INTERVIEW:

Green Party Presidential Hopeful David Cobb

Hate Bush? Angry at Nader? Kerry Leave You Cold? The Green Party's David Cobb Wants Your Vote

"My strategy is to run a smart, aggressive campaign, and at the same time ensure that the Green Party presidential candidate is not responsible for President Bush being in the White House."

Non-Greens can be forgiven for not knowing the Green Party is even holding primaries. (There have been six so far, including the GP's own version of "Super Tuesday.") With Ralph Nader's decision to run for President as an Independent in 2004 rather than actively seek the GP nomination for a third time, the Greens have all but disappeared from the general public's radar.

The Greens' PR machine was never particularly dazzling, but it has been even harder for them to get press--and financial support--in the wake of the backlash against Nader's putative effect on the 2000 election. And because they failed in 2000 to achieve the 5 percent electoral threshold necessary to win federal matching campaign funds, they will be on their own again in 2004.

Despite so many setbacks, Greens remain determined to run their own 2004 presidential candidate. For many state Green parties, retaining ballot access depends on having a presidential candidate on the ballot.

Cobb is trying to boost his and his party's cachet by running on Nader's platform but against Nader's campaign strategy. Fiery Southern populist that he is, Cobb advocates a more judicious way of approaching national third party campaigns by focusing resources in "safe" states. Though he doesn't like the word "spoiler," he is one of the few Green Party leaders--and the only Green presidential candidate--willing to acknowledge that, without some strategic troubleshooting, even the best-intentioned third party campaigns can have unintended consequences.

On a recent trip to Baltimore, Cobb stopped by the Chronicle's office for an interview. Privately, he said the campaigning-for-broke strategy advocated by other GP candidates would be disaster for the Party's long-term growth because it would play into "spoiler" accusations and alienate millions of voters whose top priority in 2004 is getting Bush out of office.

The trip to Baltimore was Cobb's second as a presidential candidate, and there will certainly be others before the Maryland Green Party's nominating convention takes place on June 5.

"Maryland has twelve delegates they will send to the national nominating convention in Milwaukee," Cobb told the Chronicle. "As such I'm vigorously campaigning for those twelve delegates. Of course, Baltimore is a key element towards getting support within the Maryland Green Party. "

Cobb currently serves as the US Green Party's general counsel. When we reported on his rise within the Party a year ago, GP activists and officials told us that his Texas roots and the populist fervor of his campaign stump speech could help Greens drain more votes from Bush and attract a more working-class demographic than they would otherwise.

What follows is the third-degree we gave Cobb when he innocently walked into our office.


BALTIMORE CHRONICLE: So you're the Green Party front-runner at this point, right?

DAVID COBB: Just to be clear, I didn't call myself the front-runner. Other people have said that. The national nominating convention will be in Milwaukee. The DC Statehood Party has had a formal primary: I won that. The Iowa Green Party had a caucus process: I won that. The Green Party of Ohio just this Saturday had a statewide nominating convention: I won that. [Cobb also won the primary in Rhode Island after this interview was conducted, though he lost the California primary to Peter Camejo.--Ed.]

And so I'm earning delegates as we go. I've earned by far more delegates than anyone seeking the nomination, I'm the only one actively campaigning, I'm the only one actively raising money, I'm the only one building a campaign team.

So... there are conclusions to be drawn from that, but I want to be clear: I'm not the one drawing that conclusion.


BC: Whatever the semantics of it are, I get a sense of what your strategy is for winning the primary. What's your strategy in the general election?

DC: Because my campaign has specific goals, my strategy follows. Which is to say: I want to increase Green Party membership and registration; I want to help the local candidates get elected; I want to create state and local Green Party chapters where they don't currently exist; I want to strengthen those that do exist; I want to run a campaign that's a genuine partnership between myself as candidate, the campaign staff I create, and the local and state Green parties.

Now, because those are the goals, my strategy is to run a smart, aggressive campaign, get as many offices as we can, and accomplish what I call a secondary goal. And the secondary goal is: to ensure that the Green Party presidential candidate is not responsible for President Bush being in the White House.

