Howie Hawkins, the Green Populist candidate for Congress in New York’s 25th District, left soon after the congressional forum at Maxwell Hall ended Wednesday night. Hawkins lingered for a few minutes, chatting, before he had to go.

Ralph Nader, and independent presidential candidate*, was coming to Syracuse later in the week, so Hawkins had a meeting scheduled at the Onondaga County Green Party office to plan for the meeting. It took work to get Nader here, so Hawkins said he wanted to make sure the party was prepared.

‘We’ve been talking about it, working on his scheduling,’ Hawkins said. ‘Just a lot of back-and-forth. Fifty states, where do you go? What days?’

Nader will go to The Westcott at noon today for a rally as part of a campaign stop. Both Nader and Hawkins will speak at the event. Nader is running with Matt Gonzalez, a former president of San Francisco County’s Board of Supervisors.

Nader first rose to prominence in the 1960s as a consumer advocate, writing ‘Unsafe at Any Speed,’ which helped remove the dangerous Chevy Corvair from the road.

He has run for president five times since 1992. His most prominent campaign was in 2000. Nader received just fewer than 100,000 votes in the key state of Florida, where George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by a margin of just more than 500 votes.

Nader’s profile diminished afterward, but he continues to speak out and campaign. The slogan ‘jail time, not bail time’ is written on the flyer for today’s event. Both he and Hawkins opposed last month’s emergency bailout of the financial system.

‘We’re going to talk about that,’ Hawkins said. ‘We’re going to talk about getting out of Iraq, single-payer national health insurance, environmental problems.’

*Correction appended: Due to an editing error, The Daily Orange misrepresented Ralph Nader’s political party. He is not the presidential candidate of the Green Party. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on October 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm