American Prospect No Tie -- Cobb! The true story of how a man you've barely heard of beat Ralph Nader for the Green Party nomination. By Garance Franke-Ruta Web Exclusive: 06.28.04
MILWAUKEE -- For Ralph Nader campaign spokesman Kevin Zeese, the map explains it all. Hand drawn in black ballpoint pen, the rough state-by-state depiction of the United States is covered in hatch marks and polka dots. Florida, California, and New York are filled in with diagonal lines. The middle of the country is a blotchy block of similar-colored states, drawn dark with circles.
"It's just like the red and blue map," Zeese says Saturday, June 26, around 10 p.m., standing with other disappointed "Nader For President" supporters joking about committing "hara-kiri" in the Midwest Airlines Center while newly selected Green Party nominee David Cobb gives a rousing final speech accepting the party's nomination.
Except that it's not a map of Democratic-voting states versus Republican ones; it's a hastily drawn representation of where delegates to Forward 2004!, the Green National Convention in Wisconsin, cast their votes during the second round of balloting to nominate a Green Party candidate for president. Cobb, a lawyer from Texas who now lives in northern California, won that balloting against the "none of the above" and "no nominee" options, equivalent to votes for the party to endorse Nader.
And just as in the country at large, voting patterns among the Greens reflect regional and geographic differences. Those differences, and Nader's 100-vote loss because of them, suggest that the eco-friendly third party that many blame for Al Gore's narrow loss in 2000 will be far less likely to play a spoiler role in swing states come November.
Nader drew support primarily from California Greens, who, with 132 delegates and more elected officials than any other state, made up about a sixth of those in attendance. He also did well in New York and Vermont, and gained the backing of many other Greens living in blue states. But Cobb won the election with 408 of 770 ballots cast, based on the strength of his support in places like Montana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and, of course, his native state of Texas.
The number of state Green parties grew from 21 in 2000 to 44 today, and with the party's expansion from the coasts into the interior of the country has come an influx of Red-state Greens -- call them the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Green party.
Indeed, Cobb went out of his way to court the South -- his campaign explicitly advocated a "southern strategy," promising to devote considerable resources to the newly formed state parties in places like Mississippi, Green since April 2002 -- and campaigned the old-fashioned way. He built alliances, visiting 41 of the state Green Parties since announcing his bid last October. He worked inside the party, making sure it adopted rules favoring his election, such as a mandate that a candidate must be registered as a Green in order to receive the party's nomination. More than any other single change since 2000, that rule forced Nader into a bind: Either the famously independent candidate, who Cobb knew was unlikely to commit to any party, would have to declare his allegiance to the Greens, or else the homegrown candidate, Nader's former state director in Texas, would mount a challenge to Nader as the only strong candidate with true party loyalty.
Make no mistake: Had Nader chosen to fight for it over the past year, he could have easily walked away with the Green Party nomination on Saturday. But he didn't. "The Nader campaign has intentionally avoided trying to influence the outcome," said Zeese as the balloting was about to start. "We'll see what the outcome is." His words suggested a kind of equanimity, but he sounded nervous.
Into the political vacuum left by Nader's arms-length campaigning jumped Cobb, running on a platform of support for state parties and local candidates. For a party that draws heavily from the ranks of the alienated and disaffected -- people who already feel ignored by politicians -- Nader's decisions to eschew Green membership, not participate in the presidential-primary process, and avoid the Milwaukee convention were decisive. Nader, perhaps thinking himself a sure thing, or so outsize a figure that a fair fight would require him to tie one hand behind his back, failed to mount a campaign sufficient to win.
As late as two days before the balloting, Nader's supporters were urging him to reconsider his refusal to court the Green Party nomination in favor of the high-risk endorsement strategy, which was contingent on the expectation that Cobb would fail to win a simple majority of delegate votes. Internal polling of the party delegates last week had shown the race neck and neck, with the momentum favoring Cobb. While Nader waited to be handed the Green crown, Cobb buttonholed delegates, rushed around the Milwaukee Hyatt Regency, cell phone attached to his ear, and attended the $50 per person Green Party of the United States fund-raiser with the party's "high-dollar" donors and elected officials this past Saturday evening, June 26.
Nader's one concession to traditional campaigning was to call in by speakerphone to a 300-person rally held by his vice-presidential candidate, Californian investment adviser Peter Camejo, last Friday evening, June 25. Even then, he didn't push the issue. "Whatever decision the Green Party makes," Nader told the crowd by speakerphone from Washington, "I want it to be made on the merits, based on majority rule, not based on emotion or nostalgia."
In short, though the Greens may be way outside the mainstream of American political opinion, in the end the same laws of politics that govern the two major parties held: In order to win, it helps to outfox the other guy -- and to fight hard.
The other significant factor at work in Nader's loss was the strong anybody-but-Bush sentiment sweeping through the Green Party's membership. While Camejo campaigned on a platform calling the Democrats allies of the Republicans, Cobb noted that the differences between the parties might be "incremental" but that they were not "inconsequential." Cobb and his vice-presidential candidate, Patricia LaMarche, are perfectly happy to call John Kerry "a corporate militarist" and declaim the Democratic Party as a place "where dreams go to die," but the new Green leaders also recognize that their constituents are, at core, progressives.
That means that, in about a dozen swing states where they plan to campaign, they want George W. Bush out and will not demand that voters choose Greens instead of Kerry. "The voter has now been placed in a position where the president of their country is a threat to the entire world," said LaMarche of this mixed-campaigning strategy. "It's not about being a benefit to Kerry. It's about being a benefit to the voter."
Already, Cobb seems to be trying to combine the radical Green anti-Kerry critique with some coded pro-Kerry messages. "I'm not embarrassed to say I get weepy-eyed about what America can be," Cobb said in his final speech Saturday, citing the Langston Hughes poem "Let America be America Again" as inspiration. Which is, of course, the new Kerry campaign slogan.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor. Her column appears each week in the online edition.
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