And the way that I think we can accomplish both my primary goal and as well as the secondary is to target the very finite resources of candidate time and money into those states which I call the 'safe' states, or the states that are not in play. And you and I already know which ones they are. I mean, we might quibble about three or four, but every political person who sort of follows it like a ball game--I'd be willing to bet you that you're one of those kind of people, right?--And so we know, right now, without a single vote being cast, before we even know who the Democratic Party nominee is, we know for a fact where the electoral college votes are going in New York, and in Texas.


BC: What do you think about Nader's strategy in 2000 of competing hard, some seem to think especially hard, in close 'swing' states?

DC: Well, I can'’t speak for Ralph and what his particular strategy is. I've got a different strategy, that's for sure.

"George Bush is a problem. George Bush is a big problem. But George Bush is not the problem. The problem is a social, political, and economic system that's literally destroying the planet, and it's creating an unjust and oppressive world order with the plunder. That's what the problem is. And John Kerry or any of the other corporatist Democrats are not going to solve the problem."

I'll acknowledge this: George Bush is a problem. George Bush is a big problem. But George Bush is not the problem. The problem is a social, political, and economic system that's literally destroying the planet, and it's creating an unjust and oppressive world order with the plunder. That's what the problem is. And John Kerry or any of the other corporatist Democrats are not going to solve the problem.

So the Green Party is in a difficult situation of growing and preparing to grapple with the problem, in light of a very serious problem of having an illegitimate occupant of the White House who's engaged in immoral, unconstitutional war and occupation, who is destroying the few environmental regulations that exist, and is engaged in completely dismantling any notion of progressive income taxation--all to the benefit of his corporate-capitalist-crony buddies. We've got a really difficult situation on our hands.

So the strategy I'm describing is: focus finite resources--campaign time, candidate time--in those states where the electoral college is already done. I mean Texas, California, New York, Massachusetts--we can go down the list--Wyoming, etc. There are only going to be, at most, twelve to thirteen states that are genuinely contested. It might be as few as five or six. And of course, it might be true that none of it matters; it might be a blowout one way or the other. We'll know for sure probably around July or August.


BC: Well, if your primary goal is helping out local GP candidates, what about the local candidates in the swing states?

DC: That's the question. This is why it's a very nuanced strategy that I'm describing, Brad. I want to be clear about this: I'm proud of it, but it's also complicated.

In those swing states, my general rule is probably to not spend resources there. However, if in those states, there's a particular reason for a Green Party presidential candidate to make a trip, I will go.

Here's an example: Iowa is considered a battleground state. The Iowa state election code says that for the Green Party to stay on the ballot--they're already on the ballot, they exist as a state party--they have to get 2 percent of the vote for president. Now, it's unfortunate that the Iowa legislature has such a requirement, because now, the Iowa Greens and I have already been in contact, and I have promised them that if I'm the nominee, I will campaign there and help them do our best to reach the 2 percent threshold in Iowa to ensure that we stay on the ballot. Maybe we'll succeed, maybe we won't. But we're not going to walk away from attempting to meet the draconian threshold and requirements that the state sets up for us. So Iowa is one of those examples.

"A lot of our natural allies are really deathly afraid of Bush. The A.B.B. [Anybody But Bush] phenomenon is real."

In another state, if there are local candidates who are saying, 'Look, we really think that a presidential visit will help us,' then we'll talk. I can tell you that there are already some state legislature candidates who are saying, 'You know, we don't think it'll be helpful.'

There are a lot of our natural constituencies and natural allies who would be willing to vote down-ballot but are really deathly afraid of Bush. The A.B.B. [Anybody But Bush] phenomenon is real.


BC: But this brings up another issue about not only the role but the purpose of the Greens in this election. The Green Party has its criticism of the Democratic Party, but at the same time, Nader is running as an Independent, and in many states you'll have a Socialist Party candidate on the ballot, and the Natural Law Party--

DC: The Natural Law Party is dissolved. Functionally, it won't be running a candidate.


BC: My understanding is that in many states where they have ballot access they'll probably put Dennis Kucinich's name on the ballot--

DC: Really? I hadn't heard that.


BC: --though in other states there may be some sort of cooperative arrangement where they'll transfer their ballot access to the Greens in states where they need it.

DC: There are conversations going on. It's complicated.


