Providence mayoral candidate Greg Gerritt has the kind of credentials that
would impress many progressive-minded voters. A committed environmentalist, he
lived for years in a solar-powered house that he built in Maine. Gerritt has
been active with a number of community groups since moving to Rhode Island,
organizing, for example, an annual post-Thanksgiving "buy nothing day" when
hundreds of winter coats are gathered for the needy. The Green Party candidate
also helped to assemble a recent State House protest against an attack on Iraq,
and, during debates, he strikes a spirited and unapologetic left-of-center
stance.
Since launching his mayoral bid in January, Gerritt, a 48-year-old grant
writer and carpenter, has distributed about 23,000 flyers and spent countless
hours knocking on doors and walking throughout Providence. But despite his
liberal appeal and the considerable amount of time and energy that he has
poured into the campaign, reminders of Democrat David N. Cicilline, the
overwhelming favorite to become mayor, are never far away.
Gerritt (pronounced, "Jerr-it") found a measure of success as he campaigned
during the lunch hour on a recent weekday in downtown Providence, readily
convincing most of the pedestrians passing through the intersection of Dorrance
and Westminster streets to accept one of his leaflets. Still, many of the
prospective voters with whom he talks believe that Cicilline, who won a 52
percent mandate during the four-way Democratic primary on September 10, has
already been elected mayor, the November 5 general election notwithstanding. As
if to reinforce the point, a bus bearing a large Cicilline advertisement --
updated to include the post-primary message, "Thank you, Providence" -- rumbles
by a short time later.
Robert J. Healey Jr.
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A subsequent Brown University poll, which showed that 70 percent of the
respondents backed Cicilline -- compared to four percent for Republican David
Talan, two percent for Gerritt, and one percent for independent Christopher
Young -- offered further evidence of the steep hurdles facing the Green
candidate. Like most third-party candidates, the Green plans to expend only a
tiny fraction -- about $8000 -- of the hundreds of thousands of campaign
dollars spent by a better-known rival. But with a month until the election,
Gerritt forges on, slightly frustrated, yet undeterred by the challenges facing
alternative candidates in what Ralph Nader, the Green's leading light, refers
to as America's "two-party duopoly."
Billionaire Ross Perot significantly elevated the profile of alternative
parties when he claimed almost 20 percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential
election. But although it's not unusual to hear Americans grouse about the
status quo of politics, not to mention the growing resemblance of Democrats and
Republicans in a number of national elections, third parties and their
candidates are most often reduced to a marginal role in US politics.
A series of institutional obstacles -- such as the winner-take-all basis of
our elections, the tendency of the media to focus on major party candidates,
and the major parties' function as tents for a broad variety of interest
groups, have inhibited the growth of third parties. And despite dissatisfaction
with political choices, the typical response of most people for about four
decades has been to withdraw from participation, rather than actively
supporting a new and different direction. As The New York Times reported
last week, the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, a
nonpartisan group in Washington, found that only 17 percent of the voting-age
population voted this year in primaries for major statewide offices -- a slight
increase from 1998 -- in the 37 states that had primaries for both parties.
Some observers, like John Bibby, a professor emeritus of political science at
the University of Wisconsin, and an expert on political parties, believe the
degree of frustration with the American political system is overstated. In
terms of alternative parties, "There just isn't the support," he says. "The
strength of the system, it seems to me, that if the Republican or Democrat
wins, any change that's going to happen is going to be incremental," rather
than threatening people with a more abrupt overhaul. "It seems to me the
two-party system, with two relatively moderate parties, contributes to the
stability of the system we've seen since 1856."
Darell West, a professor of political science at Brown University, finds it
surprising that alternative parties haven't gained more support, "Because in
our surveys, half of the citizens identify themselves as independent, not
aligned with either major party, but it never really seems to translate into
votes for alternative parties. No one has really come along who has grabbed the
imagination in the ways that Ross Perot did nationally. Of course, no one has
his deep pockets either. In part, his success was the self-financing of his
campaign, but he really identified a message that resonated with people."
Appealing for votes downtown, Gerritt offers a different explanation. "People
know that the system is seriously flawed," he says. "The people don't vote
because the system is flawed. They really feel that they're vote doesn't
count." After another passerby questions whether Cicilline has already been
elected, the Green candidate adds, "The fact that so many people don't
understand the process doesn't help us, either."
UNDAUNTED, Gerritt points to the slow, steady growth of the Green Party in
America over the last 18 years, to the point where there are state
organizations in more than 40 states and at least 152 Greens hold elective
office, mostly municipal posts, in 20 states, including Mike Feinstein, the
mayor of Santa Monica, California.
