Two U.S. presidential candidates campaigned in Michigan this week.  John McCain’s brief return to the state was greeted with great fanfare by an audience of several hundred people at a town hall meeting in suburban Detroit.  By contrast, Cynthia McKinney spent a long weekend listening to the grievances of struggling Detroiters, engaging small crowds of local activists, courting independent media and raising money for her presidential campaign.

Cynthia who?  In case you haven’t heard, former U.S. Congress member Cynthia McKinney is the front runner for the Green Party’s U.S. presidential nomination.  Ms. McKinney would like you to consider the Greens as a viable option to win in 2008. 

No, she doesn’t expect to take the White House, but if her fledgling party can garner 5% of the national popular vote, the Green Party of the United States would become eligible for federal matching funds.  This victory would mark an important step toward breaking the two-party duopoly that stifles the American electoral process.

With all of the hype and hyperbole surrounding the 2008 presidential election, one aspect of the media’s election coverage hasn’t changed:  the Democrats and Republicans get virtually all of the press.  All other parties – the Libertarian Party, the Constitution Party, the Greens, the Prohibition Party, and even so-called “fringe” Democrats and Republicans like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul – are locked out of the national debate.

According to Fred Vitale, Michigan Green Party Chair and Cynthia McKinney’s Michigan campaign coordinator, mainstream news organizations determine who our presidential candidates will be by limiting their coverage of our choices.  “[The corporate media] says ‘the choices are: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain.  There are no other choices.’  They have systematically excluded [all other parties] from every debate and discussion.”   

This ploy affects young voters most of all.  Vitale notes that young people are moved to action by events like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the murder of Sean Bell.  However, since the Democrats and Republicans get all of the mainstream media coverage, young voters believe they are forced to choose from a limited field of viewpoints.

Cynthia McKinney boldly displays the political battle scars she earned during six terms as a Democrat from Georgia in the United States Congress.  Through much of her congressional tenure the single, African-American mother was praised by activists as a staunch social justice advocate, and vilified by the media, by Republicans and by members of her own party.  From 1992 to 2002 McKinney fought for clean fuel public buses, community oriented policing, the rights of Black farmers and election rights for disenfranchised voters.

McKinney lost her seat in 2002 after making post-911 remarks in which she asked what President Bush knew about the September 11 attacks and when did he know it. 

Georgia citizens voted McKinney back into office in 2004, but in an unprecedented move, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied McKinney’s seniority upon her return to Capitol Hill.  Undeterred, McKinney continued to be an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and the PATRIOT Act.  Again she fought for voters who had been disenfranchised during the 2004 presidential election, and pushed for the impeachment of George Bush and **** Cheney.

She lost the 2006 Democratic primary in her district to Hank Johnson, a self-described “pothole politician” who promised not to rock the boat.  In 2007 McKinney left the Democratic Party, and joined the Greens after being asked to run for the party’s presidential nomination. 

“I was more loyal than the [Democratic] Party deserved,” McKinney says.  “I think I probably am a reflection of many African-Americans who retain a visceral connection to a party that left them behind a long time ago.  I changed political parties because the political party that I was a member of totally didn’t reflect my values any longer.”

The former House member testifies that corporate interests have taken control of the public policy debate, and the Democrats and Republicans have become corporate political parties that no longer look out for the interests of the people.

Unlike the Democrats and Republicans, the Green Party favors the single-payer universal health care plan that polls say health care professionals and the American public favor.  McKinney criticizes her former party for their failure to end funding for the war in Iraq since they regained control of Congress in 2006, and she doesn’t believe Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama when they say they will complete a full withdrawal of troops from Iraq.  The Green Party advocates what McKinney calls “radical common sense” policies that would result in real change in the United States.

As a Green Party candidate, McKinney must defend the perception that the Greens were a “spoiler” in the 2000 presidential election helping George W. Bush get into office in the first place.  McKinney cites the 1 million African-Americans who voted that year, but whose votes were not counted.  She also points to the thousands of Blacks and non-Blacks who weren’t allowed to vote because Republican governors around the country provided inaccurate and illegal lists of convicted felons to Florida when many on the lists had no criminal record. 

“The Democratic Party was given the presidency by the electorate in the 2000 presidential election,” McKinney argues.  “All the Democratic Party had to do was defend itself and its voters, but the Democratic Party didn’t do that.  So don’t blame it on [the Green Party].  Lay the blame where it lay, and that is with the Republicans who stole the election and the Democrats who allowed it to happen.”

Cynthia McKinney is a practical politician who recognizes the Green Party’s strengths and weaknesses.  By the time of the November election, the party will be on the ballot in 40 different states.  The party is in need of funding and of grassroots activists who can run as candidates and spread the party’s environmentally friendly, social justice platform.

“Politics is not a fashion show.  It’s not a beauty contest.  It’s not a popularity contest.  It’s about power.  Maybe [the people] need to reject those corporate political parties and advance a political party that looks out for us.”