BC: So in other words, in many if not most states, there's a chance you may have two, even three, other progressive or left-leaning third parties on the ballot besides the Greens. My question: is there any larger purpose for the Greens even being in this race besides just maintaining ballot access? Is it all just to serve the party?

DC: Well no, it's not to serve the party. The purpose of the Green Party is to serve the country and to serve the planet. I'm not embarrassed to say that, Brad. We are genuine citizen activists. Almost every Green I know gets all weepy-eyed about that fifth-grade idea of democracy and 'We the People.’' We take it seriously, and we're rolling up our sleeves and getting the job done.

Frankly, just to go down a very quick segueway, we meet requirements that the establishment party can't meet themselves. In Rhode Island, where I'm on the primary ballot, John Kerry's not on the primary ballot. He couldnt get a thousand signatures. He couldn'’t get people--paying them--to go and get signatures, because there are a couple of states where they actually force the establishment parties to do certain things.

So I want to be clear: first of all, the Green Party has a right to exist and we have a right to run candidates. If we don't have that right, then let's just give up the whole sham that we have even any semblance of democracy, even in the electoral forum. We have the right to do it. And we have a growing strength. We're running more candidates for office, we're electing more candidates. We're getting larger, stronger, and better organized with every election cycle.

Now I acknowledge that in this ridiculous, single-member district, winner-take-all voting system that we have, that we should exercise our growing strength wisely, but the solution to the problem that is implicit in your question of the spoiler issue and what's going to happen--


BC: Not so much the spoiler issue, but if there are other people on the ballot that share the same values that you do--Ralph Nader and others--what's the point of having yet another alternative cut from the same cloth?

DC: Well, I would disagree with you. First of all, the Natural Law Party and the Socialist Party and the others are not going to be on very many ballots. And they're also not growing. In fact, they're withering and dying. And I say that with no glee, but just objectively, the Green Party is the electoral arm of the growing movement for peace and justice and ecology in this country. Many people who were formerly in other efforts to constitute a radical electoral politics are now in the Green Party. There's not anything else out there.

What Ralph Nader will do or won't do as an Independent, I'll leave to him. I'll tell you this, Brad, I can't understand what the goal of a Ralph Nader Independent campaign is, because it doesn't build infrastructure, it doesn't build organization, it doesn't build for the future.

The reason the Green Party needs to run in 2004 is to prepare our way for 2005, in local elections, in 2006, in the off-year presidential elections, in 2007 and '08. The Green Party is on a trajectory of growth that is quite impressive. So we need to continue to grow, we need to continue to exercise our rights.

I do want to just really focus on the fact that if anybody thinks that our participation is spoiling anything, then the solution is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and proportional representation. And so far, Democrats have fought against those electoral reforms, because they would rather attempt to kill the Green Party than beat Republicans.

That's really a question they'll have to answer, just like Ralph will have to answer the question of what's the goal of his campaign. Ralph of course could still seek the Green Party's nomination if he wanted to have the twenty-one guaranteed ballot lines that we have today.


BC: You mentioned the issue of growth of the party for the long term. What makes you think you might be the best person to do that? For example, correct me if I'm wrong, you haven't run for national office, you've run for statewide office before in a campaign that you didn't win, and so your name doesn't have currency. You're not a household name in America.

DC: True.


BC: So how then you could help the Green Party get more votes than it did in 2000 when you had Ralph Nader, whose name everyone knows?

DC: Sure. Well, Brad, again, the question is, is the goal to actually get more votes than we did in 2000? I laid out what my goals were, and it's to grow the Party, increase GP membership, work in partnership, help local candidates, do training.

The reality is this: I'm an organizer. When I ran for Attorney General in Texas, there were four local chapters of the Green Party in Texas. When I culminated that campaign, there were twenty-six local chapters of the Green Party. I coordinated Ralph Nader's and the GP petition drive that helped found the Green Party in 1999. It hadn't even existed in Texas before that. In 2000 I coordinated the ballot access drive to get on the ballot in Texas. To get on the ballot in Texas, we had to collect 38,000 valid signatures. Now to be valid, a signature had to come from somebody who was registered to vote but had rejected participating in the Democratic or the Republican Party primary. They had to care enough to register to vote but be so disgusted by the establishment party that you don't vote in their primaries. And there's a 75-day window to do it.

