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The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) is a national politicial party in the United States and a federation of affiliated state Green Parties. It is recognized by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as the national committee of the Green Party.
GPUS is part of an international Green Movement, affiliated with both the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas and the Global Greens.
GPUS should not be confused with the Greens/Green Party USA (G/GPUSA), a separate organization, unaffiliated with GPUS. The two organizations do share a similar set of values, and a common history; but their structures are radically different, and they promote significantly different proposals, reflected in their distinct political platforms.
G/GPUSA holds positions that are to the left of those of GPUS and is viewed by some, even within GPUS, as Socialist or Anarchist in nature. Many claim that GPUS holds less radical, more mainstream positions.
Another difference is that, while both organizations may be active in both nonviolent direct action and the electoral system, GPUS is much more involved in the electoral system. G/GPUSA is sometimes mistaken for GPUS because, while GPUS owns the Internet domain name, G/GPUSA owns the Internet domain name.
GPUS, with 44 affiliated state Green Parties, more than 200 elected officials, and about 300,000 registered voters nationwide, is substantially larger and better known than G/GPUSA. GPUS, not G/GPUSA, is the organization that nominated and ran Ralph Nader for President and Winona LaDuke for Vice-President of the United States in 2000 (although at the time GPUS was known as the ASGP, or 'Association of State Green Parties').
Largely inspired by the success of the German Green Party, political activists in the United States formed the Committees of Correspondence in 1984, later to be known as the Green Committees of Correspondence (GCOC). The GCOC adopted the Ten Key Values as their philosophical basis, loosely based on the Four Pillars that most European Greens use. They organized themselves around bio-regional lines.
The GCOC held national gatherings of Green activists in 1987, then annually starting in 1989. At the 1991 national gathering, the GCOC was disbanded, and a new structure was put into place, named the Greens/Green Party USA (G/GPUSA), which was organized with delegates from local and regional green groups, in addition to individual members.
In 1990, Jim Sykes ran as a Green for governor in Alaska. He received 3.3% of the vote, enough to grant official ballot status to the Green Party in the state. The California Green Party would follow, attaining official ballot status in 1991. From 1992 to 1995, the number of candidates in local and state-wide elections identifying themselves grew, in addition to the number of organized local and state-wide Green groups.
At the 1995 national gathering of the GPUSA in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a measure to run a candidate for president was defeated. However, those who wished to run a candidate for president continued to pursue this possibility. They selected Ralph Nader as their presidential candidate and Winona LaDuke as their vice-presidential candidate. The pair were on the ballot in twenty-two states and received 685,128 votes, or 0.7% of all votes cast.
In the aftermath of the 1996 election, representatives from eleven state Green Parties joined to form the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP). The focus of the ASGP, while still including issue activism and non-electoral politics, was more clearly on getting Greens elected. In the years from 1997 to 1999, more local, regional, and state-wide Green parties continued to form. Many of these parties affiliated themselves with both the ASGP and the G/GPUSA.
In the year 2000, the ASGP nominated Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke for President and Vice-President again. This time, the pair were on 44 state ballots and received 2,882,897 votes, or 2.7% of all votes cast .
In October of 2000 (during the campaign), a proposal was made to alter the structures of the ASGP and G/GPUSA to be complementary organizations with the ASGP focusing on electoral politics and the G/GPUSA focusing on issue advocacy. The Boston Proposal (so named because it was negotiated at Boston in the days before the first presidential debate) was passed by the ASGP at its next annual gathering, but did not pass at the G/GPUSA Congress. The ASGP then changed its name to "The Green Party of the United States" and was granted status as the official National Committee of the Green Party by the FEC in 2001. Today the G/GPUSA survives as a small membership organization, led by the few Greens who opposed the Boston Proposal. Though they often represent themselves to the contrary, they do not represent the vast majority of Greens, and only a handful of state parties are affiliated with them.
In 2002, John Eder became the highest elected official in the history of the Green Party in the United States when he was elected to the Maine State House of Representatives. He was personally congratulated by Ralph Nader on election night.
Late in 2003, Ralph Nader declared that he would not be the party's nominee for president in 2004. However, in February, 2004, Nader announced his intention to run as independent. A few months later, Nader stated that he would accept the "endorsement" rather than the "nomination" of the Green Party, as well as of other third parties. Several prominent Greens, including Peter Camejo and Lorna Salzman, endorsed this plan (Camejo would later accept a position as Nader's vice-presidential running-mate). The most notable opposition came from lawyer and activist David Cobb, who wanted to run a campaign focused on building the party. On June 26, the Green Party of the United States convention rejected the idea of an endorsement for Nader and chose Cobb as its presidential candidate, with Pat LaMarche of Maine as the candidate for Vice-President.
A vigorous debate continues within the Green Party regarding the place of the party in what many see as a dysfunctional electoral system.
The Green Party is most popular in the far-western and northeastern United States, as judged by percentage vote in the 2000 presidential election and number of candidates elected . The California Green Party has the largest number of greens, receiving 405,722 votes in the 2000 presidential elections, and electing 67 of the 204 office-holding greens nation-wide as of January, 2004. In the 2002 Governor's race, the city of San Francisco gave more votes to the Green Party candidate than to the Republican candidate. The president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Matt Gonzalez, is also a Green Party member. The Alaskan Green Party has the highest number per capita of Greens, receiving 10% of the votes statewide in the 2000 presidential elections.
In the 2004 presidential election, the candidate of the Green Party of the United States for President is lawyer David Cobb of Texas, and its candidate for vice-president is labor activist Pat LaMarche of Maine.
Ralph Nader, the Party's 2000 candidate for President, had announced an independent candidacy, but he did attempt to gain the Party's 2004 endorsement. When that did not happen, his announced Vice Presidential running mate, Peter Camejo, said, following the Green Party convention in Milwaukee, "I'm going to walk out of here arm in arm with David Cobb."
Although many Party members were upset and expressed "embarrassment" that Nader was not their candidate, others said that the Party needed to concentrate on creating a party at the local level, instead of trying to win the presidency.
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