In 2000, Nader garnered almost six percent of the presidential vote in Rhode
Island, good enough for the Greens to win official ballot status in the state.
The 10-year-old Green Party of Rhode Island is hoping to capitalize on the
situation, fielding three candidates described by Gerritt as "high-profile,"
including himself, David Segal in the Ward One race for the Providence City
Council, and Jeff Toste for the seat held by state Senator Frank T. Caprio
(D-Providence), as well as Gregg Stevens, a candidate for lieutenant governor.
Gerritt, the secretary of the Green Party of Rhode Island, describes the Greens
as the only political party enjoying political growth and he says national
registration is up by four percent over last year.
In Rhode Island, though, even the Republican Party, which dominated the state
until the "Bloodless Revolution" of 1935, has struggled to rebound from
marginalization. Aided this year by the ongoing controversy surrounding House
Speaker John B. Harwood and former legislative worker Wendy Collins, GOP
officials like state party chairman Brad Gorham are optimistic about making
gains in the General Assembly. Still, it's hardly a sign of a robust party when
the most optimistic outcome involves being able to sustain the veto of a
Republican governor.
In some states, the Greens are displaying a growing ability to act as
spoilers, reprising the tipping effect that Nader's 2.7 percent take of the
national vote had on the last presidential election. In Minnesota, for example,
the presence of a Green candidate in a tight race between US Senator Paul
Wellstone, a progressive Democrat, and a Republican could effectively result in
an Election Day loss for Wellstone (see "Green around the gills," News, August
16).
The outlook to have an impact seems bleaker for the Rhode Island Greens,
despite Gerritt's hopes of using the party's current slate of candidates to
spur ongoing growth.
Toste, 38, a first-time candidate who served as Rhode Island coordinator for
Nader's 2000 campaign, cites his commitment to environmental issues and taking
cues from the residents of Senate district eight, which includes Federal Hill,
Olneyville, the West End, and other neighborhoods. A waiter at the Blue Grotto
restaurant, he's been endorsed by the Million Mom March and the political
action committee for the local chapter of the National Organization of Women.
Toste touts the importance of new voices, and given the anti-incumbent mood
toward the General Assembly, this could help him.
But he faces an uphill fight in challenging Caprio, a Harvard-educated lawyer
who served two terms in the House before winning election to the Senate in
1994, and whose father, presiding justice Frank Caprio of Providence Municipal
Court, is featured in the WLNE-TV (Channel 6) television show Caught in
Providence. The senator, who was ousted from his chairmanship of the Senate
Finance Committee, and has supported efforts toward separation of powers,
strikes a humble tone in expressing hope that he'll be reelected.
As far as Gerritt's own campaign, he cites the goal of wanting to "change the
debate in the city -- to get people thinking about issues that no one else is
talking about, that no one else is putting on the public agenda." During a
subsequent September 27 mayoral debate at Brown University, Gerritt delivers on
his pledge to broaden the discussion, overshadowing the two other general
election challengers to Cicilline -- Talan and Young -- by offering the most
distinct and forceful alternative to the Democratic frontrunner.
Alone among the four candidates, Gerritt condemns the idea of a public subsidy
for a downtown hotel. Although Cicilline has been a strong advocate of civilian
review in the police department, Gerritt voices the most critical view of the
police. As part of his focus on sustainability, he advocates an immediate
program to build affordable housing from recycled materials, including tires,
and reinforced earth. Responding to a question about overcoming racial and
ethnic discrimination in Providence, the Green candidate sounds not unlike
leftist historian Howard Zinn in saying, "This is a country that was founded on
genocide and slavery, so we have a very long way to go."
There's little doubt that concepts originated by the Greens, such as
sustainability, have gradually filtered into the political mainstream. But
although Gerritt's impassioned broadsides spark sporadic bursts of applause
from his audience on College Hill, it's questionable whether they'll generate a
wider citywide discussion, particularly without broader and repeated
transmission. It doesn't help that college students and other young people, one
of the groups with which the Greens would seem to have the most appeal, are
largely disengaged from the political process.
That said, third-party supporters can use simple means to effective ends. Tim
McKee, co-chair of the Rhode Island Green Part,y has considerably raised the
party's visibility by, for example, frequently calling into talk-radio shows
and offering an alternative viewpoint to John DePetro's conservative politics
on WHJJ-AM. Still, the party seems to sometimes squander opportunities.
