Jill Stein, a Massachusetts Green and pediatrician, is running to obtain the U.S. Green Party’s nomination for President in the November election. On January 18, about two dozen Greens from Arlington and Northern Virginia got a chance to meet and heear Dr. Stein at a house party in Arlington.

Dr. Stein Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, called for a Green New Deal to counter the “trickle down economic agenda” laid out by President Obama in his State of the Union address. Stein’s “People’s State of the Union: A Green New Deal for America” that is on her campaign website: http://www.JillStein.org

Political Notes, the Arlington Sun Gazette, Nov. 17, 20111

GREEN PARTY GETS MIXED MESSAGE FROM VOTERS: Voters sent what could be construed as a mixed message to the Arlington Green Party on Nov. 8.

The party’s County Board candidate, Audrey Clement, picked up 9,724 votes based on unofficial counts reported Nov. 9 by the State Board of Elections. That compares to 24,447 votes for Democratic County Board Vice Chairman Mary Hynes and 23,587 votes for Democratic board member Walter Tejada.

Clement’s vote total equates to 16.5 percent of all votes cast, but since each voter had two votes to spread out among candidates, Clement picked up votes from almost one-third of those who went to the polls.

http://www.sungazette.net/columns/political-notes/article_f1cb44e4-0fb8-11e1-8626-001cc4c002e0.html

Fortunes of Green Party candidates for County Board have tended to be tied to whether the Arlington County Republican Committee fields a candidate:

* Last year, with Democratic incumbent Chris Zimmerman and Republican challenger Mark Kelly on the ballot, Green Party candidate Kevin Chisholm scored 3,454 votes, or 6 percent of the total.

* In 2009, when there was no Republican on the ballot, the Green Party’s John Reeder scored 32 percent of the votes (14,970 votes) against Democratic incumbent Jay Fisette.

* In the presidential year of 2008, Reed scored 21,451 votes, or 23.3 percent, against Democrat Barbara Favola. No Republicans were in the race.

* In 2007, the last “constitutional” election year, Green Party candidate Josh Ruebner won 3,275 votes in a five-way contest that also featured Democrats Hynes and Tejada and Republicans Mike McMenamin and Joseph Warren.

In appearances on the campaign trail this year – often accompanied by political gadfly Jim Hurysz – Clement attempted to make the case that the all-Democratic County Board was too beholden to developers and too interested in funding luxury pet projects over basic services.

Arlington Connection, Oct. 26 – Nov. 1, 2011,
A Streetcar Named Disagreement
Green Party candidate disagrees with Democratic incumbents about streetcars.
By Michael Lee Pope
The Connection
Should Arlington County drop hundreds of millions of dollars on a new Columbia Pike streetcar system? The all-
Democratic County Board is solidly behind the program. But when voters head to the polls in November,
they’ll have a choice. Green Party candidate Audrey Clement says the streetcar system is a waste
of money, unnecessarily diverting a funding stream that could be used to improve bus service in
other parts of the county. “It’s a sinkhole,” said Clement. They’re taking a stream of revenue and sinking it into one project, which is a mistake.”Clement says Columbia Pike is already well served by buses, including the ART service as well as Metrobus service. As a result, she said, the county should find another use for the funding stream identified to pay for the $160 million initial capital investment in purchasing the streetcars.

But incumbent Democratic County Board member Mary Hynes said that elected officials promised the business community that the money from the add-on tax would be used for capital investment rather than funding the operation. “We made a commitment,” said Hynes. “And it wouldn’t be right to go back on that commitment.” “Before the streetcars were approved, we had a full community process where people could participate and tell us what they wanted,” said Tejada. “People overwhelmingly supported the streetcar option.”

ARLINGTON COUNTY has been moving toward installing a streetcar on Columbia Pike for almost a decade. Since that time, the county has adopted a land-use plan to revitalize Columbia Pike and approved redevelopment in anticipation of the streetcar system. Supporters of the plan say delaying the investment will add to the tax burden on the existing community because the demand for services will continue as future development fizzles. The Green Party candidate isn’t buying it. “Arlington likes to bill itself as this great place for transit, but most of the county just isn’t walkable,” said Clement. “The county hasn’t invested in bus service in the north and west parts of Arlington.”

