McKinney Goes Green

What kind of strategy are you employing for the campaign?
There are currently about 200 members of the Green Party who are elected officials. These are mostly local elections. The Green Party does not yet have representation on the federal level, but it's quite a successful "minor" party. With 5 percent of the electorate, it can move from minor party status to major party status [and qualify the Green Party for federal funds]. So our goal is to get onto as many ballots as we can, since then achieving a 5 percent goal becomes possible. When I got to Washington D.C., I realized that public policy was made around the table. The 5 percent puts another seat at the table.

Tell me about your prospects for getting this 5 percent, since polls are showing that all the third parties combined are only at about 1 percent. That's a pretty big gap.
Yes, we have our work cut out for us. But I think the fact that Congress has failed to stop funding the war and is aiding and abetting in the illegal spying against American citizens, combined with the fact that we don't have a livable wage, don't have single-payer health care system, are not subsidizing higher education as we should be, have not seen a cogent energy policy come through Congress, are seeing people losing their homes in a record foreclosure mortgage crisis -- and predatory lending has not been tamed -- the Bush tax cuts have not been rolled back, then we certainly can't trust those who created the problems to solve them.

A lot of those issues sound similar to the Democratic Party platform.
I don't think that assessment is accurate. The Democrats stand for what we've been given now. While many Democratic activists may want a single-payer health care system, neither one of the final two Democratic candidates who were able to garner so many delegate votes were supportive of a single-payer health care system. They have also taken impeachment off the table.

There are quite a few prominent third-party candidates running this year, including your former fellow Congressman from Georgia, Bob Barr, over at the Libertarian Party. Is he basically the conservative version of you?
The only thing I would say about Bob is that it's interesting that Georgia is so well-represented in the non-major party lineup. Of course, I worked in the Congress for a long time with Bob Barr and, in fact, members of the Libertarian Party have reached out to me on several occasions this year and I expect there will be more mutual reaching.

So you might actually be working together on some issues?
I didn't say that.

What does mutual reaching mean then?
It means that where there is the possibility of having discussions, then I wouldn't turn down discussions. There's nothing afoot, if that's what you mean. I would take it issue by issue, and see what the future brings.