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GUEST: Matt Gonzalez, running mate alongside Ralph Nader

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader has embarked on a tour of the West Coast states as part of his presidential campaign. Nader returned to Oregon earlier this week where, four years ago, he made three failed attempts to make it onto the Oregon ballot and then filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee for sabotaging his candidacy in Oregon. Nader continues his campaign in Southern California this weekend. He will be joined by his running mate Matt Gonzalez, who he announced would join his independent ticket earlier this year. Gonzalez is the former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He narrowly lost a 2003 bid to be the first Green Party mayor of a major U.S. city. As Nader’s running mate, Gonzalez plans to call for changes to open the electoral process to third-party candidates.

Saturday May 10th 3:30 pm
Ralph Nader & Matt Gonzalez Rally
Santa Monica Bay Women’s Club
1210 4th Street Santa Monica, CA 90401
$10 contribution/ $5 student/low-income (no one turned away)
More Info Call – (213) 841-6042 or la4nader@gmail.com

Rough Transcript

Sonali Kolhatkar: Now, you gained a lot of attention in your challenge of Gavin Newsom in the mayoral race in San Francisco with the Green Party. Why run on an independent ticket now rather than on any other position with the Green Party?

Matt Gonzalez: Well, you know, Ralph Nader has never been a member of a political party and the Greens, four years ago, last time, very much wanted to nominate one of their own and so, rather than repeat that, we thought we would run on an independent ticket, and of course we are supportive of Cynthia McKinney’s effort to win the Green nomination and we think that these campaigns will work side by side.

Sonali Kolhatkar: What is the main goal, the main function that you see, of your candidacy along with Ralph Nader, in terms of either symbolic or even real change within the electoral system?

Matt Gonzalez: Well, I don’t think it is a symbolic campaign, I think it is one that is very necessary. If we don’t run, there is no problem that needs to be fixed. And if we run, everybody suddenly says hey, wait a second. Why, in this democracy, do we have election rules that don’t allow candidates with different views to run for office without some “spoiling” happening? You know, we are running against candidates who want to increase military spending, who are not supportive of single-payer health care, who are not calling for majority elections, who are not challenging corporate power in any real way, and who are talking about an occupation of Iraq. So, you know, I think it is imperative that we be out there talking about these issues.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Now, given the last 8 years in this country under Bush, wouldn’t you agree that the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats has widened, simply because the Bush administration has taken the Republican Party so far to the right? When we did have a sort of Bush/Gore match-up in 2000, I don’t think anyone expected that these two parties would split so far apart from one another, and it was assumed that the Democrats were sort of like the Republicans, the Republicrats or the Demolicans, which were these names that people came up with. Now, these two parties do seem to be pretty far from one another and given that context, isn’t it, just from a prospective of a progressive Democrat, isn’t it important to get a Democrat into office, simply to stave off a Bush-like Republican?

Matt Gonzalez: Well, I think you are making some assumptions that aren’t true. If we look at Nancy Pelosi’s rise to the speakership, she was going to have no blank check on Iraq funds without a withdrawal date and all of that rhetoric. The year before she was speaker, there was $116 billion in war appropriations. The year she was speaker that number went up by $50 billion, and this year it is going to go up probably by another $20 billion on top of that. When you look at the Patriot Act, even when the Democrats were the minority party, the reauthorization passed in the House of Representatives in early 2006, but if 44 Democrats had voted against it, it would have failed. And of course, you know, we often look at someone like Al Gore and we romanticize his legacy. You know, he was a representative at the Kyoto Conference when our government would not sign on to that, he had a rating as a Congressman from the League of Conservation Voters, 60%. You know, we had a President, Bill Clinton, who started bombing, I think, the Sudan to get out from under the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The reality is that the Democrats have been complicit in everything and so they are very good at trying to lay the blame on independent/third party candidates who want to challenge them to be an opposition party, and they need to look at themselves and take responsibility for what they have done.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, Matt, I agree. All of the points you made are absolutely on the mark, particularly if you look at Clinton-like Democrats and their allies, but given Barack Obama’s prominence, would you not say that this country, if Barack Obama does becomes President, that this country would be better off, in your opinion, under an Obama presidency than a McCain presidency?

