Analysis of Green election results in Rhode Island.

• Author: Gerritt, Greg
• Position: Election 2004: Green Analyses

The Green Party of Rhode Island is actually rather pleased with results of the 2004 election. By every measure we demonstrated the core of support for Green politics in Rhode Island. We also confirmed several thoughts we have entertained about the nature of that support and its limits.

Our history is that in two-candidate local elections, the Green candidate can get about 15% of the vote by showing up, and a strong campaign or a very weak incumbent can increase that percentage of the vote. Larry Kern ran a medium intensity campaign, with a small local group of about five people supporting him. He limited his spending to less than $1,000 running against a well entrenched Democrat. His 15% base increased to 21%.

Jeff Toste, in an inner-city district, ran a high intensity campaign, with full time campaigning, events, 50 volunteers, and a reasonably sophisticated GOTV effort. He raised his percentage of the vote from 23% in a less organized effort two years ago to 29%. Jeff's campaign took it to the highest level a Green campaign has ever reached in Rhode Island but he ran into an old-line family machine in a neighborhood in which the voting pattern has not yet caught up to the changing demographics. His experience means real progress; real information transfer in that so many more of us have an idea about how campaigns can be run; new volunteers for the party as well as the campaign; but it also points out limits and our need to find new strategies to break through.

The 3- and 4-person campaigns were low budget and nearly invisible campaigns. All were run by candidates with no political experience, even as a campaign volunteer. All had family and personal lives that made running the campaign even more difficult than anticipated. Green candidates on the ballot received 5-6% of the vote, which matches our previous experience with these types of campaigns, though most of our experience with invisible campaigns has been on statewide rather than local campaigns.

Our four-person race for Mayor of the second largest city in the state was almost by design nearly invisible, with a few press releases and one radio debate being the sum total of the campaign. It was a campaign that came about to protect the ballot line from a traditional town crank candidate with our candidate beating the filing deadline by two minutes with an 11th hour decision torun. To get over 1% when there was already someone taking the third party vote says that there are a lot of...