June 6, 2016

Sander campaign damaging California Green Party

Mother Jones

"The Sanders campaign is absolutely destroying us."

Those are the words of California Green Party spokesman Mike Feinstein, who, in response to an inquiry from Mother Jones, visited the website of the California Secretary of State. He discovered, to his consternation, that his party has lost 30 percent of its members in the months since Sanders launched his presidential campaign. "I am apoplectically mad right now," Feinstein says. "I am so disgusted with this."

"They intentionally went after our voters because they are low-lying fruit on the issues," he adds, citing mailers the Sanders campaign sent to Green Party members. The steep drop in Green registration underscores how Sanders has energized California's far-left electorate.

The party's steep decline in registration—from nearly 110,000 voters in early 2015 to 78,000 now—represents a tiny fraction of California's 18 million registered voters. Yet it underscores how the Sanders campaign has made deep inroads into California's liberal electorate, tapping voters who may have never before considered voting for a Democrat.

California's other major leftist third party, the Peace and Freedom Party, has also seen a significant drop in registration since last year, losing about 7,000 voters, or 9 percent of its members..

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, if Jill Stein had as good a chance of winning the general election as Sanders does, then this would be a shame. The sad truth is Jill Stein is still relatively unknown and would be unlikely to win the general election, even if Sanders had never run. What the Greens and Peace and Freedom are missing, is that many of the people who deserted these 3rd parties will return to them after the primary. If Clinton becomes the nominee, these third parties might do even better in the general election, because of the independents, like me, who changed registration to Democrat for the primary, but have no loyalty to Clinton or the Democratic Party, and cannot be depended to vote for Clinton in the general election. If Sanders doesn't win the nomination, or runs as an independent, then Jill Stein will get my vote in November.

Greg Gerritt said...

Feinstein and the CA Greens should both have anticipated that there would be defections and that remaining open would mkae it easier for Sanders folks to go Green after he loses. We have already had Sandrers activists in RI meet with us to discuss the what if.

AgustinG said...

Sounds like they need to ask Bernie to join the Green Party. Or to put it another way, quit whining and use this to their advantage.

MAMADOC said...

Truly Green thinking people (like your truly) refuse to have anything to do with partymongering: an unecological way of facing reality. What the greens should do is rally behind the most sensitive and best prepared individuals to get us out of this messy, degrading, political scenario: Support a MOVEMENT VS. FASCISM -which inevitably is rooted in a vane sort of patriotism... that is what nationalism is... vane and dangerous and ultimately, inevitably, warmongering. All sensible truth and freedom seeking souls should come together to get our democratic institutions in high-gear vs. the kind of lying and corruption that characterizes our false, unsustainable kind of "democracy"...