THIRD PARTY CANDIDATES DEBATE AT STORRS

UConn hosted a small gubernatorial debate on Friday evening sponsored
by Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). Several people gathered
into College of Liberal Arts and Sciences room 105 shortly before 6
p.m. to hear a spirited exchange between Cliff Thornton of the Green
Party and Joe Zdonczyk of the Concerned Citizens Party. Incumbent
Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Democratic nominee John DeStefano
were both also invited to participate in the debate, but neither was
able to attend.

The two minor-party candidates spoke for one full hour on a variety of
topics, ranging from marijuana legalization to the influence of money
on politics. Stephanie Molden of the SSDP asked most of the evening's
questions, though one excited member of the audience also made some
inquiries.

"The Green Party is a party of social and environmental justice,"
Thornton said during his opening statement. "We are a party that is
looking to make great change in the state of Connecticut for our
educational, environmental and social programs."

Thornton also made note of his plan to provide free college tuition to
Connecticut students.

"Over the years I've seen the state of Connecticut deteriorate in so
many areas," Zdonczyk said. "And it's simply because the major parties
have their own agendas. They don't know what it is that's affecting
the people in the state of Connecticut. All they know is, they're
funded by sources and those sources expect, after the elections, to
have an ear. They're the ones that the governor listens to, who funded
their campaigns."

Thornton agreed that the major-party candidates are not in touch with
average citizens.

"These two people that are running for office have virtually shut us
out of the debates and all types of media," Thornton said. "Everywhere
I go where DeStefano is, I get the loudest ovations and I get the
thumbs up from the crowd. It just goes to show you that he's not
speaking to the people. Rell, I don't know where she is, she never
appears anyway."

Thornton and Zdonczyk were both recently kept out of the state's
televised gubernatorial debates, even though the League of Women
Voters, an original sponsor of the first debate, had invited Thornton
to attend. The New London Day, the other sponsor of the event,
accepted responsibility for excluding Thornton, saying that he did not
have enough financial contributors to warrant a podium.

Though the Day took blame for barring Thornton, DeStefano's campaign
had reportedly threatened not to participate in the first two debates
if minor-party candidates would also appear and even publicly
suggested that their presence would serve only as a distraction.
Similarly, Gov. Rell refused to meet more than twice for what her
staff called "an extended series of debates."

Even though they were prohibited from standing alongside the
major-party candidates, both of the third-party nominees showed up at
the first gubernatorial debate in New London's Garde Arts Center.
Zdonczyk got on stage before the event to address the crowd for a
short time before politely being escorted out. Thornton rallied with
dozens of Green Party supporters outside, in a scene that was filmed
for a commercial later aired right before the second debate.

At UConn, discussing the topic of transportation, Thornton suggested
that Connecticut invest in mass transit undertakings like railcars.
Zdonczyk said he would like to see more people working at home, since
that would cut back greatly on the need to commute.

The candidates were eventually asked for their opinions on medical
marijuana.

"I would like to see the outright legalization of marijuana," Thornton
said. "And along with it, hemp, because hemp is one of those
alternative energy sources that we could possibly use to help with the
energy problem in this particular state and in the country. It
produces much more biodiesel-type fuel than corn for a lot less money."

Zdonczyk sharply disagreed with Thornton over marijuana.

"It would seem to me that there are all kinds of medical
alternatives-you talked about alternative energy-I would think there
are all kind of other alternatives to ease the pain and suffering of
people who are insistent upon using marijuana as their form of relief.
Marijuana, I believe, is a gateway drug," Zdonczyk said.

"Cannabis has been used for medical purposes for thousands of years
all over the world," Thornton said. "So when you speak of marijuana,
marijuana has the ability and is much cheaper than synthesized drugs.
This is why they don't want to make it legal. It's cheaper, in many
respects it's much more effective and [another] reason they really
don't want marijuana legalized is because of hemp. Now, you talk about
money and say it's all about money. This is all we're talking about.
Any time that you talk about legalizing, medicalizing or
decriminalizing drugs, you're only talking about one thing-the
redistribution of economic power."

Unexpectedly, one male member of the audience interjected and began
speaking to the candidates for a few minutes.

