Still Fighting the Duopoly: Nader Boosts Green Party Candidates in New York

Consumer activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader traveled to Glens Falls and Albany this past Sunday to lend his support to two promising Green Party candidates — gubernatorial hopeful Howie Hawkins and congressional candidate Matt Funiciello, the latter of whom is polling double digits for an open seat in that state’s hotly-contested twenty-first district.

Nader, who took part in a separate fundraiser for Funiciello at the Charles Wood theater in downtown Glens Falls earlier in the day, told a crowd of approximately 100 in Albany that he has a very high standard when it comes to endorsing candidates.

“If someone just throws their hat in the ring as a Green Party [candidate] and shows up disheveled, doesn’t know what they’re talking about but they’re good hearted, I wouldn’t support them,” said Nader. “They have to have a level of performance, of seriousness, of dedication, a record of experience taking on issues and they have to know what they’re talking about.”

Both Hawkins and Funiciello clearly meet that criteria.

“I’ve never seen better third party candidates around the country,” said the feisty 80-year-old Nader, who waged his fourth and probably final campaign for the White House in 2008. “They’re very authentic.”

Though not yet able to crack double digits in any statewide polling, the 61-year-old Hawkins — one of the party’s most prolific vote-getters — believes he has “a fighting chance” this fall against Wall Street-funded incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his hapless Republican rival, as evidenced by the surprisingly strong showing of underfunded challenger Zephyr Teachout in the recent Democratic gubernatorial primary.

His candidacy, he said, is much more than a protest vote — he’s more than ready to govern and lead, to bring the kind of change so many New Yorkers are desperately yearning for.

Hawkins garnered nearly 60,000 votes in a previous bid for governor in 2010 — a showing that restored the Green Party’s automatic ballot access in the Empire State.

Noting that Hawkins was polling an impressive twelve percent of the vote in the state’s nineteenth and twenty-first districts — encompassing the state’s North Country through the Mid-Hudson Valley, including parts of the Capital Region — and that the lesser-known Funiciello, a Glen Falls baker, had garnered ten percent of the vote in a recent WWNY-7 News-Siena College poll, Nader said that he believed both candidacies were on the verge of taking off.

“If they get to 15 percent, they’re going to get more media coverage,” he told the cheering crowd in Albany. “And if they get to 20 percent, then it’s a three-way race, and it’s off to the races.”

Nader, who first met Funiciello during his 2000 presidential campaign, described the Glens Fall activist as “Democracy’s Baker” — a designation he bestowed on him years ago — and described his long-shot candidacy as “the most important congressional Green Party race in America.”