Matt Reichel – the Green Party candidate for Congress in the April 7th special election in Chicago, who has previously been covered here and here -participated in a short televised debate against his opponents on Wednesday night. Both the Democrat and Republican who Reichel is competing against were there, on a 13-minute segment on a public broadcasting channel.
Reichel repeatedly pushed for cutting the Pentagon’s budget by 50 percent in five years and investing the saved money in green public works projects, such as expanding public transportation. He said that he opposed the bank bailouts, but favored the bailout of auto companies. In addition, Reichel said that he very much favors a path to citizenship for so-called illegal immigrants, adding that there is “no such thing as illegal human beings.” This is a particularly interesting statement, considering that the Republican is vehemently anti-illegal immigration and the founder of the Illinois Minutemen.
The rest of the debate:
Thank you Gregg. Somebody pass out progressive libertarian alliance strategy leaflets. Progressive voters are not stupid; quite the contrary. They’ll try it. It is too late for me to come out there & do it. & I am hesitant unless the candidate publicly endorses the strategy.
I think Robert may be right in this particular instance. IF Reichel is not so un-Libertarian as to be objectionable to that party’s leadership, it might be worth having someone on his staff contact the local LP to see if support could be found for his candidacy.
Green, you do not have a libertarian competitor, correct? Declare you support the progressive libertarian alliance strategy. Claim the Libertarian vote from the republican. Claim the progressive vote from the democrat. All your good ideas don’t mean much UNLESS YOU WIN.
Got this email from the Reichel campaign today:
That Pulido woman is scary.
Hopefully Reichel will run for some local office (unless he pulls an upset victory because of the tiny number of voters or something like that). The Illinois GP has impressed me, but they still haven’t elected that many people.
Reichel is really impressive in that video. The problem he’s going to face is that Quigley is also very impressive for someone like me who’s a big-government progressive. Geogehegan supporters and others just aren’t going to have enough trouble with Quigley to want to cast a protest vote against him. I’d probably vote for Reichel if I lived in the district, but only because I support third parties and want them to get high vote totals, and because loony Pulido isn’t going anywhere.