Green Party Watch Radio will host South Carolina’s only elected Green, Eugene Platt, this Sunday from 3 to 3:30 East Coast Time.
Platt is at the center of a legal battlefield. He has been sued in state court by Charleston County Democratic Party Chair George Tempel to keep him off the November ballot. Platt and the South Carolina Green Party have had to go to federal court against the South Carolina Election Commission to overturn a staff decision to bar Platt from the November ballot.
Platt will join Democratic Party nominee Anne Peterson Hutto and incumbent Republican Wallace B. Scarborough once barriers to the voter’s rights to a legal third choice are removed.
Platt, who ran as the Democratic Party nominee against Scarborough in 2006, losing by fewer than 50 votes out of more than 12,000 cast, has needlessly been slandered by the Charleston Post and Currier/s reporter with the phrase Political observers don’t expect Platt to place any better than third should his name appear on the ballot… without naming who these “political observers” are.
A paraphrased quote from “new Green” Eugene, in speaking to a Working Families Party group this spring: “I only lost by 40 votes last time, and I noticed that the Green Party had 57 straight ticket votes, so I kind of regretted that I didn’t go after their nomination too.”
Platt was a nominee of the Working Families Party in both his Assembly races. WFP went to him the day after he lost the Democratic primary and asked him to withdraw from the WFP line, which he did. Now he’s “Green” all the way (including his socks), while hastily revising some of his publically adopted positions on issues, such as supporting the SC constitutional ban against gay marriage. There’s no principle at work here, simply vanity and an endless need for attention.
well, actually it does.
And adopting a third party label usually isn’t a convenience, even in non-partisan races. It’s the sort of thing people go after you for.
He’s an elected Green, just as my former Mayor was an elected Libertarian, even though it was a non-partisan race.
He’s an elected official and he’s a member of the Green Party. That’s the only requirement.
Eugene Platt is not an “elected Green.” The only offfice to which he’s ever been elected is the non-partisan office of James Island Public Service Commissioner. His very recent adoption-of-convenience of a Green Party label does not (and never will) make him an “elected Green.”