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Editor’s note: The Green Party of Minnesota endorsed a senatorial candidate, Ed McGaa, at its state endorsing convention on 18 May. McGaa was not my first choice candidate, but I felt strongly (still do) that we needed to come out of our first endorsing convention with a senatorial candidate. I’ve been disappointed and disgusted with the reaction and pseudo-analysis of the so-called “progressive” press to the notion that the Greens would be uppity enough to endorse a candidate for the U.S. Senate. I was going to write a piece about it, but Dr. Jeff Taylor did a dang fine job. Here, then, is Taylor’s missive. There are minimal links because any links I added would potentially distort Taylor’s intent. This article is Copyright © 2002 Dr. Jeff Taylor and used with permission.

Update: Sometime after McGaa’s endorsement, charges of irregularities concerning his screening and subsequent endorsement were brought to my attention. Ordinarily I would have pulled this piece, but leave it here, intact, to maintain the integrity of the record.

I have several problems accepting the pro-Wellstone, anti-Green articles in The Nation, The Progressive, MSNBC, etc. at face value. My problems?

1. These writers/publications are pro-Democratic, anti-Green no matter who the Democrats and Greens are fielding. So, even when the Democrats nominate someone as obviously illiberal as Clinton or Gore, and the Greens nominate someone with unimpeachable credentials like Nader, they’re still there harping about how we’re hurting the progressive cause by taking votes away from the Democrat. Same song, different verse in 2002. It really has very little to do with the merits of Wellstone or weaknesses of McGaa.
2. The term “liberal” is vague and debatable, but, in my opinion, Wellstone isn’t the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is a more consistent liberal. Maybe not in the way you’d define the term today, when listening to leaders of various liberal interest groups (with a vested interest in the status quo, by the way). At any rate, the Green Party has never claimed to be the most “liberal” party. In some ways, we’re more “conservative” than the Democratic Party (e.g., our key value of decentralization). The whole point of the U.S. Greens when we began in 1984—and I joined in 1987—was that we’re “Beyond Left and Right” or “Neither Left nor Right.” News flash for liberal columnists (columnists so “liberal” they praised Gore to the skies while bashing Nader!): The Green Party has never officially claimed to be the bastion of liberalism you imagine us to be. Many liberal ex-Democrats have joined our ranks, but we’ve never been designed to be an annex of or a temporary holding-spot for liberal Democrats. If anything, our ideology is a combination of liberalism and populism. Ed McGaa is liberal in most areas and for those areas where he’s not so liberal, he’s a populist. That’s a great combination, in my opinion.
3. Paul Wellstone has an anemic record, in comparison with what was accomplished by earlier U.S. Senators with liberal/populist credentials. Compare what he’s been able to accomplish and the impact he’s had within his party and the role he’s played in advancing the ball to people like Senators Robert La Follette (R-WI), Hiram Johnson (R-CA), Thomas Gore (D-OK), or Burton Wheeler (D-MT). Compare Wellstone with Minnesota senatorial predecessors like Ernest Lundeen or Henrik Shipstead (both Farmer-Laborites… incidentally, if our state didn’t have the rich tradition of third-party politics which Wellstone and his supporters dislike and fear so much, then we wouldn’t have the rich legacy we have of the Shipsteads and Floyd Olsons and Elmer Bensons, and we wouldn’t have the strong DFL we have today). Even if Wellstone is the most liberal member of the Senate, so what? His impact has been minimal. He hasn’t stopped the country and the Democratic Party from its rapid and frightening movement toward conservatism/elitism. After ducking the 2000 presidential race himself, the best he could do in supporting an alternative to Gore was Bill Bradley—not exactly a firebrand of liberalism or populism! The one man more boring than Al Gore…and deeply indebted to Wall Street and committed to globalization. Wow—what an alternative to the status quo.
4. If Wellstone loses his reelection bid, it will be his own fault, not the fault of various “bogeymen” (namely, the evil President Bush showering money on his favorite Republican candidate or the misguided Green Party running a spoiler candidate). Months ago, Wellstone was running even with or behind Coleman in the polls before Coleman began campaigning or a Green candidate was endorsed. That’s after 12 years in office. Wellstone has a record and Minnesotans are just not that impressed. And many of us are pissed that Wellstone made his term-limits pledge when it was popular (1990) and broke the pledge when it was inconvenient (2002). That’s a sign of lack of principle and inflated self-importance. Wellstone could have groomed a DFL successor with equal or greater voter appeal and then retired as planned. Instead, he’s a professional politician who clings to office at the expense of his party and his principles. That’s his fault, not our fault. Wellstone has probably lost most Perot/Ventura/Independent swing voters by cutting one too many populist corners (as ad-man Bill Hillsman said in the 1-16-02 City Pages article “United They Sit”). McGaa has great potential in appealing to that group of voters. They didn’t sign a loyalty pledge to Wellstone or anyone else… they’re free to vote for whom they want. That’s not called “taking votes” or “spoiling a race.” It’s called an election or democracy.
5. The partisan balance of the Senate doesn’t hang on the Minnesota race. That would be true if Minnesota were the only state holding an election this year. We aren’t. There are other Democratic incumbents in potential trouble, there are Republican incumbents in the same condition, there are Democrats and Republican retiring, etc. It’s silly to focus on Minnesota as if we will decide everything. That’s just Wellstone/Democratic Party rhetoric.
6. McGaa is not a militarist and he doesn’t support Bush’s war on terrorism. He’s a veteran and proud of that service. He believes some type of military response was necessary after September 11. That’s true. But he’s not a jingoist or an imperialist. If you take the time to read his books, you’ll learn that he has a nuanced view of the Vietnam War (one of the conflicts he participated in). He can see the war from the VietCong, anti-colonial perspective. He understands how the military-industrial complex works and he opposes it. He understands how the U.S. government used the Cold War to prop up fascist dictatorships around the globe. He doesn’t support the killing of civilians in other countries as a 9-11 reaction. He believes we should bring our non-combat overseas troops home and close the bases which are the bulwark of the American empire. All of this fits in perfectly with the Green value of nonviolence. McGaa isn’t a pure pacifist, but he has a nonviolent agenda and he favors a public policy more consistently nonviolent than the record established by Wellstone.

Let’s stop spreading pro-Democratic, anti-Green propaganda. No matter who the Greens had endorsed at our St. Paul convention, Democratic hacks would be subtly attacking the person and howling about how we’re endangering civilization as we know it and all progress will be lost without that beacon of hope Paul Wellstone. That’s nonsense. We’re grown-ups and we need to think and act as such.

Taylor lives in Rochester, Minnesota. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Missouri and is Chair of the Olmstead County (Minnesota) Green Party.