It’s fun to run for a statewide office. But what consequence has there been to her most recent effort? What the Green Rainbow coalition needs is actual office holders in the General Court.
Making the Republican party in the Legislature Massachusetts the 3rd Party would be a real political change, not the Green-Rainbow grand-standing that would result in a split center-left vote for Governor, that likely would bring yet another Republican governor into office, a result inimical to the Green Rainbow coalition.
The Green Rainbow coalition is capable of having more people representing districts in the legislature than the Republican Party. If I have it correctly, the House has a mere 19 Republicans of 160 seats (11.9%), and of the 40 Senate districts, there are a mere 5 Republicans (12.5%). The Democrats could use a little complacency reduction, and competition; it’s ripe for a little splitting up in the Legislature.
For example, there’s an opportunity to fill a wide-open State Senate office in Cambridge, either soon this year, or later this November 2010, with the resignation of Galluccio in Cambridge, and there are no residency requirements to live in the district prior to the election.
(Residency: see the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s guidance to candidates: only State Representatives must have resided within the district prior to the election. http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele… )
Massachusetts certainly has a number of unsolved problems in the state, starting with funding for Education, affordable Housing, deeply in debt MBTA Mass Transit, cut-back Social Services, inadequately maintained Roads and a court system that is groaning under cutbacks. It takes a legislature to resolve the operations and funding of these activities.
Suppose that Stein actually won–what could she accomplish without the support of a party behind her in the legislature. The previous Republican governor can certainly testify about how much fun it was to have numerous legislative overrides of his vetoes.