Portland Greens
The party realizes its greatest successes in the state's largest city, Portland. From 2002 to 2006, the highest-ranking elected Green in the United States was John Eder, who served in the Maine House of Representatives for Portland's West End neighborhood. Seven of the state's elected Greens are Portland officeholders, including two School Committee members, three City Councilors and two Water Trustees.
The School Committee was once the second "Greenest" governing body in the United States, and from 2004–2006, significant media attention was attributed to conflicts between the Committee's Greens and Democrats. The Greens successfully passed precedent-setting policy limiting military recruiters' access to city high schools, and were recognized by the National School Board Association.
The 2006 election of two under-30 Green councilors (David A. Marshall and Kevin Donoghue) in Portland's high profile West End and East End districts. In 2007, John Anton was elected at-large, which brought the number of Greens on the Portland City Council to 3. During the 2010 rewriting of the Portland Charter, Greens Anna Trevorrow and Ben Chipman won seats on the commission. The two successfully pushed to include instant run-off voting in the new charter. They also supported extending voting rights in municipal elections to legal non-citizens. Trevorrow lead in the 2010 campaign while also running for the East End seat in the Maine House of Representatives. Non-citizen voting was narrowly defeated as was Trevorrow. In the 2011 mayoral election, two Greens, (Eder and Marshall) ran for the expanded mayoral position.
In 2012, the Portland Greens ran three candidates for State Representative in Portland and one for State Senate. The candidates all received between 14% and 33% of the vote. Kevin Donoghue (District 1) and David Marshall (District 2) easily beat Democrats for re-election to the City Council. Holly Seeliger, a 26 year old former Occupier and education activist, won election to the School Board from District 2.
Read more about this topic: Maine Green Independent Party
Famous quotes containing the words portland and/or greens:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore,
The snake has left its skin upon the floor.
Key West sank downward under massive clouds
And silvers and greens spread over the sea. The moon
Is at the mast-head and the past is dead.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)