In 2000, Rhode Islanders who didn't want George W. Bush to become president
could vote for Nader with a clean conscience since it was clear that Al Gore
was going to receive the state's electoral votes. Since Cicilline remains the
overwhelming favorite to become Providence's next mayor, Gerritt could make a
similar call for support from the city's liberal-left voters. Yet he
soft-peddles such talk, and although he uses his closing argument during the
Brown debate to cite the importance of building "a movement for change,"
Gerritt doesn't explicitly name the vehicle for that movement as the Green
Party. Asked about this afterwards, he says, "I should [have]. In 90 seconds,
you just don't think of everything."
INSPIRED BY THE national show of support for Ross Perot in 1992, Robert J.
Healey Jr. thought the time might finally be right for a third party in Rhode
Island. "People all of a sudden became aware that they didn't have to choose
between dumb and dumber," he recalls, and the state banking crisis had produced
no small number of disgruntled residents.
Healey, a media-savvy Warren native known for mingling his distinctive
mustache, full beard, and shoulder-length dark hair with conservative business
attire, had already created the Cool Moose Party -- a nod to Theodore
Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party and the case of a stray moose that wandered
through Cranston in the mid-1980s before being killed by state environmental
officials. The Cool Moose name also hearkened back to a photo published by the
Providence Journal, in response to a contest sponsored by the newspaper,
in which Healey had posed with antlers tied to his head.
"I looked at the race in 1994," he says, referring to the first gubernatorial
match between Republican Lincoln Almond and Democrat Myrth York, "and said,
`this is do-able.' People were familiar with voting outside the box. And I was
interested in making an opportunity for Rhode Islanders to have an
alternative."
Healey tackled questions about his credentials by pointing to his background
as a lawyer operating a small practice who was pursuing a Ph.D. in education.
He learned about issues by immersing himself in the state's general laws. As
part of his low-budget campaign, Healey sent a daily fax to the media,
sometimes leading reporters to ask particular questions of his rival
candidates. "It was pretty heady stuff," Healey recalls, and he wound up
attracting about 34,000 votes, or almost nine percent of the vote, perhaps
costing York the election. (Healey disputes this view, believing his support
came fairly equally from Democratic- and Republican-leaning voters.)
Regardless, the support for the Cool Moose candidate was sufficient to win the
party official recognition in Rhode Island, although this quickly brought its
own challenges. Anyone can join an officially sanctioned party, and many
aspiring Cool Moosers had just a single issue of concern that wasn't being
addressed in the general political system. "We had to walk a very fine line in
not allowing people to come who were going to misdirect the party," Healey
says, while trying to build additional support for the nascent party.
Bylaws were written and Healey was elected party chairman when about 60
supporters gathered during a mid-'90s convention at the Warwick campus of the
Community College of Rhode Island. But although the chairman limited his tenure
to three years since he wanted the party "to expand beyond the cult of Bob
Healey," this never really came to fruition. "For better or worse, Cool Moose
was always identified with Bob Healey," he says. "It never really could escape
me. It's a plus when you're running, but a downside for party-building."
The party's apex came in 1996, when about 20 candidates ran for General
Assembly (none were elected), and a handful of others gained local office,
including two slots on the Hopkinton Town Council. But although Healey
attracted seven percent of the gubernatorial vote in the 1998 election,
enthusiasm for being a part of the party essentially dissipated.
"I think a lot of the third political parties are people who like to rail
against the system and have no idea of how to govern or would have a limited
ability of how to actually govern," Healey says. "It's not that they're doing
something that's futile. They're doing something that serves a valuable
purpose, as long as they recognize what that purpose is. Third-party politics
is fraught with delusions of grandeur. As long as you can put that into
perspective, you understand what third-party politics is all about. It's about
being outside the mainstream, being able to challenge the status quo. As one
person said to me, `You can't beat City Hall, but you can piss on the steps.' "
Healey, 45, who is still hailed by strangers on the street as "Cool Moose" and
"the Moose Guy," is currently running for lieutenant governor on a platform of
abolishing the office. Regardless of the outcome, this will mark the last
campaign of the Cool Moose Party since state law requires that a party must
receive five percent of the presidential or gubernatorial vote, or a petition
with the signatures of five percent of those who voted in the last
gubernatorial election, to remain on the ballot.
Without a dramatic shift in the fabric of American politics, Healey doesn't
expect third-party candidates to make significant inroads in his lifetime, "but
that doesn't mean you should stop trying."
Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.
Issue Date: October 4 - 10, 2002
