LaMarche slams debate shutout Candidate excluded from VP event

ORONO – The candidates for vice-president of the United States will square off Oct. 5 in a man-to-man debate, leaving Green Party vice presidential nominee Pat LaMarche fuming on the sidelines.

Speaking to about 20 University of Maine students Wednesday at the Memorial Union, LaMarche deplored a decision by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates to shut her out of the forum at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

The former Maine disc jockey and Bangor resident said the commission had rejected her on the basis of polling recognition.

According to the CPD’s web site, the organization requires a participating candidate to have a level of support of at least 15 percent of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations.

LaMarche and the Greens’ presidential candidate, David Cobb, are rarely cited as options for voters participating in surveys and were most recently omitted as choices for Mainers who were canvassed in a Portland Press Herald Zogby International poll.

“I’m not welcomed at the vice presidential debate,” LaMarche told the students. “That’s probably the cruelest cut of all because I might have something to contribute. I don’t see how we’re going to open up this whole beautiful process and make people care if we don’t give them choices. If we silence every voice that isn’t owned by Enron, how in the world are we going to get people to care? But silenced we are, and I don’t take that well.”

While the debate between Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards is going on inside the Cleveland auditorium, LaMarche will be wrapping up her “Left Out Tour,” a two-week trip across the United States designed to bring attention to those living on the edge of society.

She’ll be staying at shelters and migrant worker facilities to focus attention on the homeless, victims of domestic abuse, people without health insurance and the working poor. LaMarche’s tour will be launched from the Bread of Life Shelter in Augusta on Sept. 21.

While LaMarche reserved some of her remarks on the need to elect 23 Green Independent Party candidates to the Maine Legislature this fall, her overwhelming message was targeted toward President Bush.

“At all times, we must have as our agenda the defeat of George Bush,” she said in explaining why she decided to run as the party’s vice presidential nominee.

Lashing out at the administration’s policy in Iraq, LaMarche said the war was being fought on the premise of a “vendetta” and “our oil being under someone else’s sand.”

“George Bush has not done his job,” she said. “He has not looked out for what was his charge to begin with: the people of the United States. If they mattered to him, we would have health care, and there would not be 800,000 more children than least year living in poverty. Isn’t one more too many? So George Bush needs to be fired, and I would love it if I could replace Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney needs to be fired.”

A third-year student at the university, Zak Keenan of Bangor, said he found LaMarche’s remarks interesting but that she failed to persuade him to give his vote to the Greens.

“Although I won’t be voting for a third-party candidate in this election, I do believe strongly that they should be allowed to participate in debates,” Keenan said. “I’m a Kerry vote. I think he’s a better option than Bush at the moment.”