"I feel that there's much bigger issues at hand than a lot of these
things that we are saying, because the structure of power is so
small," Hugo Barecca, a 3rd-semester philosophy major, said.

The young man criticized the Federal Reserve banking system, as well
as the passage of legislation establishing military commissions for
the War on Terror that deny illegal enemy combatants habeas corpus and
the right to cite the Geneva Conventions.

"You're frustrated," Thornton said.

"I'm very frustrated with the system," Barecca.

"Right and I hear your frustration," Thornton said. "However, if you
don't participate in this thing called democracy, then you're just as
much at fault as they are."

Thornton linked the audience member's fears about diminishing American
freedoms back to the subject of drugs.

"When you look at it and you look at the decades of this Drug War, you
will see the erosion of our rights through this Drug War," Thornton
said. "You will see the conspiracy theory that allows a police officer
to frisk you or stop you just because he thinks you may have drugs. So
the Drug War is at the core of most of our problems. If we didn't have
the Drug War, we couldn't have passed the PATRIOT Act."

"Reasonably, what you're saying is, we've got to get back to our
Constitutional fundamentals," Zdonczyk said. "You know, when the
Constitution was put together, it strictly defined the limits of those
three branches of government-the executive, judicial and legislative.
And also the Ninth Amendment and the Tenth Amendment, particularly,
say in effect that all of the authority that is vested in the central
branches is strictly defined and that all other rights, which is what
you're talking about, are reserved to the states and/or the people."

The Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "The enumeration
in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny
or disparage others retained by the people."

The Tenth Amendment reads: "The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

"Going back, if you're looking at the Constitution, you have to look
back even further than that," Zdonczyk said. "You have to look at the
Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence: it was the
birth certificate of this country. Now what does it say? We have certain
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of
happiness, and that government is created to assure these rights."

The candidates were then asked by the SSDP's Stephanie Molden to
define their land ethic.

"I don't want to see any more roads built anywhere," Thornton said. "I
want to see mass transit. I want to use the farmland that we have to
produce hemp. I want to make sure that, when we start building
businesses, we don't start changing the codes."

"The other thing that is very important is eminent domain," Thornton
said. "Eminent domain has changed over the last ten years. Eminent
domain is supposed to be when the government takes over private
property and uses it for highways, libraries or schools. But now they
are taking away people's personal property and putting businesses in
there. I'm gonna stop that. I don't want that to happen."

By comparison, Zdonczyk denied that government could assert any
authority over personal property.

"Going back once again to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,
that is involved in that whole concept," Zdonczyk said. "Life and
liberty, how you use what you're going to earn by your own sweat and
toil. That's a personal thing and it belongs to you. And the idea that
you could be working a lifetime to put together a few bucks and buy a
piece of property and live there and make it your home, the idea that
some governmental agency is going to come in and, just by reason of
this vague concept of the greater good being served if we can grab
your property, is repulsive. And what we need to do is understand
that, once the government comes in and asserts its supposed authority
to grab your own home, we're in serious trouble. And we have to fight
this for as long as we have a breath, because once we give up that
right, that is just giving away that authority over our property."

Both men referenced Rell and DeStefano in their closing
statements.

"I'm running as a taxpayer advocate," Zdonczyk said. "I'm face-to-face
with two big spenders who have absolutely no concept about where that
money comes from and how hard we have to work to get it."

"If you're not satisfied with Tweedledee and Tweedledum, then listen,"
Thornton said in his concluding remarks. "What I'm going to do, if
elected to office, is challenge the federal government to bring these
drugs inside the law by setting up programs like heroin maintenance
and cocaine maintenance that have been effective not only in Europe,
but in Canada. The next thing I'm going to do is shore up education
within this state. And the third thing that I'm going to do, I'm going
to have an audit on every single department, over the last ten years,
to find out where they're spending the money and how they're spending
it."

While neither of the two minor-party candidates is expected to win the
election, third parties have traditionally helped to push taboo issues
like slave abolition and labor rights into mainstream political
discourse. During an interview with the Daily Campus last January,
Thornton said that he would personally be happy to secure only five to
10 percent of the vote.

The election for this office and others is scheduled to happen on
Tuesday, Nov. 7.