Jill Stein, presidential standard-bearer for the Green Party, has qualified to be on the ballot in 38 states.
Hailing from deep-blue Massachusetts, Dr. Stein, a physician, stands on the far left of the political spectrum among the presidential candidates. This is her first national campaign, but she represented the Green-Rainbow Party in three Bay State races: governor in 2002, state representative in 2004, and secretary of state in 2006. The only office to which she has been elected is as a town meeting member in Lexington, Mass.
In an April 6 profile in online Grist magazine, Stein said, “If I can quote Alice Walker, 'The biggest way people give up power is by not knowing they have it to start with.' And that’s true, for the environmental movement, the student movement, the antiwar movement, health-care-as-a-human-right movement – you put us all together, we have the potential for a Tahrir Square type event, and [to] turn the White House into a Green House in November.”
Adapting a page from Franklin Roosevelt, Stein advocates a “green New Deal.” New renewable energy jobs would address environmental issues and help to employ "every American willing and able to work.” She proposes to fund the plan through a 30 percent cut in the military budget, bringing home all US troops, and raising taxes on capital gains, offshore tax shelters, and multimillion-dollar real estate.
Other proposals: make the National Guard the national defense, close overseas military bases, legalize gay marriage, provide free public education from kindergarten through college, provide federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, maintain abortion rights and provide free birth control, and apply a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to bailed-out bankers.
Stein became an environmental-health advocate in 1998, focusing on toxic threats to children and coal plant regulations. In 2003, she founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, a nonprofit organization that focuses on health care, local green economies, and grass-roots democracy. Stein worked on a 2008 ballot initiative, “Secure Green Future,” which called for Massachusetts to make green jobs and renewable energy a priority.
Stein graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979, where she also taught internal medicine for more than 20 years.
Her Green Party, though, still sports a black eye from the contentious 2000 presidential race, when its nominee, Ralph Nader, won enough of the left-leaning vote to hand the crucial battleground state of Florida to Republican George W. Bush, instead of going to Democrat Al Gore. (That, at least, is how many Democrats see it.)
Moreover, the climate for third-party candidates is particularly inhospitable in the close Obama-Romney contest of 2012, says Prof. Christina Greer, a political scientist at Fordham University in New York. Voters “are particularly unwilling to do what most see as throwing away a vote on a candidate that cannot win.”
However, Stein’s presence on the ballot in 38 states – and qualification to be a write-in candidate in nine others – may affect candidates or issues down the ballot, suggests Professor Greer. “There are many other issues and names on ballots beyond the presidential candidates,” she says. “Stein could have the effect of driving votes for state and local candidates who may have an even greater impact on the issues she favors, whether it is the environment or education.”
– Gloria Goodale and Allison Terry
