most fortuitous campaign move was to have the Democrats help him win the Republican primary over two opponents.

These weak major party candidacies left fertile ground for Camejo, an artful campaigner and arguably the most effective one the Greens fielded nationwide. He kept himself in the media spotlight and used his meager $90,000 war chest to visit every corner of the state. His fluency in Spanish helped him take advantage of Davis's loss of support from Hispanic voters.

He even benefited from a few outspoken Republicans, dissatisfied with their party's nominee. At Baron's Books in Anaheim, employee Myra Vevenecia, a 39-year-old Orange County Republican, told an Associated Press reporter in a widely publicized story, "I haven't made up my mind on which one, only because they both seem pretty rotten. It's not going to be Simon or Davis. I'm thinking, actually, the Green Party guy, I don't know his name. That will be a first."

Camejo and the entire Green slate also ran a well-coordinated statewide campaign, one that might have resulted in many more votes had Davis agreed to debate Camejo. Instead of appearing with Camejo and Simon at a scheduled September 17 encounter, Davis held a press conference 10 minutes away, ensuring that there would be no significant television coverage of the Simon-Camejo dust-up. Simon was of course more than happy to oblige Camejo and the debate went ahead as planned, with little media coverage. In a radio interview, Camejo attributed Davis' actions to an "arrogance of power."

On October 7, the L.A. Times sponsored a debate to which Camejo was not invited. Bill Simon invited Camejo as his personal guest to observe, at which point Davis threw a tantrum and threatened to walk out of the debate if Camejo was even allowed in the building. In a replay of the Nader incident two years ago, Camejo was barred, with Camejo claiming that the refusal to admit him violated California's Jesse Unruh Civil Rights Act, which, with some exceptions, prevents a spectator from being excluded from public meetings on the basis of political opinion. The barring was front-page news, and angry editorials blasted Davis and the Times. Davis's treatment of Camejo was one factor in his poor election-day showing.

Davis' s negative coattails compromised the entire Democratic slate. Now, despite winning a clean sweep, statewide Democrats are looking over their left shoulder, and Democrats have no excuses to unduly compromise with Republicans. For the Republicans, the election is probably as bad as it can get. If a Democratic sweep with record performances from the Greens isn't a mandate, what is?

Although they aren't likely to see it this way, the Democrats owe Camejo and company a debt for shifting the continuum of debate leftward. More likely, they are relieved that Camejo, being foreign born, cannot replace Ralph Nader as the Green's presidential candidate in 2004.

Can the California Greens repeat if not surpass their statewide performance in four years, and under changed circumstances? Not if 2006 boasts a Schwartzenegger race against popular Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Not only is Lockyer a much better candidate than Davis -- alone of all the candidates he scored a majority of votes for office, but there will be a great progressive drive to nip any emerging Schwartzenegger political career in the bud.

SO WHO IS PETER CAMEJO? I first heard of him way back in high school, when I joined the Socialist Workers Party (they came up under "socialist" in the phone book) and he is likely no stranger to New Politics readers. After his being drummed out for some heresy I don't remember, he went largely unheard in left activist circles until he surfaced a few years later as a successful stockbroker, apparently subscribing to Jerry Rubin's nostrum that "power is in money, not people."

He reappeared again in the early 1990s when he and other left refugees coalesced into the "Committees of Correspondence," now expressing its politics within the Green Party.

Camejo possesses a gravitas all too absent in progressive electoral politics, not to mention in California gubernatorial candidates of any party since Upton Sinclair's run in 1932. Unlike most left candidates, he has been a success in private business, starting Progressive Assets Management, the nation's first viable, socially conscious investment firm. This led to the creation of businesses such as Working Assets and one of the strongest pension funds in California. As brilliant as Ralph Nader, Camejo makes a better leader, thanks to a sharp wit and a visible sense of irony. He also milks the "socialist stock broker" shtick for all it's worth. Every once in a while he relapses into rhetoric that makes recovering Marxists wince (too-quick references to "smashing the two-party duopoly" are typical), but mostly he presents his perspectives with a level of intelligence, depth, and marketability unknown to the left in recent years.

