GREEN PARTY CANDIDATES FACE HURDLES

To say the statewide slate of Green Party candidates faces a tough election
campaign underestimates the obstacles that Republican and Democratic
domination have built in Connecticut since Henry Dutton, a Whig, was
governor in 1855.

Political experts and observers say the 2,200-member Green Party, while
addressing some major issues that concern state voters, cannot get its
message out to enough people to overcome the massive media campaigns of the
Republicans and Democrats.

But amid the expected cacophony of attack advertising in this year's
quadrennial gubernatorial race and the sizzling-hot U.S. Senate campaign,
the Greens will provoke Connecticut's electorate to think beyond
traditional party politics.

The Green Party is under funded and expected to finish no better than a
distant third in the fall races, but the party's top-of-the-ticket
candidates hope to use the upcoming Senate and gubernatorial debates to
frame public discussions on national security, health care and
environmental issues.

Clifford W. Thornton Jr., 61, a retired Glastonbury businessman whose
campaign centers on drug-policy reform, is leading a team of advocates from
throughout the state who believe that mainstream politics has failed
Connecticut and the nation, letting corporate interests dominate public
policy at taxpayers' expense and detriment. Overshadowed by the recent
gubernatorial primary -- which, in turn, was drowned out by the uproar of
the U.S. Senate primary contest between Sen. Joe Lieberman and upstart
millionaire Ned Lamont -- Thornton hopes to break into the electorate's
consciousness during the upcoming debates with Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell
and Democrat John DeStefano Jr.

That is, if he gets invited and the mainstream candidates agree.

Thornton may have an easier time than another petitioning gubernatorial
candidate Joseph A. Zdonczyk of the Concerned Citizens Party, who received
only 8,792 of the nearly one million votes cast in the 1998 election.

Ralph A. Ferrucci, a 34-year-old truck driver and artist from New Haven, is
the Green's U.S. Senate candidate, who has the formidable task of getting
voters to notice him.

The daily mud slinging of the Lamont-Lieberman race has also eclipsed
former Derby mayor and little-known Republican Alan Schlesinger's attempt
to gain traction beyond the 4 percent rating in the recent Quinnipiac
University Poll.

Ferrucci believes that voters are ready to listen to someone talk about
issues that really concern them, such as health care.

"I want to talk about a real universal health-care system," Ferrucci said
recently. "A single-payer plans that takes insurance companies out of the
system and makes health care the first priority."

He said that the way elections are financed, with special-interest money
fueling mainstream campaigns such as Lieberman's, make the fight for
healthcare access tougher.

"The problem is universal health care and campaign finance reform have to
come together," Ferrucci said. "You have to take the lobbyists out of
Washington, set up public financing instead of the insurance companies and
pharmaceuticals financing the elections."

He believes that the attack ads hurling back and forth between Lamont and
Lieberman are turning off the electorate. "I talking about the issues that
people care about while these commercials attack each other on what they do
not stand for, while ignoring most of the concerns of the working people in
Connecticut."

???????????????????? ? ? Thornton, the first African-American to run for
governor, said during a recent interview that current national and
statewide drug policy has created a wasteful prison culture that ensnares a
disproportionate percentage of inner-city residents, let suburbanites off
the hook and ignores the overriding need for better drug treatment.

"It's not that today's drug laws are racist, but it's the application
that's racist," Thorton said. "What I'm talking about is the double
standard for people in the justice system. Anyone that supports our present
system is directly responsible for its results."

Thornton said that while initial signals seem to include him in the
anticipated upcoming gubernatorial debates, he's concerned that Rell and
DeStefano might work to keep he and other minor-party candidates like
Zdonczyk, off the stage.

or Democrats."

He said that while the Lamont and Lieberman race has garnered national
attention on Connecticut and the war in Iraq, the domestic war on drugs is
being annoyed.

"Our own house is not in order and we're telling people about democracy
around the world?" Thornton said, adding that his main platform is the
"legalization, medicalization and decriminalization" of drugs including
marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

"Once we put the models in place at the same time, crime and violence is
gone over night," Thornton said, adding that drug dealers would then be
given chances to back to school and train for jobs.

"If one does not understand racism, classism, white privilege, terrorism
and the war on drugs, what these terms mean and how these work, then
everything else you do understand will only confuse you," he said. "The war
on drugs is a world destabilizer. The most-pressing issue facing the state
of Connecticut and this country is not the war in Iraq, and I respect the
human toll the war has taken."

Thornton expects to run the campaign for $50,000 and to at least blaze a
trail for future Green Party candidates.

"The true test of a real leader is how many leaders he creates in the
process," Thornton said. "I'm not talking about Lamont Light, the Lieberman
Light or any of those rich white boys. Going along to get along makes one
complicit."

But political analysts and observers say that beyond adding some issues to
the campaign, third parties in general and the Green Party in particular
have little impact.

Since the mid-1850s, there are been only two minor-party governors,
Alexander H. Holley in 1857 and 1858 of the American Republican Party and
Lowell P. Weicker, who invented A Connecticut Party for his successful 1990
campaign. Otherwise, it has been a string of 31 Republicans and 15 Democrats.

Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said he
doesn't include third-party candidates in telephone surveys unless they
have prompted some amount of popularity.

"They have to show things like fund-raising, media coverage, participation
in debates and other issues that they show they could significantly affect
the outcome of the election," Schwartz said last week. "Historically, they
have not performed well at the voting booths and they get scant attention
in the news media."

Schwartz admitted that third parties can raise important issues that the
mainstream politicians avoid.

Gary L. Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at
Sacred Heart University, said last week that Weicker and other independents
such as Ross Perot and Teddy Roosevelt, are the few exceptions to the rule
that third-party candidates are doomed.

"And those who are successful often come out of the major parties," said
Rose who teaches a class in political parties. Part of the problem for
minor parties is that the two main parties write state and national
election rules, he said.

"Even though we have a lot of independents out there, they usually identify
themselves as Republicans or Democrats," Rose said. "It seems that the
American people break into two broad political factions. The parties that
have existed have also been broad enough to encapsulate the broad range of
their interests."

Rose said the best that third parties can hope for is to shape the debate
and possible force the mainstream pols to accept, or steal, their ideas.

"The Progressives raised the issues of civil-service reform, creating
primary elections, providing Social Security and even minimum-wage
legislation," Rose said. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt split from the Republican
Party and formed the Progresive to run as independent president campaign
nicknamed the "Bull Moose" party.

On Thornton's drug-reform proposal, Rose said he hasn't seen any polling
data indicating that state residents are concerned about it.

"That's hardly front and center in either Connecticut or American politics
today," Rose said. "I have serious doubts whether it gets traction in
Connecticut."