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Arkansas ballot grows green Monday, Jan 28, 2008 By Doug Thompson Arkansas News Bureau FAYETTEVILLE - The Green Party will hold a presidential primary in Arkansas on Feb. 5, just like the Democrats and Republicans. It took 10,000 petition signatures to do it. Once a party gets the names and addresses of voters who asked for ballots for its primary, future canvassing becomes a lot easier, said Jim Lendall of Mabelvale, the national party's Arkansas committeeman. Parties that do not get 3 percent of the vote in the last governor's elections have to gather petition signatures to get on the ballot. All parties collect names and addresses of voters who choose to join their primaries - a chief building block of party organization, one the Green Party has never had. "When I ran for attorney general, I received 35,000 votes but no names," said Rebekah Kennedy, a Fort Smith lawyer who is the Green Party's challenger to U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. Kennedy ran for the attorney general's office in 2006. However, since that was a general election, voters did not ask for a Green Party ballot and Kennedy could not identify the party's supporters. "Those names are the lists of your voters, your potential contributors and your volunteers," Kennedy said. The lists from primary voters will be invaluable in her Senate campaign, she said, and to any other potential Green Party candidate. Four of the six party candidates filed with the Arkansas secretary of state's office to appear on the Feb. 5 presidential primary ballot. They are: - Cynthia McKinney of Decatur, Ga., a former U.S. congresswoman who was voted out of office after she hit a U.S. Capitol police officer last year when he stopped her from entering the Longworth House Office Building because he did not recognize her. - Kent Mesplay of La Mesa, Calif., who has a doctorate in biomedical engineering and also ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2004. - Kat Swift of San Antonio, a former bookkeeper and co-chairman of the Green Party of Texas. - Jared A. Ball of Washington, D.C., an assistant professor of communications at Morgan State University in Baltimore. The decision to get into a presidential primary signifies that the Green Party has "a little bit better local support than in past, and that they're using a smart way to start recruiting people," said Andrew Dowdle, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas who specializes in the presidential primary process. "It's not going to have a major impact on electoral fortunes, but as a tactical move, it will probably make a difference," Dowdle said. "This is the kind of baby steps you have to take to build a party," added Jay Barth, a political science professor at Hendrix College in Conway. Another important step, Lendall said, is Green Party supporters will no longer be isolated. "Right now, you might not know who the other Green Party member are in your county," he said. |
