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In governor's race, third-party candidates struggle for attention
By John McElhenny, Associated Press, 08/17/02
WAYLAND -- Carla Howell says she's tired of being ignored. The candidate for governor has almost single-handedly gained official status for her Libertarian Party, collecting hundreds of thousands of votes in two statewide elections and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions. She is the driving force behind a proposal -- one of only three headed for the ballot this November -- that would abolish the state income tax and drastically reduce the size of state government. So why isn't anyone paying attention? Welcome to the world of third-party politics in Massachusetts. "Third parties tend to get ignored everywhere," said Tobe Berkovitz, communications professor at Boston University. He said the only exceptions are when voters are "mad as hell" or when there's a particularly engaging candidate such as Jesse Ventura, the Independence Party member and former wrestler who is now governor of Minnesota. Massachusetts' Democratic dominance doesn't help matters -- even the long-established Republican Party has had trouble gaining traction in recent years. One problem for Howell and for Green Party candidate Jill Stein is they lack the huge campaign war chests needed to buy ads and keep pace with free-spending Democrats and Republicans. Stein currently has about $1,000 in her campaign account, for example, while Democrats Shannon O'Brien and Tom Birmingham each have more than $2.5 million. There's another factor, too. "The problem is, the press just doesn't find the third-party candidates compelling, so they just sort of ignore them," Berkovitz said. He'll get no argument about being ignored from Howell, a former high-tech and health care consultant who ran unsuccessfully for auditor in 1998 and U.S. senator in 2000. Howell, from her home in a tree-lined neighborhood in this upscale Boston suburb, describes her vision of a small-government society in which families and individuals take responsibility for one another. That's a message that most voters do not get to hear, she says. "The media obviously isn't doing its job to get my view," she says. "You cover me and the ballot question since I announced in January, I may well be leading in the polls right now." Howell, who turns 47 Sunday, says she represents the "forgotten taxpayer" who is overburdened by the taxes imposed by the Democrats and Republicans on Beacon Hill whose ideas are so close they might as well be a single party. Her solution? Abolish the state's current 5.3 percent income tax, which generates about $9 billion a year. Howell and her supporters already have succeeded in collecting enough signatures to put the question of eliminating the tax on the ballot. Howell says the question would save 3 million Bay State workers who pay income tax about $3,000 per year they could then invest or spend on charity. Critics say it will decimate state services and force communities to raise property taxes. Howell also says the state and federal departments of education should be abolished, with responsibility being turned to local teachers, parents and school committees. She says all antigun laws should be repealed, and she said this week that she plans to campaign at gun clubs and gun stores Sept. 11. If the cockpit and crew on the hijacked planes had been armed, she said, thousands of lives could have been saved. Stein, 52, a medical doctor from Lexington with two Harvard degrees, agreed with Howell that third-party candidates in Massachusetts get ignored. "Does the sun rise in the East? Absolutely," she said. Massachusetts has a "mockery of democracy," Stein said, because only the Democrats and Republicans, who are "sponsored by big money interests," are represented in the political landscape. Like Howell, Stein said Democrats and Republicans are so close on the issues that they fail to represent the state's diverse electorate. "We need more than shades of gray," she said. "We are a diverse society and that should be reflected in our political system." That lack of political diversity leads to people losing interest in the political system, she said, and a decline in voter turnout and political candidates. On the campaign trail, Stein calls for breaking the "stranglehold of big money on politics" and boosting "grassroots democracy" by encouraging people to get involved who have never been involved before. Stein herself is running under the Clean Elections system, collecting contributions of $100 or less, though she fell about 600 contributions short of qualifying for state funding. That would have greatly boosted her campaign with an influx of at least $2 million. Stein speaks knowledgeably about the environmental battles that first got her involved in politics but also about the health issues which are her professional specialty. Her Green Party and Howell's Libertarian Party are the only two official third parties in Massachusetts, which means they appear on the November ballot and will hold a primary with Democrats and Republicans on Sept. 17. The Libertarians qualified as an official party for this year's elections because Howell won more than the 3 percent required in a statewide race when she ran for U.S. Senate in 2000. The Green Party qualified by virtue of presidential candidate Ralph Nader surpassing the same threshold in the 2000 election. This year, the Libertarian Party will field 19 candidates on the ballot, compared to hundreds of Democrats and dozens of Republicans, according to the Secretary of State's office. The Green Party will field eight. At a Green Party campaign event in Cambridge recently at a cafe that sells coffee from socially responsible growers, Eli Beckerman said people will continue to feel left out of the system as long as the Democrat-Republican dominance remains. "People really do feel like there's nothing they can do," said Beckerman, 25, an astronomer from Somerville. "We're living in a one-party state." |
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