Though he doesn't talk much about his Trotskyist past, claiming as justification a fiduciary responsibility to the Green Party, which is not socialist per se, his status as a Green is still tentative. In a KMUD interview on my radio show, his knowledge of north coast environmental issues seemed token at best, and one could detect in his statements about European Green Parties a relapse to the old left bugbear that ecology is a bourgeois science. Camejo even interjected a curious metaphor, likening the Party to a watermelon: "green on the outside and red on the inside."

On the other hand, when sitting in a circle of activists in rural Garberville (in Humboldt County, the north end of California's "tye-dye belt"), he was less reflexive. He cautioned one supporter not to fixate on the theories of economic calamity, using his expertise as a professional investor to argue that the economy was more uncertain than in distress. He further encouraged the young man to exercise care and avoid arguments he could not back up because "leftists on the outside of power can lose credibility easily."

Camejo introduced color, literally and figuratively, to Green politics. Davis was right in a sense to fear him, and pulled out the stops calling in favors from Hispanic supporters to campaign on his behalf, including Dolores Huerta, heir to Caesar Chavez as spiritual leader of the farm worker movement.

So what explains Camejo's ballot success? In essence, he lobbied hard over Spanish speaking radio so that he was the only candidate who could directly address some of the Hispanic voters. He combined sophistication with wit on the stump, as when he replied to tremulous liberal supporters worried about a surging Camejo possibly throwing the election to the Republican: "He (Davis) spent 10 million to get Simon nominated, and if Simon wins he'll blame it on me."

He also emphasized the right issues to energize the old hippie and bohemian vote, a solid bloc in California, and he managed to link them with broader social issues and comprehensive policy. Take the Greens' balanced budget proposal, offered in response to a projected $21 billion state deficit. It includes policies that could draw revenue while reducing implementation costs. A key example is savings from the legalization of marijuana, including lower prison costs, fewer enforcement and court costs, and increases in revenue due to the taxing one of the largest cash crops in the state. Of course, one should also consider the drops in price if the substance is legalized, and the loss of federal block grants currently available for ganja eradication. But the point is Camejo and the other candidates were effective in presenting a thoughtful platform that was more than a typical laundry list of issues playing to the usual suspects.

Essentially, Camejo, using his standing as a businessperson to good effect, also added some pragmatism to the idealism of the Greens. He never believed he could score in the election without several key reforms that he believes should be the major focus of ongoing Green activism in the next few years. He encouraged his supporters to push for instant run-off elections (now in effect in San Francisco), one cut away from proportional representation. And he urged that his supporters push for liberalization and clarification of qualifications for participation in televised debates. Moreover, he urged people to remember that under the original charters, broadcasters were stewards of broadcast signals, not their owners -- so that the public has the right to demand that they provide coverage of all of the candidates who qualify for ballot status. Lastly, he urged support for public financing of qualifying campaigns for office. Had even a few of these reforms been in place, Camejo believes he could have been the "Jesse Ventura of California."

On proportional representation, he was emphatic: "You know, nation after nation has considered it (our electoral- college system), and rejected it because it's so old. It was fine when towns were two hundred people -- three hundred people -- to have winner-take-all. We have 35 million people in California. You have to have a more advanced election system . . . Every single Eastern European nation rejected our system when they considered having democratic elections -- as undemocratic."

A revised electoral system, he argued, would also bring non-voters back to the polls. Camejo re-emphasized the point after the election, telling the Ukiah Daily Journal, "(Davis) was elected by 14.63 percent of all eligible voters in California. That is who voted for him. Eighty-five percent of all eligible voters did not vote for Davis. If you consider the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in California did not vote for the person who is now governor, you have to say there is something wrong with our system."

In the election's aftermath, the Greens were probably the most enthusiastic losers in election history. They collected their 5 percent. They made the Democrats sweat. They finally got some decent media coverage. They even scored victories in local elections, running 67 candidates around the state and electing 26 to office, bring the total of Green officeholders to 62.

The question is the future. With so many Greens now holding elected positions around the state, should the party's focus be on local efforts? Should they run a high profile campaign for statewide positions other than governor in 2006? Should they run candidates against liberal Democrats?

Camejo is again pragmatic. "The Green Party has to overcome structural difficulties," he told the Oakland Tribune. "We've got to get a statewide office open with full-time staff, and we've got to increase funding. Those are issues I'm going to be working on during the next few years."

Now, in California at least, Democrats must earn the progressive vote.

Contents of No. 34

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