In the 2002 Senate race, did the Greens play a role in Mondale's loss?

[wyldwolf]

In 2002, Ed McGaa won the Minnesota Green Party endorsement, with a two-thirds majority, despite an effort by their former Vice Presidential candidate Winona LaDuke and others to get the party to forego a Senate race against Wellstone.

McGaa disagreed with the Green Party platform on the war on terrorism. As a Korean War vet, he says he believes constructive military intervention is sometimes warranted. He remains proud of his 110 combat missions in Vietnam and is still a staunch anti-communist. Some response was needed to September 11, he adds.

McGaa has also stirred up some controversy for accusing Wellstone of being "more loyal to Israel than he is to the United States"-a statement Wellstone supporters and some Greens view as anti-Semitic.

McGaa takes umbrage at the accusation, insisting that he is "pro-Jewish, if you want to put it that way," and merely thinks the United States should ease up on foreign aid. His comments on Wellstone's disability (the Senator announced this year that he has a mild form of M.S.)-suggesting Wellstone might not survive the election season-didn't go over particularly well, either. A polished politician he is not. But then neither is his role model, Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0525-09.htm


DU'ers from Minnesota - did McGaa cause any ripples?

[Radical Activist]

1. There was massive fraud in that election

Wellstone won. And I don't mean the kind of hard to prove and might not make a difference anyway kind of fraud that people talk about in Ohio. It was massive, including the fact that they counted absentee ballots for the Republican, but not those who voted for Wellstone.

But yes, it was the ultimate stupidity for the Greens to run someone against the most progressive Democrat in the US Senate. They have no sense of strategy.

[wellstone dem]

2. The greens I know were really irritated with him for running

and as I recall the limited number of votes for The Green candidate was not enough to tip the election.

[dodger501]

3. My personal feeling is that it was the Wellstone memorial

I listened to Tom Barnard rail mightily on the commute in, the morning after. Just shook my head and a little eye-rolling.
When I got in, several guys came up to me, shaking with rage, saying they were going to vote for Norm "The Weasel" Coleman because of that.
To the first guy, I said something like that's a pretty asinine reason to vote for the polar opposite. After a while, I noticed a pattern.
This stuff spread like wildfire over Nazi radio and everywhere else and we had no forceful voice countermanding it.