PACIFIC GREEN PARTY OF OREGON PEACE SLATE
suzia/jim, 18.06.2008 09:12
Pacific Greens nominate Peace Slate Candidates for the state of Oregon. Cynthia McKinney to lead peace slate, nationally.
At its first summer nominating convention in Portland on June 7, 2008, the Pacific Green Party voted to apportion 23 of its 24 alloted delegates to this year's national Green Party presidential nominating convention to former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. McKinney left the Democratic Party because if its numerous failures on peace and justice issues, most prominently its failure to end the war in Iraq. She is the odds-on favorite to win the nomination at the convention to be held July 10-13 in Chicago.
http://www.runcynthiarun.org
http://www.gp.org
The PGP also nominated Congressional candidates for its Peace Slate:
In the 2nd district, the PGP nominated Dr. Tristin Mock to challenge incumbent Greg Walden, a staunch supporter of the Bush war policy. Mock is a naturopathic physician who grew up in The Dalles. She has already been active campaigning through the vast 2nd Congressional District, which covers all of Oregon east of the Cascades, as well as southern counties such as Jackson.
http://www.votemock.com
In the 3rd District, the PGP nominated Michael Meo to challenge incumbent Democrat Earl Blumenauer, who has angered progressives in his east-side Portland district by supporting funding for the Irag war, as well as free-trade deals such as CAFTA. In fact, Joe Walsh, Blumenauer's challenger in the Democratic primary, has endorsed Meo in the general election. Meo has tremendous credibility as an anti-war candidate, having served two years in prison as a Vietnam War draft resister. He is the chair of the mathematics department at Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland.
http://www.meoforcongress.org
In the 4th District, the PGP nominated Mike Beilstein to challenge incumbent Peter DeFazio, whose inconsistent record on Iraq includes votes to fund the war. Beilstein is a sitting member of the Corvallis City Council, and is the architect of the PGP's Peace Slate strategy. He devotes a month of every summer to travel to Cuba with Pastors for Peace to defy the US trade and travel embargo. He is an active member of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and Citizens for Global Solutions.
http://www.newmenu.org/mikebeilsteinforcongress
In the 5th District, the PGP nominated Alex Polikoff for the seat being vacated by Democratic Congresswoman Darlene Hooley. Like McKinney, Polikoff recently left the Democratic Party after it took over Congress in 2006 and yet failed totally to end the war in Iraq. Polikoff is an electrical engineer in Corvallis. He decries the fact that both major parties seem more concerned with getting elected and appeasing their corporate donors than dealing with the threat of our ballooning public debt, job and health insecurity, world instability, the energy crisis and global warming.
http://www.votepolikoff.org
In addition to the Peace Slate candidates, the PGP also nominated Seth Woolley for Oregon Secretary of State. A software engineer, Woolley will focus on the concerns generated by electronic voting machines, and is an advocate for electoral reforms such as preference voting -- also known as instant runoff voting -- which allows voters to rank all candidates in their order of preference, and solves the 'spoiler' problem . Although preference voting is authorized by Oregon Constitution Article 2, Section 16, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and his Elections Division head John Lindback have aggressively worked to undermine attempts in Eugene, Ashland, and the Oregon Legislature to implement this constitutional provision.
http://seth4sos.org/
The PGP nominated Chris Extine for the 42nd district in the Oregon House of Representatives, which covers inner southeast Portland. Chris is a math teacher in the Portland Public Schools.
The PGP will hold a follow-up nominating convention on August 16 in Oregon City. In addition to filling out the Peace Slate with 1st Congressional District and U.S. Senate candidates, the PGP anticipates nominating candidates to other statewide offices, seats in the Oregon Legislature, and other local partisan offices.
http://www.pacificgreens.org
