Green Party presidential candidates

Here’s your Green Party candidates for president, 2008:

1. Jesse Johnson, 2006 US Senate candidate and 2004 gubernatorial candidate for the Mountain Party in West Virginia (now affiliate state party of the Green Party of the United States); filmmaker.

2. Kat Swift, Kat Swift, Texas Green organizer; former Campus Greens leader; activist with Clean Money San Antonio and San Antonio Democracy Now.

3. Kent Mesplay, 2004 candidate for the Green presidential nomination; former president of Turtle Island Institute; environmental engineer, alternative energy activist; California Green organizer.

4. Cynthia McKinney, former member of the US House of Representatives (Georgia), 1993 to 2003, 2005 to 2007; former member of the Georgia House of Representatives, 1988-1992.

Cynthia McKinney? Stereotypes and smears related to 9/11 aside, her temper, and sense of entitlement, do concern me a little bit. She also (and this coming from someone who doesn’t come close to supporting the Israel lobby) can flirt with the boundaries of something approaching anti-Semitism.

Per the first sentence in the paragraph above, her indulgence of 9/11 “truther” crackpot theories, as articulated when she was in my area, in Fort Worth, in February, also concern me.

But, she’s got name recognition, and as a female candidate, might appeal to Clintonites who have a political brain, as well as anti-Obama anger, rather than Clintonites deluded enough to join a GOP-flacked PUMA group. And, yes, I could accept her as presidential material.

But, let’s also look at the not-so-famous candidates.

Mesplay, with his background in alt-energy, has a strong “core Green” issue, and one of importance. He favors Instant Runoff Voting (and please, flacks for other alternative voting systems, I know IRV is not perfect; do not inundate me with comments). And, Mesplay, with Blackfoot Indian heritage, also brings minority background to the table.

I have a bit of familiarity with Swift. Clean money is a good emphasis. However, her website has had little updating in months, and, it’s not too much above the amateur level as far as layout, etc.

I know less about Johnson; he’s run for U.S. Senate and the governor’s mansion in West Virginia.