The final weeks of the Lisa for Maine campaign to elect Lisa Savage to the U.S. Senate have been a whirlwind of voter outreach, press hits, and friction with the mainstream corporate parties and media outlets who continue to show little interest in democratic participation, despite our game-changing ranked-choice voting race. 

In the past month, we’ve seen a small flood of open letters from environmental leaders and long-time leaders on the left (Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and others), and articles, all with the same basic message: “Vote for Biden in 2020, Fight Him Later.”

It’s hard to argue with them. Donald Trump needs to go. Sure, we’ll need to challenge Joe Biden to do the right thing if he wins. The signers are all too aware that Biden’s campaign platform and troubling record as senator promise another Democratic administration dedicated to war and Wall Street.

U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins will be in Maine on Wednesday and will have some availability for press interviews alongside independent Green U.S. Senate candidate Lisa Savage.

Hawkins, and his running mate Angela Walker, are on the ballot in 30 states representing 73% of voters and 381 electoral votes. Including the other states where they are qualified write-in candidates, 96% of Americans, representing 514 of the total of 538 electoral votes, will be able to vote for the Hawkins/Walker Green Party ticket.

Penobscot Bay Pilot has posed questions to each candidate running for U.S. Congressional seats, providing the opportunity for the public to better understand their position on issues important to the state and nation.

Candidates responding with their individual written answers will have their responses stored in the Pilot’s 2020 Election Resource Guide.

Lisa Savage, Independent, is seeking election to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate.

Perhaps no place in Maine epitomizes the state’s schizophrenic political character more than the Somerset County town of Solon (pop. just north of 1,000, about an hour’s drive west from Bangor). Somerset County is Trump Country. Barely a third of its voters chose Hillary Clinton in 2016, and though Clinton narrowly won statewide, Trump swept the wilderness of northern and western Maine, earning the only electoral vote he got in New England.*

Yet Solon is an outlier. Since the late 1960s it’s been home to an eccentric collective of politically radical, back-to-the-lander artists, most notably the painter Abby Shahn. Every Fourth of July, in addition to fireworks and a patriotic parade, the community improv-theater group In Spite of Life Players stages a leftist protest play against war and greed, using gigantic, brightly painted sets and props, a la Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater.

August 26th marked the centennial anniversary of the federal government ratifying the 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote. Even as we celebrate that hard-fought victory, however, we must remember many women were not able to exercise that right because of a pernicious web of laws and regulations designed to disenfranchise voters based on race and country of origin.

A series of reforms through the following decades gradually expanded the right to vote to citizens of all races and nationalities, culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

• Upcoming Events, Volunteer for Hawkins/Walker, Our Recent Activism

We have lots of news this month from the North Carolina Green Party. Check out our events coming up soon, how to volunteer for the Hawkins/Walker presidential campaign, and some of our recent activism!

"Why the Democrats Are a Dead End for People of Color" Event with Angela Walker

BOSTON – As you may know, volunteers from Voter Choice for Massachusetts, the Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) campaign, made history last fall when they submitted 111,000 certified signatures to the Secretary of the Commonwealth; the most ever by a Massachusetts ballot initiative campaign. The Green-Rainbow Party was an early supporter of RCV, and we are proud to be part of this historic effort to give more voice to voters.

Climate activist Bill McKibben took to the New Yorker recently to advise me and the Green Party to stand down our presidential campaign and instead work for ranked-choice voting (RCV) so we don’t “spoil” the election for Joe Biden (“Instead of Challenging Joe Biden, Maybe the Green Party Could Help Change Our Democracy,” April 15).

The problem with McKibben’s advice is that the Green Party’s demand for replacing the Electoral College with a ranked-choice national popular vote for president will not even be raised in the presidential campaign if the Greens are not in the race.

FLANDERS, NJ – “And now there is only one candidate Booker, ... the candidate for U.S. Senate” said Madelyn Hoffman. “We get why he dropped out. If anyone knows about the difficulties of competing on a level playing field in the U.S. electoral system, it’s the Green Party. We know all too well the story of being left out of important debates, presidential or otherwise, because we haven’t raised enough money or scored high enough in ‘polls’. These polls can be manipulated by corporate or special interests in our cases to even fail to include us.