Matt Gonzalez: Well, I don’t want John McCain to be the President, but I don’t want Barack Obama to be the President either. He opposes gay marriage, he supports the death penalty, he voted for the Patriot Act, he supported every war appropriation since he got to the Senate, and he has done other things that are disturbing. He supported a Republican class action reform law that made it harder to bring these lawsuits in State Courts. He supports limiting pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice cases. He opposed getting any royalties from multi-national mining companies that mine minerals on public lands. He didn’t think it was appropriate to ask them for any royalties, and so they pay $2.50-$5 an acre and get to keep everything under the land. And he voted for the Energy Policy Act in 2005. You know, everybody is talking about Exxon Mobil having $40 billion in profits and now we gotta to do something about it. Well, in 2005, they had $35 billion in profits and this was an act that gave more money for fossil-fuel production tax breaks and subsidies than it did for alternative energy and conservation. So, you know, when I hear him and I hear Hillary talking about, oh, if they were just the President, it would be different with these energy prices, oh, if they were just the President, the home mortgage crisis wouldn’t have happened. They have been in the United States Senate. We have got to see how they govern. They are part of the very establishment that he now, in his rhetoric, claims he is going to somehow change the culture of Washington. It is not true. He has a long history of being a very different person, and I think it is a mistake for progressives to line up behind his candidacy.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Matt, let’s talk about some of your efforts and goals regarding the electoral process itself. As it is currently set up, it certainly extremely discourages third party candidates and independent candidates like yourself. What are some of the ways, particularly around presidential voting, that you think can be made better, can make our electoral system stronger?

Matt Gonzalez: Well, I think there are two things that happened in 2000 when Bush beat Gore that need to be fixed. One was, of course, that Gore got half a million more votes than Bush, but Bush was declared the winner. So I think if you have a national popular vote measure or effort, which is under way right now, that would solve that problem. The second issue, though, isn’t being addressed, which is that we allow somebody to win the contest for President without getting a majority of votes. And if you look back at the last 100 years of presidential elections, the last 24 contests, 8 of them were won, that’s a full third, by a candidate that didn’t have over 50% of the vote. That’s true of, more often than not, Democrats rather than Republicans. And so we have to deal with that and it is very simple. You just have to have a run-off before you award Electoral College votes to someone. So in Florida, neither Bush nor Gore had over a majority, they should have a runoff to deal with that.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So this approach would keep the Electoral College system intact, but just make it more fair, in terms of how the votes are allocated?

Matt Gonzalez: You could do it that way, or you could reform the Electoral College and just do a national vote. But even if you do a national vote, you can have a situation like, let’s say Clinton in ‘92, where he was the top vote getter in the national vote, but he only had 43% of the vote, but he was declared the winner. You know, that’s not a very good democracy. It’s better to have someone get over 50%. And of course, using the Clinton example of ‘92 is ironic, because the Democrats complain about 2000, when Bush was elected, but Bush had, you know, 48% of the vote. He had five percentage points higher than Bill Clinton, and so this is a recurring problem that we have to deal with.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Finally, Matt, let’s talk about the way in which mainstream Americans and progressive Americans as well have moved in a particular direction from Nader. I mean, there was a time when Ralph Nader would be able to pack stadiums, you know, not stadiums, just have tens of thousands of people at his rallies, and that’s not happening these days. People are not showing up in large enough numbers as they were four years ago, eight years ago. What is happening, why do you think it is happening?

Matt Gonzalez: Well, I mean look. When Eugene Debbs ran for President of the United States in the early 20th century, and he would, you know, give a talk wherein he advocated that women should be allowed to vote, and he only got 5% of the vote, so 5 out of 100 listeners agreed with him. I don’t think that we conclude that, therefore, he shouldn’t have run, or he was wrong. I mean, the point is, it’s the responsibility of leaders on the left to stand up and say “Wait a second. Everybody is getting excited and jumping on this bandwagon. We need a real accounting of Senator Obama’s votes from the past, how he cast these lousy votes, and how are we going to ensure that we are not just setting ourselves up for a huge disappointment?” And, in Nader’s case, I think the quality of the people that are coming out and the response that he gets, I mean, people are generally responding saying, you know, being reminded of how much they like him. His own legislative record as an outsider with things like creating the Environmental Protection Act, or Clean Water, Freedom of Information Act. I mean, his legislative record really towers over Obama, McCain and Clinton put together. And so, I think when people get in a room, they realize this is a guy who could actually do the job and has an enormous amount of experience.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Ralph Nader in fact attended a protest this week in front of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which he was instrumental in creating in 1966, and he is now saying that that agency has been taken over by the auto industry. Matt, where do you see yourself, finally, in the Green Party, beyond this election?

Matt Gonzalez: Well, I don’t know. I’m declined to state, I think there are a number of elected Greens that I have seen that are, you know, it really started four years ago, where they wanted to do a kind of “safe states” strategy. And I think it is a psychological response to 2000, where Nader was blamed for everything, and so I don’t want to be part of a political party that can’t stand up and defend itself to those issues. And of course, there are a lot of good people in that party, doing good, important work, but I am probably going to remain a decline-to-state voter or independent and, you know, make decisions election to election.

Special thanks to Claudia Greyeyes for transcribing this interview