Independently green?

It caught my ear on the radio: “… the other independent candidate for governor…” I overheard it in the line up for a summer parade: “Oh, you’re also in the independent party?” It glared at me from a newspaper headline: “Independent party candidate opens office …” So how can it be that there is no Independent Party in Maine?

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but it sure makes life confusing if you call a rose, say, a petunia. What people were referring to was Green Independent Party candidate for governor, Jonathan Carter. The “Green” in front and the “Party” behind make all the difference. The Green Independent Party is, well, just that – a political party, i.e., an organization based on a defined set of principles that works through electoral politics to achieve a certain vision for society.

This is distinct from the notion of an independent candidate – someone who is not affiliated with any political party. When it is used this way, “independent” is an adjective, not a proper noun, and so should be spelled with a small “i.” An independent candidate – John Michael is running as an independent in this year’s gubernatorial race – goes it alone.

State law prohibits a party from calling itself “independent” without any other modifier because the word “independent” is reserved for candidates who are not enrolled in an officially accepted party. It would be a lot less confusing if Maine’s “Green Independent Party” (state law also prohibits the use of the state name or an abbreviation of it in a party name) simply dropped that pesky “i-word.” But it got stuck with the label during the agonizing process of attaining and retaining its place on the ballot.

The old Maine “Green Party” qualified to be on the ballot in 1994 after its gubernatorial candidate, Jonathan Carter (again), got 6.6 percent of the vote in that election. Under state law, a political party needed to pull in at least 5 percent of the vote in the previous election for governor or president to gain ballot status.

But staying there was another matter. Greens in Maine interpreted the law to mean that they were set for the next four years – that is, until the next governor’s race. The Secretary of State, however, was of the opinion that a party had to achieve 5 percent every two years, in both the gubernatorial and presidential elections. State and federal courts agreed. So because national Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received only 2.6 percent of Maine votes in 1996, the party disappeared from the 1998 ballot, and nearly 4,000 registered Green Party members throughout the state became “unenrolled” overnight. That was the year Pat LaMarche ran for governor. She could not call herself a Green Party candidate because the party was not recognized. The best she could do was to run as a “green independent.” But when LaMarche garnered almost 7 percent of the votes in 1998, she put the Greens back on the ballot. The only snag was that they had to be called “Green Independents” because that was the name that received enough votes to qualify for official recognition.

The law has since been changed so that ballot status is good for four years. The Green Independent Party is safely ensconced on the Maine ballot until at least 2004 because of Ralph Nader’s 6 percent showing in Maine in the 2000 presidential election. And the number of voters around the state registered as Green Independents now tops 10,000. If only we could just get the name right!

Jillian Aldebron of Presque Isle is a member of the Green Independent Party Steering Committee