Green Party’s Jill Stein campaigns in Colorado, woos voters wary of major party choices

The Green Party’s Jill Stein made a presidential campaign stop in the Centennial State Saturday, courting the undecided Colorado voter, dissatisfied with the two major party candidates.
Stein, a physician from Massachusetts, rallied a modest group of supporters at Colorado Springs’ Acacia Park, before leading a march through downtown chanting political battle cries like “Jill not Hill,” on their way to the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church where a larger group of more than 100 gathered.
“Forget the lesser evil,” Stein said, touching on her campaign slogan during the park rally. “That is a propaganda campaign. It doesn’t solve the problem of a greater evil.”
Stein, who also ran for president as the Green Party nominee in 2012, is polling at 7 percent in Colorado according to a Aug. 17 Quinnipiac University poll. In contrast, the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson is polling at 16 percent and Democrat Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 41 percent to 33 in the same poll.
Banking on wooing the disheartened voter in the state to boost her campaign, Stein tossed barbs at Clinton and Trump and pushed her Green Party message of social justice, peace and environmental conservationism to the delight of supporters.
“Never doubt for a minute our power to change course, to change direction, from this trajectory toward war, endless war, toward climate catastrophe and toward a collapsing economy,” Stein said.
“We can have an America that works for all of us, that puts people, planet and peace over profit,” Stein said.
Among those searching for an alternative to the major party candidates Saturday was Iraqi War veteran Alan Pitts.
“As an U.S. Army veteran, having deployed to Iraq, having lost friends, having to deal with all the PTSD issues coming home, I feel that both (major party) candidates would just keep us in a state of endless war, where someone like Dr. Stein is more along the lines of a peaceful non-interventionist, foreign policy, which I think America could really use right now,” Pitts said.
As a party insider, and former party elected officials, Shelia Canfield-Jones called the Democratic Party her political home for 43 years. A Bernie Sanders supporter, Canfield-Jones said revelations about possible favoritism for Clinton within the party was troubling. She switched to the Green Party, which she said aligns more with her values.
“I saw a lot of things that I didn’t believe were great for the party, so I left,” she said of her time with the Democrats.
A longtime Green Party supporter, Steven Flynn said he can get behind the idea of Stein cutting the country’s defense budget and curbing an aggressive foreign policy, forgiving student loan debt and her opposition to hydraulic fracturing.
During a 30-minute speech at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, Stein thanked Colorado municipalities that tried to ban hydraulic fracturing. Communities like Ft. Collins saw a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing overturned by a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.
Stein called for an immediate moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure; fossil fuel workers would be guaranteed a job elsewhere under her plan. Stein also touted her “Green New Deal,” which she said would promise 20 million jobs by moving to 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2030.
“We’re not talking about a little bit of tweaks around the margins, we are talking about actually solving this crisis with a solution as big as the catastrophe that is barreling down on us,” she said.
Stein praised supporters of Amendment 69, the election ballot measure which if approved would create a universal healthcare system in the state coined ColoradoCare, though she told reporters during a sit-down interview that she would stop short of endorsing it because of complexities and loopholes associated with the program.
“I don’t want to throw my weight behind an endorsement at this point, but I would certainly respect anyone who sees fit to work on it,” she said.
Touching on the legalization of recreational cannabis in the state, Stein said she supports legalizing pot at the federal level.
“More power to Colorado for getting the ball rolling,” Stein said. “It needs to be done at the federal level, because otherwise we are just sending mixed messages.”
Pledging to aid the millions who have fallen victim to predatory student loans, Stein said if the government was willing to bail out Wall Street, it should bail out students.
Stein completed a two-day campaign swing in the state, visiting Colorado Springs and Ft. Collins on Saturday and Denver and Boulder on Sunday.