Hynes agrees, to an extent. When asked about Clement’s criticism, she acknowledged that she would like to see increased bus service in parts of the county that are currently under-served or not on bus routes at all. But because those areas are largely suburban, she said, they don’t have the kind of density that could justify a county-subsidized bus service — especially considering the fact that the county already subsidizes existing bus service to the tune of about 80 percent.
“Much as I would like to see bus service expanded, the ridership would be very small,” said Hynes. “The question is do we want to subsidize that?”
FOR NOW, Hynes said, she feels the responsible course of action is to maintain the course of action with the streetcar system. Although the initial capital investment is far more than purchasing buses, she said that the county could potentially save money in the long run because more than one car can be operated by a single driver, saving on labor costs. And county leaders are expecting the system to lure additional development to the corridor, creating more tax revenue to fill
county coffers. Clement isn’t so sure this is working. “Our schools are already overcrowded and our roads are clogged,” said Clement. “I’m also not sure that it’s the best idea to add streetcars to streets that are already clogged with traffic.”
This issue isn’t academic. Every year, $24million of revenue is collected from the addon tax that charges more for ommercial property than residential property. Hynes and Tejada would like to see that money go to the streetcar system while Clement said she would work to divert those resources toward expanding bus service to other parts of the county. Although both of the Democratic incumbents acknowledged they would also like to see expanded bus service, they said that abandoning the streetcar system now would be the wrong move for Arlington.
“We’re trying to push the envelope with this,” said Tejada. “We really see this as the next phase of public transportation, something beyond Metro and light rail.” Hynes and Tejada also agreed that setting money aside for the Metro system must have seemed questionable, although today the rewards are clear.

Meet the
Candidates
❖ Walter Tejada, 54: A native of El Salvador, Tejada came to America as a 13-year old and has lived in Arlington
since 1992. He studied government and communications at George Mason University. He lives in the Dominion Hills
neighborhood and votes at McKinley School.

❖ Mary Hynes, 56: A native of Ames, Iowa, Hynes was raised in St. Cloud, Minn., and moved to Arlington in 1977. She has a bachelor’s degree in textiles from the College of St. Benedict. She lives in the Lyon Village neighborhood and votes in the Lyon Village Community Center.

❖ Audrey Clement, 62: A native of Gainesville, Fla., Clement was raised in Pittsburgh and moved to Arlington in 2004. She has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in political science from Temple University and a doctorate
in political science from Temple. She lives in the Westover neighborhood and votes at Swanson Middle School

http://files.connectionnewspapers.com/PDF/current/Arlington.pdf

Sun Gazette, Letter to the Editor:
If Board Isn’t Owned By Developers, It Is Rented by Them Tuesday, October 18, 2011 9:30 am

Editor: Your Oct. 13 endorsement of Democrats Mary Hynes and Walter Tejada for re-election to the County Board started out as a well-reasoned indictment of the incumbent Democrats for their failure to address substantive issues (“too stuck in the weeds on issues where the big-picture view is sorely needed”), and for their sponsorship of a failed Columbia Pike trolley idea.

Then, you rapidly went off into outer space, delivering nonsense instead of your usually excellent analysis.

You criticized Green Party candidate Audrey Clement for her notion of “the popular but laughable refrain that developers are the real power behind the scene in Arlington.”

Oh really? I would like the Sun Gazette to cite just one major development project that Democrats Hynes and Tejada have halted or opposed in their years on County Board. In the past two years, Hynes and Tejada supported a 50-percent increase in density (i.e. development) in Crystal City and increased density around the East Falls Church Metro station.

May I ask where the children of the thousands of new Crystal City residents will go to public school, with nearby Oakridge Elementary School using 116 percent of its capacity this school year?

In August, another Democratic politician, state Senate candidate Jaime Areizaga-Soto, in his primary race against current Democratic County Board member Barbara Favola, accurately described the dollars that she received from her developer friends.

If the current County Board is not “owned” by the developers and related business interests, then perhaps they are “rented”: involved in a cozy, incestuous relationship that puts the interests of the broad Arlington community last, and the profits of the developers first.

Arlington Greens have consistently said that the County Board’s regulation of developers does not take a holistic approach, counting all the social, environmental, transportation, housing and secondary financial costs of development on the Arlington community.

Our pubic schools are overcrowded; our streets are congested during rush-hour; the Metrorail system is running dangerously beyond its own rush-hour capacity; and many moderate-income residents are displaced owing to higher rents and taxes.

Under these circumstances, do we want a County Board that routinely rubber-stamps site plans, or one that looks skeptically and rigorously at any new development?

The Occupy Wall Street protests in recent months throughout the U.S. highlighted that the lower-income 99-percent of Americans are dissatisfied with an incumbent government that protects the business interests and wealthy, and shifts those costs onto the middle class.

We need an Occupy Arlington Courthouse movement to turn our rascals out of local office here in Arlington as well. Vote Green this year.

John Reeder, Arlington
Reeder is chairman of the Arlington Greens.

http://www.sungazette.net/arlington/commentary/if-board-isn-t-owned-by-developers-it-is-rented/article_d8bc5800-f977-11e0-9e06-001cc4c002e0.html

Why the Democratic Party is Corporate Lickspittle By DAVE LINDORFF

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05132011.html

An excerpt:

A new Gallup Poll conducted for USA Today earlier this week reports that a majority of Americans (52%) say that they would prefer a third party instead of the two parties, Republican and Democrat, that have dominated American politics for nearly centuries. The poll shows that one third of Democrats say there’s a need for a new political party, while 52% of Republicans say the same thing.

Meanwhile, 68% of independents say they have no use for either Democrats or Republicans and would prefer another option (no surprise there–that’s why they are not registered with either of the two major parties). Of course, the Third Party envisioned by these various groups is hardly the same. Most of the dissatisfied Democrats are almost certainly in the party’s left wing, and are people who would prefer a more left-leaning, socialist party.

Most of the reluctant Republicans are probably either libertarians who can’t stomach the Republican Party’s corporatist stance and its fondness for police state tactics and invasion of personal freedoms, or else they are the rabid right that prefers the kooky conspiracy-driven politics of the Becks, Limbaughs, Bachmans and Palins.

As for the independents, there are certainly leftists, rightists, isolationists, globalists, libertarians and kooks among them enough to populate ten new parties. That’s one reason why we still have just two parties winning all the elections. Some of these dissatisfied citizens just hold their noses and vote for the party that is less likely to make them projectile vomit in the voting booth.

Others, unable to vote for either major party’s candidates without soiling the equipment, just don’t vote. And then there are a few stalwarts who insist on doing their civic duty, march in and vote for the Constitution Party or the Libertarians or the Greens or the Socialist Workers, or they write in Mickey Mouse.

The rest just don’t vote, which is why the US has one of the lowest participation rates in elections of nearly any of the world’s nominal democracies. It’s possible that this latest poll could be signaling some kind of tectonic political event ahead. Perhaps the incongruous collection of Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce crowd and the bible thumpers, racists, misogynists and neo-fascists who populate the Republican voter rolls will finally turn on each other and split into two or three smaller units.

May 5, 2011

Arlington Greens Nominate Audrey Clement for County Board: Sixth Consecutive Year for a Green Candidate in Arlington County

For immediate release

Contact: John Reeder, Convener, Arlington Green Party
Audrey Clement, Arlington Green Party, info@AudreyClement.org, 571-830-8889

Arlington. The Arlington Green Party endorsed Audrey Clement, a seven year resident of Arlington County and long time community activist, as its nominee for Arlington County Board at a meeting on May 4, said Arlington Greens chairman John Reeder today. There are two positions open on the Board this year. “With her experience in environment, transportation planning and community affairs, Dr. Clement, who has qualified for the ballot, will provide an alternative and rational voice on County Board.” Reeder said. This is the sixth consecutive year an Arlington Green has run for County Board.

Clement runs on a platform of fiscal, social, and environmental responsibility. She proposes ending taxpayer support for the Artisphere and other vanity projects; improving the recycling rate in apartment and commercial buildings; curtailing the retail use of single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam containers; adding solar and other renewable energy systems to public buildings; preserving market-rate affordable housing; and reducing the volume of single-occupant vehicles on Arlington’s streets and roads. Audrey played a key role in the Arlington Green Party’s recent initiatives to preserve affordable housing and prevent the widening of I-66. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a doctorate in Political Science from Temple University. She served as a Congressional Fellow during the 100th Congress and is currently employed as an information technology professional.
For more information, please visit Audrey’s web site, www.AudreyClement.org.

The two, first-time Arlington Green candidates, Miriam Gennari for school board, and Kevin Chisholm for county board received excellent vote totals, exceeding expectation of many for first time candidates.

Miriam received 24 percent of the votes cast for school board against long time Democrat Sally Baird. Kevin had a more uphill battle taking on both a Republican and the incumbent Democrat Chris Zimmerman, but still received 6 percent of votes cast in the county board race.

Miriam raised the issue of environmental sustainability and minority student achievement gaps in her race for school board (Miriam is seen campaigning at the Clarendon Day Festival with Arlington Greens treasurer Audrey Clement). Miriam organized parents concerned about better hands on, science and math teaching, and better environmental practices in all school buildings. She also pledged support for the school planetarium which the school board placed on the chopping block.

At its June 2, meeting the Arlington Green Party endorsed Miriam Gennari, a ten year resident of Arlington and parent, for the Arlington School Board. Miriam has been a long time school and community activist on many youth and social issues. She has two daughters enrolled in Arlington schools, and one who graduated in 2009 attending James Madison University. Miriam spent much of her professional career marketing senior housing. She will face Democrat Sally Baird in the November 2 election. For more information, visit Miriam Gennari’s website at: http://www.gennari4greenschools.org.

At its May meeting the Arlington Green Party nominated Kevin Chisholm, a long time Arlington resident and environmental professional, as its nominee for Arlington County Board. Until recently Chisholm was the Arlington Public Schools’ chief energy manager and has broad experience in Arlington civic affairs. He is the parent of two daughters, one in a Colorado university and another in an Arlington public school. Chisholm will face Democrat Chris Zimmerman in the November 2 election. For more information, visit Kevin Chisholm’s website at: http://greensofarlington.org.