Factoring in the third-party ticket

If one of the major-party gubernatorial candidates' staffers got arrested, it would likely be something the candidate wanted to keep quiet.

He would probably not, for instance, broadcast the arrest on his campaign Web site.

That's one of the things that makes Michael Morrill different from other candidates.

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Morrill is running for governor of Pennsylvania on the Green Party ticket. Back in September, his campaign field director, Eric Prindle, was arrested for trespassing while gathering signatures to help get Morrill on the ballot. Morrill issued a press release about the arrest and posted a link on his Web page.

That's the kind of thing you can do when you're all about promoting the ideals of "participatory democracy" -- and when you know you don't stand a chance of winning.

"You'd have to be delusional to think that at 11 o'clock on Election Day, when the results come in, that I'll be celebrating," Morrill said last month during a speech at La Salle University. "Realistically, I won't be living in the governor's mansion next year."

Morrill -- along with Libertarian Party candidate Ken Krawchuk -- is currently polling at under one percent, and Morrill himself said during a debate in October that the race was basically over because Democrat Ed Rendell was a sure win.

Then why run?

To present an alternative to the "Republicrats," as his staffers sometimes call the two major parties. To "put the Green Party on the map." And because everyone said he'd be good at it.

"Some friends and I started joking about me running for governor, and the jokes became less funny and more serious over the last year and a half," Morrill says.

It was not a particularly likely turn of events, considering Morrill's background.

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Morrill, 47, directs the Pennsylvania Citizen Action Network, a left-leaning consumer and environmental advocacy group, and he was a key organizer of the 2000 Republican National Convention protests in Philadelphia.

But he is also a former Baptist minister and once served as a Democratic committee member.

Eventually, he became disillusioned with the Democratic Party because he felt it had lost its integrity.

"Time and time again, we would raise issues, and time and time again, they would say, 'we don't care about issues, we just want power,'" Morrill says. "They didn't say it in those words, but it was pretty close to that."

He knew he had to leave, but he was hesitant about joining the Green Party, which he felt was not a "serious" political party and amounted to little more than a "debate society." After seeing the support Green Party candidate Ralph Nader got in the 2000 presidential election, though, Morrill decided the Greens meant business.

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Over the last several months, he has been crisscrossing the state, trying to drum up grassroots support for the party. It's been an uphill battle, especially where money is concerned.

The Green Party does not accept corporate donations, which means that it has only raised a few thousand dollars for this race, compared with tens of millions spent by Rendell and Republican Mike Fisher.

No money translates into no advertisements, which means very few votes.

"I think if we had as little as a million dollars, we could run a campaign that would run pretty close to winning, because the ideas that we are generating are ideas that people like," Morrill says.

Many of these ideas come from the Green Party's "Ten Key Values," which stress environmentalism, feminism, non-violence and "economic justice." Morrill has also been talking a lot about the need for electoral reform.

But he has not been able to publicize his ideas as much as he would like.

He and Krawchuk have been excluded from three of the seven gubernatorial debates because of a rule requiring participants to be polling at 5 percent or higher. Morrill says this rule was instituted because the political powers-that-be are running scared of the growing popularity of the Greens.

According to Green Party USA Political Coordinator Dean Myerson, the people of Pennsylvania have been responding very well to the party's ideas.

"Pennsylvania has been one of our star states in recent years," Myerson says.

He says the Keystone State's Green Party is among the fastest-growing in the country and has the third-highest number of Green officeholders -- 13.

Still, the Green Party is so small -- there are only 4,700 registered members in the whole state -- that it has little impact on the political landscape.

"They are not a factor in state politics," says Terry Madonna, head of Millersville University's Center for Politics and Public Affairs.

Furthermore, according to Madonna, Morrill has not been conducting himself like a real candidate.

"Normally, I love third parties," Madonna says. "They bring new ideas, a little life. In this case they've brought little more than theatrics... [like] declaring the race over. Whether it's true or not, when you're a serious candidate you don't do that."

Morrill has been using the Rendell-is-going-to-win argument to win over people who are concerned that voting Green would vault the Republican candidate into office, as some people believe happened in the 2000 election.

"Do you always want to be voting for the lesser of two evils? Is that what you want?" he asked the La Salle audience. "Ed Rendell is not going to lose, not against Mike Fisher."

As can be expected, Morrill doesn't think much of the political beliefs of his opponents. He calls Libertarianism the "philosophy of selfishness" and feels there is little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.

"I think Ed Rendell and Mike Fisher are two sides of the same coin," he says. "The only major difference on Ed Rendell and Mike Fisher is their stance on abortion."

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Michael Morrill is aware that some people view third-party candidates as hopelessly idealistic.

But he sees that as a point of pride.

"We're dreamers, and I'm proud of the fact that I'm a dreamer," he says. "You don't innovate unless you dream."

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