No volunteer ballot had ever gotten on the ballot in the state of Texas before our effort. And in fact the state Democratic Chair--because I know a lot of people in Texas and progressive politics; I am a known quantity amongst do-gooder lefty activist circles--upon hearing that the Green Party was attempting to organize in Texas was heard to laugh at a cocktail party and said, 'Don't worry about it. They can't get on the ballot. It's impossible.’ Ha-ha-ha, and they went back to their wine and cheese.

In 2000, Brad, in that 75-day window, I coordinated an effort where we collected 76,100 signatures in a 75-day window. And to put that in perspective, Pat Buchanan also got on the ballot in Texas, and he spent about a quarter of a million dollars. We spent--raised and spent--less than $20,000.

That's in 2000. In 2002, I ran for Attorney General with a whole slate of other people where the whole purpose of it was to grow the infrastructure, to grow the party. The GP is really in its infancy, and we're nurturing that, we're building more capacity. I tell Greens all the time, especially those laboring in the fields, we need to be more gentle with ourselves, with each other, and with what our expectations are. We've created more state parties every year since 1992, we've created more local chapters every year, we've run more candidates for office, we've elected more candidates for office. The caliber and quality of the candidates that are running for office in the Green Party is getting better every single year.

So when you ask a legitimate question--'How can you accomplish your goals, you're not a household name, you're not Ralph Nader, you're not any of these things.’ And I own that. Yes, I'm not Ralph Nader. In fact, there's only one Ralph Nader. And the corporate media will never allow the creation of another Ralph Nader. You know, they helped to create him by giving him the attention he so richly deserves. The reality is this: Lois Gibbs equally deserves that attention. Lois Gibbs is not a household name. She’s the woman from Love Canal who created another phenomenon. The corporate media won't let another Ralph Nader come into being.

My point is this: I am uniquely positioned because I am the general counsel for the Green Party of the United States and have served in that capacity since 1998. I'm a Green Party organizer: I've traveled the country doing workshops on Rethinking the Corporation, Rethinking Democracy, which is an effort to expose the social/legal/historical context of how the corporation as a corporate form has basically destroyed the ability for economic democracy in this country, and that now uses the legal system to overturn any law that attempts to genuinely control their conduct. I am an organizer, and I have the capacity and the demonstrated history of being able to do it.

I want to be the Green Party's candidate in 2004 so we can accomplish all the goals of growing the Party I just outlined, and so I can continue to infuse the analysis, not just of corporate harm and corporations being bad, but really expose the illegitimacy under our constitutional theory of self-government, to expose the fact that corporations being able to claim constitutional rights is what's preventing us from actually having economic democracy. I want to insert that message.

And of course I want to talk about the issues of universal healthcare and a living wage and publicly funding elections and ending the prison-industrial complex and the 'War on Drugs.' There's a whole slate of issues that neither the Democrats nor any of the other parties are going to talk about. But in terms of my effort to secure the Green Party's nomination and the reason I want to run in 2004 really is because I feel that I'm uniquely qualified, coming of and from the Green Party, to be able to help us navigate the dangerous waters which are 2004.


BC: One of the complaints I've often heard from people within the Green Party is that right now it's like the major parties in that it's too dominated by white men. Though the Party advocates a lot of social justice issues that one would think might appeal especially to minorities, it's not connecting somehow with them, because the party's rank-and-file doesn't reflect the diversity of the country. So that brings up the question: since there are leaders within the party who do represent a diverse background--Ralph Nader is Arab-American, you have Peter Camejo, you have Carol Miller and Lorna Salzman--there are some who might question whether it's strategically wise, in terms of growing the party, to have a white man at the top of the ticket of the Green Party, when there are plenty of other parties where people can vote for white men.

DC: First of all, I want to gently correct one of the assumptions when you ask that question. The Green Party embraces the positions that we embrace not in order to reach out to anybody but because we all genuinely know that the oppression--both racial injustice and social justice--is real, and we need to stake out the right positions on the side of social justice and fairness, period, on their own merit.

