The 2024 Green Party Primary is Already Over
Let’s stop pretending that the Green Party is currently able to successfully run an open, fair and democratic primary. End the Green Party primary before the confusion and treachery even start.
Back in April 2019, almost a year and half before the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention of 2020, Howie Hawkins’ future campaign manager (then on the Hawkins exploratory committee) quite literally wrote the rules of the presidential primary process. Those rules were what all of us who ran in the 2020 Green Party primary had to follow and they were written by Hawkins’ most prominent supporter who later went on to be his campaign manager. Allowing a very biased campaign manager to write the rules of the primary was so egregiously wrong that ultimately I left the Green Party in disgust. I wrote about it at the time.
Let’s fast forward 5 years. Yesterday, (June 14th 2023) Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential nominee for 2016 and 2012, publicly endorsed Dr. Cornel West in his bid to be the Green Party presidential nominee. Previously, Dr. West had been running with the People’s Party, but was then convinced by author and activist Chris Hedges to seek the Green Party’s nomination instead.
This move denotes a significant shift within the very quickly evolving Green Party presidential primary. Chris Hedges’ support alone is a major win for Dr. West. However, now, with the backing of Stein, it can completely change the dynamics of the Green Party’s political landscape. Especially when it comes to the Green Party’s presidential primary.
As it stands, Dr. West’s journey to securing the nomination is far from straightforward. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve written extensively on my personal experience with the awful Green Party primary process. Bad actors in the party have and will manipulate key committees to favor their preferred candidate.
The national Green Party has several different committees that have many different areas of focus. However, the most important and highest ranking body of the Green Party is the National Committee. To quote the Green Party bylaws: “The National Committee shall be the final decision-making body of the Green Party of the United States.” The National Committee’s structure is essentially a congress of delegates from every state across the country.
I’m calling on the Green Party to cancel it’s 2024 primary and convention. Instead of a primary followed by a convention, the National Committee should simply vote to make Dr. Cornel West the 2024 Green Party Presidential Nominee.
Why am I calling for such decisive action? Hawkins’ legacy has set a precedent of allowing certain factions to manipulate committees. One such tactic is “committee packing”, where biased supporters acting in bad faith pack certain key committees. Since the party did nothing to stop this bad behavior in 2020 it’s now a valid tactic that many different factions in the party use. Most notably this tactic was used against the Alaskan Green Party, which was decertified (and thus ended the Alaskan GP) after the Alaskan GP refused to nominate Hawkins.
So with the current disarray the Green Party finds themselves in, if the GP re-ran it’s primary of 2020 but with the candidates of today, the question now becomes not how Dr. West secures the nomination, but which side will outmaneuver the other in the political chess game within the Green Party.
When I was with the Green Party in 2020 I had a simple proposal; a national GP primary election. An open primary where anyone could vote. Transparently done so all would be able to observe. All primary candidates appearing on the ballot. Done in one day and held as early as possible. The results would then be announced that evening at a large event where all would be welcome. Not only would a national open primary be historic, it could become a shining example of how other parties could conduct their own primaries.
Instead, the primary process of 2020 was a tragedy. Not only did the front-runner’s team write the rules, but many states ran disgustingly biased primaries. Here’s just one embarrassing example from the North Carolina Green Party Primary. There was only one candidate that the state GP allowed on their ballot, Howie Hawkins. Why even bother running a primary when you ban all but one candidate!
Given the party’s undemocratic history and virtually no real progress made to ensure the 2024 primary is fair, I believe the best course of action would be for the National Committee to bypass the primary process and simply vote to make Dr. Cornel West the nominee as soon as possible. While this might seem extreme, it would prevent the kind of behind-the-scenes manipulation we’ve seen in the past. And it would spare the Green Party and the country from a confusing and crooked primary that only takes credibility away from the party.
To be clear, I want all political parties, including the the Green Party, to mature in their political processes. All parties should strive for open and fair primaries, instead of allowing candidates and their teams to manipulate the system. This also includes preventing the appointment of individuals to positions that could potentially lead to conflicts of interest.
But in reality the Green Party’s current practices are in stark contrast with its image as open election advocates dedicated to transparency and democratic ideals. In my experience with the party many members see the Green Party as a social club rather than a serious political entity that should follow it’s own principles.
That is why I’m recommending the Green Party need step up and take decisive action to prevent further manipulation of their own political process.
I know nominating Dr. West from the National Committee instead of a primary might seem counterintuitive, but take a look at the current website of the Presidential Campaign Support Committee, the committee charged with running the primary. Here’s a screenshot from today (6/15/2023):
Notice anything missing? That’s right, there’s no information about the 2024 Green Party primary! No information on how to qualify in 2024 or if they are going to require signatures and money (like they did in 2020) to be raised in some capacity in order to qualify. Furthermore, the list of active members are full of Hawkins supporters! Hawkins is in complete disagreement with West on important and key hot-button issues, such as arming Ukraine vs calling for a ceasefire with Russia at the negotiating tables. I doubt those supporting Hawkins will suddenly give West a fair primary fight. As a hypothetical example, this committee could simply declare that because West hasn’t been active enough in the Green Party that he’s not qualified to run with the party. Since there are, at this moment, no rules at all about the 2024 primary and who qualifies as a candidate that’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Perhaps in years to come the GP will take itself seriously and craft a fair and open primary process with clear rules well in advance of the primary. I hope that those in the party reading this take seriously my proposal about how to run such an open primary. But given the state of the party and it’s terrible history of embarrassingly biased primaries, the only sensible option at the moment is to have the national committee quickly move to vote Dr. Cornel West in as the Green Party’s presidential candidate for the 2024 elections.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Addendum 6/15: I want to clarify that I left the GP Dec 2019 and I have no plans on returning anytime soon. I am personally very happy to see that all these years later many in the party are finally waking up to realization that Howie Hawkins policy’s and the actions of his campaign have permanently hurt the party. I appreciate all the messages of support. I’ll refrain from saying “I told you so” as that would be childish and I of course am above any sort of childish behavior like that.
That being said I do not consider myself a supporter of Dr. Cornel West at this moment. I am keeping a very close eye on the statements and interviews Dr. West gives. So far I like what I am seeing and if I compare him to the rest of the field at the time of writing this he certainly seems better than most declared candidates.
It would be nice to see the party that I devoted 8 years of my life to succeed and have a candidate that would actually grow the party with a anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and egalitarian message. I don’t know if that is Dr. Cornel West (although from what I’ve seen so far he may be.) But what I do know is that if the GP repeats the primary of 2020 in 2024 it will be a national embarrassment again.
Finally, no one outside of the GP cares that the party has it’s own primary. I’m sorry to be the one to have to say this out loud. People are often very confused as to why the party waits so long to pick a candidate and will confuse the previous candidate from the last election cycle with the new nominee. Most people I spoke to while running wanted the Green Party to pick their candidate much earlier. I completely agree with this. Let’s be honest most are not following independent politics as closely as you and I. So this would give the majority of people more time to learn who the new Green Party candidate for President is and what they stand for.
