The Aaron Dixon Senate campaign: A direct challenge to the two-party system

author : Dave Jette topic : Aaron Dixon | Green Party

by Dave Jette

On May 13, the Green Party of Washington State held its semiannual convention and by a 43-1 vote nominated Aaron Dixon as its candidate for the U.S. Senate. Aaron is a former Black Panther Party leader, and he is well known among African-Americans in Seattle for his decades of service to the community. While in the Black Panther Party, he started the Free Breakfast for School Children Program and a free medical clinic which continues to this day. More recently, he has worked for nonprofit organizations that serve the public in a variety of ways, from preventing drug and gang violence to providing shelter for youth on the street. Four years ago he founded Central House, a nonprofit organization that works to provide housing for young homeless adults, where he is still acting director.

It was with considerable excitement that members of the Green Party of Seattle had approached Aaron last December to run as a Green against the incumbent Democratic Senator, Maria Cantwell. Cantwell is unabashedly pro-war, being the only member of Washington State's Congressional delegation to refuse to retract her initial support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and is strongly supportive of the Patriot Act. Aaron had not been involved in electoral politics since the Black Panther Party days, but after consulting with community activists he accepted our request and joined the Green Party.

After considerable preparation, Aaron held a press conference in March to announce his candidacy. The campaign held a highly successful kickoff party in April which featured Elaine Brown, former Chairperson of the Black Panther Party, as well as the President of the Seattle Chapter of the NAACP and other prominent community activists.

The Dixon campaign has been steadily building support around the state. Politically, Washington tends to be divided into East and West, with the eastern part being mainly rural and voting Republican, while the western part contains most of the major metropolitan areas and overall votes Democratic. However, the campaign is systematically reaching out both to eastern Washington and to the rural areas of western Washington, overcoming the tendency of liberals and progressives to concentrate on the Seattle area. The candidate is quite effective when doing this in person.

For example, Aaron recently attended a county fair some thirty miles outside of Seattle. He parked (for a fee) on the property of a burly white guy, and naturally he engaged the fellow in discussion for some 20 minutes. Then, when Aaron came back to retrieve his car, he said that he had been talking with his wife and, although previously they've always voted Republican, they both wanted to put up a Dixon yard sign. This campaign is not about siphoning off the votes of liberal and progressive Democrats, but rather about building an electoral movement which speaks to the decent concerns of the great majority of people.

National Implications

What makes this campaign so interesting is its national implications. The Democratic incumbent is quite weak; unlike our other Democratic Senator, she's been pretty ineffectual. Moreover, her strong support of the Iraq War has alienated many Democrats, but she faced only nominal opposition from anti-war candidates in the Democratic primary election. The Republicans are fielding a reasonably strong candidate, although he also is unabashedly pro-war and overall he is even more odious. This is a race that the Democratic Party has got to win if it is to have any chance of regaining control of the Senate, and already they've brought in a pro-war Black Senator, Barack Obama, to support Cantwell at an event in the African-American community. Other nationally distinguished Democrats have also been visiting Washington State, trying to save Cantwell's skin.

Thus the spoiler issue looms large in this campaign, and Aaron is occasionally asked if he will step aside if it looks like his candidacy may throw the election to the evil Republican. He and his campaign steering committee are very clear about this, having formally adopted the following resolution:

"This campaign will continue wholeheartedly through Election Day, regardless of the consequences to the Democratic Party. Specifically, it will continue to the end even if it may result in Maria Cantwell's losing her present Senate seat and the Democratic Party's losing the opportunity to regain control of the U.S. Senate."

This, coming from a high-profile Green Party candidate in a tight, crucial race, constitutes a direct challenge to the two-party system which has allowed no effective opposition to its rule on behalf of the very wealthy people who control our country. There are similar Green Party campaigns around the country, and the time couldn't be better: the Democratic Party has revealed its complete political bankruptcy, forcing liberals and progressives to look for an alternative. This alternative is the Green Party, which will continually be building upon people's disgust with the two-party system, and which in 2008 should be running a strong Presidential candidate (again, without respect for the tired "lesser-of-two-evils" argument which keeps us in chains). Indeed, the Green Party of the United States has designated Aaron's Senate campaign as one of the three or four races this year to which it will give maximum attention.

The Spoiler Issue

But what of the spoiler issue? Isn't it ethically valid to support an unabashedly pro-war incumbent such as Maria Cantwell in order to avoid the Republ

can "greater evil" staying in power? Come Election Day, most liberal Democrats, and many progressive Democrats, will be holding their noses and doing exactly this (as they've been doing for countless elections!). There are a number of levels on which to consider this question.

First off, the spoiler issue is more illusion than reality. It is what the Democrats cry out in order to hide the fact that they don't offer a real alternative on many crucial issues: people should vote for them simply because they aren't Republicans! To say that most Dixon supporters would otherwise vote for Cantwell is sheer fantasy; we are drawing support from both Democrats and Republicans, and a great many of our voters would just not vote for either pro-war candidate if Aaron weren't running.

Furthermore, the obvious answer to the spoiler problem is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV, or "ranked voting"), in which, for example, if your first choice is Aaron and your second choice is Cantwell, your vote goes to the latter if Aaron is eliminated in the first round of vote-counting. In Washington State, the Democrats completely control the state government (governor and both legislative branches) and they could easily institute IRV. But of course they don't want to allow the public to seriously consider alternatives to the two major parties. Perhaps if this election gives the appearance of the Green Party's having spoiled Cantwell's re-election, the Democrats will see the light and institute IRV. (Or perhaps we'll have to "spoil" other elections for them first -- the governor's race is coming up in two years, and the Democratic incumbent won by only 129 votes last time.)

Is it ethically acceptable to vote for a pro-war candidate (assuming that one considers the invasion of Iraq to be morally unacceptable)? Well-meaning people who say yes will implicitly have made some sort of calculation with a balance scale: on the one side, important good things such as abortion rights, raising the minimum wage, and protecting the environment; on the other side, the unconscionable Iraq war and other aspects of U.S. imperialism (such as unqualified support for Israel's decades-long oppression of the Palestinians). Unfortunately, it is here that white supremacy, which has ideologically dominated our country since its creation, comes into play: in weighing the balance, white folks so often come down on the side which oppresses people of color.

Ethically, there is simply no alternative to refusing to support politicians who support the United States's longstanding drive (since World War II) at world domination. Of course domestic issues are important, and they need to be tackled both through mass struggles and in the political arena, but not at the expense of the rest of the world! Rejecting the lesser-of-evils outlook is essential in order to be able to build a progressive electoral alternative to the two-party system which has kept us straight-jacketed ... and the Green Party is vigorously involved in this endeavor.

Why is it so important to run high-profile progressive candidates in important elections, even if they have little chance of winning? We can hope eventually to start winning these elections, but immediately our purpose is to lay the groundwork for building an ongoing progressive electoral movement effectively challenging the two-party system, and to combat the ideological hegemony of the very wealthy people who control our society in their own interests. This is especially important now, with our overextended empire crumbling and fascistic measures being instituted to control a populace increasingly concerned about their deteriorating living conditions. To maintain ideological control, the Democrats and Republicans have been playing a "good cop, bad cop" game since the 1930's. The only way out is to consciously reject the "lesser-of-evils" outlook by refusing to support liberal Democrats like Maria Cantwell, especially when they enthusiastically support the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. The Aaron Dixon Senate campaign is doing exactly this.

Dave Jette is the Treasurer of Aaron Dixon's Senate campaign, the Secretary of the Green Party of Seattle. Visit the Dixon campaign website at http://www.dixon4senate.com .