Now I will tell you that whenever I was running for Attorney General of Texas, I helped to organize a multi-racial and multi-ethnic slate of candidates. In fact in some respects I was the token white male on that ticket. We had Roy Williams running for Senate, an African-American well-known in the state of Texas who marched with King. Rahul Mahajan, an Indian-American, a growing figure in public-intellectual circles, especially as they relate to anti-war and the corporate-colonial empire, was our gubernatorial candidate.

The point is, there are plenty of examples of people of color running for the Green Party, and of course many candidates getting elected as Greens. Now, I want to address head-on the fact that, as a straight white man, I actively attempted to convince [former Congresswoman] Cynthia McKinney to seek the Green Party's nomination. She declined. I actively sought to get [California gubernatorial candidate] Peter Camejo to actively seek and run as the Green Party candidate. He has declined. Now he's letting his name be used on the ballot, but as a stand-in for Ralph Nader at this point. He's been very clear that he's not going to be the Green Party's presidential nominee. The point is, Brad, that I did actually engage in some personal responsibility to affirmatively seek people of color who might seek the Green Party's nomination.

Now, having said that, I should also say I have a history of working for racial and social justice issues as a citizen activist, and in fact am one of the few presidential candidates, in either the Green Party or for that matter the establishment parties, who grew up in a house without a flush toilet. I come up out of genuine poverty. Now, I don't say that to get a pat on the head in lefty circles, but to simply say that I have first-hand understanding of class oppression. I've tasted it, and it's bitter and ugly. However, I also acknowledge that because of my white-skin privilege and because I happen to have my neurons arranged in such a way in my brain that I was able to go to college and then law school and have some success, I put on a suit and tie and take my briefcase into the courthouse, and there's no class oppression I face anymore at all. I want to acknowledge that: that'’s what white-skin privilege means.

But the point is: I'm one of those white men who gets it. I totally understand issues of race and gender oppression, I understand the oppression that LGBT people experience, because I experienced a version of oppression, but it was a class oppression--which is different to be sure, and it's not to even equate them. But I'm just saying I get it. I understand.


BC: You talked earlier about the type of campaign you want to run and your safe states strategy. But it wouldn't be entirely up to you if you got the nomination, would it? There would be a lot of decisions made at the convention in terms of what type of strategy to run and might you be hamstrung by whatever the rank-and-file decide?

DC: Well, I wouldn’t even call it being hamstrung, Brad. I’m a little 'd' democrat, and if the national party goes through any process by which it decides on what strategy the Green Party ought to pursue, then I'll implement it if I’m the candidate. It doesn't look like that's going to happen.


BC: My understanding is that's part of why Ralph Nader is not actively seeking the Green nomination, because he's worried that whatever strategy gets adopted at the convention might tie his hands, whether it's a safe-states strategy or an all-out, going-for-broke strategy.

DC: Well, let's just be clear about this. There's no way to actually enforce any strategy that might be adopted. A candidate can implement her or his strategy, period. Certainly Ralph did not feel hamstrung by anything the Greens wanted in 2000. He ran the kind of campaign he wanted to run. I managed his campaign in Texas, and he did what he wanted to do. And anybody who's worked with or for Ralph--well, historically, that's what people understand what Ralph will do. He keeps his own counsel.

Having said that, I actually would be willing to work in cooperation with the national party to develop that, because I want to be part of a genuine democratic organization that is full of people with personal and institutional self-respect and go through, and--look, I know I won't always get my way. I don't expect to always get my way. I'd like to, you know? But in the organizations that I want to be part of and help to build, I want them to be full of people who are actively participating and then we create a process, we'll go through the process, and at the end we will implement the decision of the greater will of the body.

So I'm acknowledging that if that happens and we go through some process like that, it might say, 'Your personal strategy'--and again, the strategy I just described is my personal strategy, this is what I think the Green Party should do. It's possible that the national Green Party might go through some process to say otherwise. But there's no indication that the Party is going to do that.


BC: Well let's play 'What If.' So if there's overwhelming consensus at the convention--'We want David Cobb to be our nominee but we want him to run an all-out strategy'--if you don't get to run the kind of strategy that you think is best for the party, will you still run?

DC: Yes. By that time time I will have to because it'll be June and all the ballot access will have taken place, and I will owe it to my sisters and brothers in the Green Party. The 'what if' that you just described, I would owe it to people to implement it.