Office Holders
As of October 18, 2012, there were 134 elected Greens across the United States. Positions held varied greatly, from mayor to city council, school board to sanitation district. Twenty-three states had Greens elected at the municipal level, representing every region of the country except for East South Central. Greens held mayorships in California and New York, and positions on city, neighborhood, or common councils in the West, South, Midwest, and Northeast. Major cities with a Green presence were spread throughout the country and included Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, and Washington, DC.
The Green Party in the United States has won elected office at the local level; most winners of public office in the United States who are considered Greens have won nonpartisan elections. The highest-ranking Greens ever elected in the nation were: John Eder, a member of the Maine House of Representatives until his defeat in November 2006; Audie Bock, elected to the California State Assembly in 1999 but switched her registration to Independent seven months later running as an independent in the 2000 election; Richard Carroll, elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2008 but switched parties to become a Democrat five months after his election; and Fredrick Smith, elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2012.
As of 2012, Fredrick Smith of the Arkansas House of Representatives and Mayor Gayle McLaughlin are the most notable Green elected officials in the United States. McLaughlin is serving her second term as mayor of Richmond, California. McLaughlin defeated two Democrats in 2006 to become mayor, and in 2010 again prevailed in a three-way race. Richmond, with a population of over 100,000 people, is the largest city in the country with a Green mayor. In 2010 Ben Chipman, a member of the Green Party, ran for Maine Legislature as an Independent and was elected. Chipman was reelected in 2012.
Fairfax, California, Arcata, California, Sebastopol, California, and New Paltz, New York are the only towns in the United States to ever hold a Green Party majority in their town councils. Twin Ridges Elementary in Nevada County, California held the first Green Party majority school board in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Green Party (United States)
Famous quotes containing the words office and/or holders:
“The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work, the writer provides food for the prince.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)