Pentel seeks governor position as candidate for Green Party

Brad Swenson Bemidji Pioneer
Published Friday, August 18, 2006

Minnesota citizens — “the common people” — remain locked out of their government, says Ken Pentel, the Green Party of Minnesota's endorsed candidate for governor.

Third parties offer citizens more choices, and allow people to vote for their core issues, issues not beholden to corporate profits or political party promises, he said Thursday night.

“What do third parties have to offer?” he asked about 30 Bemidji Greens who held a potluck dinner at Diamond Point Park. “We may not have a lot of money … but we have a sense of vision that's practical, that's sustainable, that establishes security long-term for generations yet to be born.”

Those values “are a natural magnet for people in our society today,” he said.

Pentel, making his third run at the governor's office, finds himself this time running as a minor party candidate, without the automatic ballot access that is given to the DFL, Republican and Independence parties. It means possible exclusion from debates, joining the lower-rung status candidates have with the Libertarian, Constitution or American parties.

The party needs to have one of its five statewide candidates this fall to get at least 5 percent of the vote to regain major party status — and automatic access to the ballot for its candidates.

That's why one of Pentel's three major issues is campaigning for “honest democracy,” which includes proportional voting and instant runoff voting, both ballot procedures designed to give more power to third parties.

“What this campaign is about is honesty,” he said. “What we want to do is establish an honest democracy and an honest economy that leads toward healing our relationship to the Earth and to our communities.”

Minnesota, in the 2004 election cycle, saw $42 million spent on lobbying legislators, Pentel said, putting the state fourth in total spending and No. 1 in the nation in per capita lobbying. That figure rose to $54 million in 2005.

“It interferes with the translation of the people,” he said. “People vote and then go to work. Then, massive global wealth pours in and interferes in the public's legislative body. This global wealth has no loyalty to this state, to this community, nothing. They have no loyalty to the Earth, they have no loyalty to justice.”

Quarterly profits are more important to them, he said, promoting a policy that “is literally killing big chunks of the planet we live on.”

The dominance of big money in politics has caused people to pull away, believe they can no longer make a difference, Pentel said. “That amount of wealth getting involved in our government locks out the citizen, and the citizen no longer has a role.”

The system needs to be reformed to bring citizens back into controlling what their government does, and to promote solutions at the local level, he said.

“We need to re-establish the collective courage to remove this central money from the political body so the system can breathe and the citizens can then be reflected in their government, and the policies that the common good wants manifests literally in our lifetime,” Pentel said.

Under the current system, a voter's choice could have 49 percent of the vote but end up with “zero representation,” he said. “That is not democratic.”

Rather, the Green Party seeks proportional voting, “multi-party democracies, so if you have 10 candidates running for Legislature, and your party or candidate gets 10 percent of the vote, you get one seat in the state Legislature,” he said.

“What happens then is young, poor, upcoming parties don't have to get this huge 50 percent hurdle to get their values reflected in the legislative body,” he said.

The Green Party also seeks instant runoff voting, where voters rank their candidates. “Some of the most oppressive words in our system right now are ‘don't waste your vote' or ‘don't be a spoiler,” Pentel said. “In an instant runoff system, there's no primary. For single-seat offices, you go in the booth and you rank your favorites. If your first choice doesn't win, maybe your second choice wins.”

Such a system allows the voter to “vote exactly how you feel, and not worry about your vote being thrown away,” he said.

With voting system reforms, plus publicly funding campaigns rather than special interest funding, “now the democracy has the chance to breathe,” Pentel said. “Now the citizens have the chance to reflect their values into their government.”

The Green Party hopes to regain major party status by offering options in such races as U.S. Senate, governor, attorney general, state auditor and secretary of state, Pentel said in an interview.

“We've given people options to choose from,” he said. “If they believe in the Green Party values of non-violence, democracy, justice and ecology, then they will have a pathway to vote in that direction.”

The party is also working to build a base in a short period of time, through grass-roots organizing and person-to-person contact, plus cable access television, radio and seeking access to debates.

“We have a lot of goodwill from previous campaigns,” Pentel said. “So we have a lot of people who know about the Green Party who didn't know about us before and they're more than willing to vote for us because it's an option on the ballot.”

The public resonates with getting “big money” out of politics, he said.

Pentel's lieutenant governor running mate is Danene Provencher, a Green Party activist, social worker and small business owner.

Aside from seeking honest democracy, the team is also campaigning for single-payer universal health care and for energy independence through a renewable energy policy for wind, solar and biomass and that rewards energy conservation.

More than 80 percent of the public for the last 50 years has wanted health care for everyone, Pentel said. “But it doesn't translate into the system. Every other democracy in the world has health care for all its citizens.”

Under single-payer health care, “menu” fees would be set for procedures and medicines and advertising and marketing would be banned. “You go in, you've got your health card, you get your procedure, you swipe your card — the bill goes to the state and the state pays the doctor, the hospital, you see no paperwork. Deal done.”

The state also needs to promote energy conservation through tax incentives or rewards for saving energy, he said.

In agriculture, Pentel said that “if you are local, sustainable, organic, taking care of habitat and groundwater, and so on, you pay no property tax in Minnesota.”

Energy investments need to be based in energy efficiency, he said. “Energy diversification that leads to local self-reliance that's efficient and renewable is directly counter to the dominant moneyed interests that control our policy making right now, who want central control, market control and poisonous fuels.”

He said he return to the progressive tax brackets of the 1970s, which would raise $6 billion to $7 billion in additional dollars. “Taxation would highly tax those that poison, and reduce taxes on those who would reduce poison. It would highly tax those who are wasteful in energy, reduce taxes” on those who conserve.

The meeting also had one other Green Party candidate speak — Bryce Ronnander, who is opposing Beltrami County District 2 Commissioner Joe Vene.

Ronnander, who said he's making his first run at elective office, had four issues with the county — he doesn't like the direction of county timber policy, which he said is making “all county land to be used as a corn field,” believes the county is taking the wrong tact in funding for library services, notes Vene's support for a regional events center which he believes “environmentally is not a good project,” and that the new County Administration Building included no bike racks for citizens.