Statewide convention doings

I'm blogging the convention as it happens: first are reports. A couple of us called in, Soren Wuerth calling out of Chevak and me out of Ester. The connection was good, but faint, so it was hard to hear people in the room unless they were right next to the phone.

The legal report concerns our lawsuits; we won the ballot access case, but the state appealed, it looks like we're going to do okay on that. Activities report: not much. The Anchorage Greens revived: campaign finance reform was an active issue, clean water project (sewage is only given primary treatment before being dumped into Cook Inlet).

The new statewide PO Box is 112947, Anchorage, AK 99511, phone number is 907.745.6962. A new e-mail listserve was created by Tom Macchia for statewide. The Fairbanks-area Greens started a new website and this blog, but lost their legal standing as a political party due to lack of officers and reporting.

Next was the nomination and election of officers. The issue of who is a spokesman for the party came up; this should be the party chair. Sykes has been sort of the public face of the party, which is the role of the co-chair. The two busiest officers are the secretary and the treasurer (in terms of paperwork). Since this is an election year, there is more reporting for the treasurer to do. Judy Moss was nominated and unanimously approved for treasurer.

Soren suggested combining two positions and creating a secretary/treasurer position, but we've not done that before, according to Jim Sykes. Greg Nothstine was nominated but not present yet, so nominations were held open.

Nominations for co-chair were opened, Soren Wuerth and Steve Cleary were nominated. Cleary declined, but nominated Diane Benson. Benson also declined. Tom Macchia was nominated by Wuerth; Shirley Buchholtz was nominated but she declined. So now Soren Wuerth and Tom Macchia are our new co-chairs.

Next on the agenda was the listserve. Tom Macchia is our new listmaster, and those who wish to sign up can contact him at tommacchia [at] yahoo.com to sign up. This discussion segued into outreach using the web and blogs, and going to speak at schools.

Diane Benson spoke; she's considering running for US Congress against Don Young. I hope she does. She's an articulate, principled woman who would be an improvement in any race. There was quite the discussion about running candidates for various offices and strategies being used in other states. We discussed the merits of running lots of candidates in as many offices as possible, versus concentrating on only a few, high-profile races. I prefer the shotgun approach myself, aiming for many small races, as I think that one is more likely to gain a small office and then be able to build on that experience later on for bigger races.

I signed off after this discussion; my poor ear was beginning to hurt after an hour and a half on the phone.