This is a letter I sent to the Editorial Board of the San Jose Mercury News.
Subject: Concern with your misrepresentation of Green Party in your Prop 14 endorsement
April 25th, 2010
Dear Ed Clendaniel and Randall Keith, San Jose Mercury News Editorial Board
I am a former Mayor and City Councilmember in Santa Monica and a current co-chair of the Green Party of the US. I want to express deep concern from a journalistic standpoint about how your paper portrayed the Green Party in your endorsement of Proposition 14.
As you may know, Green Parties all over the world thrive where they operate under more fair and representative electoral systems than we have in California (and the US.) If California Greens believed that operating under Prop 14 would more accurately reflect the real support in the electorate for green policies and positions than our the current system, we would likely support it.
However, the Green Party of California unconditionally opposes Prop 14, both because it discriminates against green minded voters and because it reduces choice and voice for California voters as a whole. Many of our party's members find it distasteful at best that supporters and endorsers of Prop 14 (like your paper) feel they can tell California's smaller independent parties that Prop 14 is good for them, when Prop 14 is designed to eliminate our voice and knock us off the ballot.
Specifically your editorial stated: "The top-two primary system is opposed by both major parties, since it would diminish their power. They also say it would exclude third parties from the general election — but the only member of the Green Party ever sent to the Assembly, Audie Bock of Oakland, was elected after an open primary."
This is deceptively misleading. It not just that the Democrats and Republicans say that Prop 14 would exclude California's smaller independent parties - it is those parties themselves that say this. The Libertarians, Greens and Peace & Freedom Party all oppose Prop 14.
If you want to advocate for Prop 14 that is your right. But when you state what you believe its likely impact will be on parties like the Greens, you have a responsibility as editors to say that the Green Party does not share that view. Instead you conveniently omitted this fact and tried to discredit this concern about Prop 14 by playing upon a faux anti-establishment populism against Democrats and Republicans.
Furthermore, your Audie Bock reference is neither accurate nor forthcoming. Green State Assembly candidate Bock was elected in a March 1999 election under blanket primary rules, not Prop 14 rules. In the first round of that election, she received only 8.5% in the first round, coming in 3rd. Had Prop 14 been in effect, that would have been the end of her campaign. But because the blanket primary provided for the top vote-getter from each ballot qualified party to advance to the run-off, she had a chance and won.
Perhaps most importantly in your editorial, you failed to mention that Prop 14 specifically eliminates one of the only ways California's smaller independent parties retain their ballot status - by appearing on the general election ballot and receiving at least 2% of the vote for a statewide constitutional office. How you can say these parties would benefit under Prop 14 without even mentioning this incredible negative for them is remarkable to say the least.
By your misstating and/or omitting these key facts, its hard to see your editorial in favor of Prop 14 as an honest attempt to influence voters. As such, it speaks of an abuse of the public trust we the people place in journalists and editors like yourself.
Sincerely,
Mike Feinstein, Co-Chair, Green Party of the United States
Santa Monica, CA
www.gp.org/committees/steering/sc-bios/Mike-Feinstein.php
www.cagreens.org/greenfocus/spring_10/oppose_prop_14.html
Sunday, April 25, 2010
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