For Camejo, Broadening the Left Is Worth a Loss

CONCORD

Peter Miguel Camejo understands he is not going to be elected governor. “Look, I’m not an idiot,” says the Green Party candidate.

Oh, if he could wangle into three televised debates with Gov. Gray Davis and Republican nominee Bill Simon Jr., then it’d be possible, he contends. “That’s my posture.”

But that’s never going to happen. Davis won’t allow it. “A total political coward,” Camejo asserts.

Political prudence is a gentler characterization. Davis is not about to shine the media spotlight on a left-winger who could siphon away votes from him on Nov. 5.

Besides, Camejo’s argument for debating the governor is weakened by his poor showing in polls.

A new statewide survey by pollster Mark Baldassare for the Public Policy Institute of California shows Camejo with only 5% of the likely vote. Davis leads Simon 40% to 32%, with 17% undecided and 6% for other candidates.

There seems to be a market for fringe, protest candidacies. Baldassare found that only 38% of voters are satisfied with their choices for governor. But relatively few voters ever actually buy into such markets, especially in California.

“People don’t like to throw away their vote,” notes veteran pollster Mervin Field. He says interesting third-party candidates usually wind up with only about half the votes they record in polls.

So why is Camejo running? I asked him that at his tiny campaign headquarters, in the back of a modest Bay Area office building where he operates a “socially responsible” investment firm.

“We really believe we should try to build an alternative party,” he said. “There is a domination of corporations over our society and over the two political parties that endangers democracy. My campaign is to broaden the base of the Green Party.”

At last count, the Green Party had 147,243 registered voters in California, about 1% of the total.

Camejo, 62, was born in New York to Venezuelan parents. After they divorced, he spent summers in Venezuela with his father, who was getting rich building resorts. The rest of the year, he lived with his mother in middle-class New York. The mix of lifestyles he witnessed radicalized him, Camejo says.

He didn’t see any poverty in middle-class America, obviously not venturing far from home. But in Venezuela, he saw both extreme wealth and, nearby, desperate poverty. “I began developing the concept that it is possible to have a society where everybody is about equal, like I saw in the United States,” he says.

“When I was 16 years old, I went to the top of a building my father had built. I watched the sun rise and promised myself that I would spend my whole life trying to help poor people.”

Camejo chuckles when he recalls this. His words often are fiery, but he projects modesty and smiles easily.

At UC Berkeley in the ‘60s, Camejo was an antiwar protester who got expelled for using an unauthorized microphone. In 1976, he ran for president as the Socialist Workers candidate and received one-tenth of 1% of the vote.

He’s about as liberal as they come in American politics, even on the fringe.

On some liberalism, he’s mainstream--like favoring abortion rights.

On other issues--like opposing the death penalty--he’s where the Democratic Party used to be before it wised up politically. “I agree with Gandhi’s statement: An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

He’d legalize marijuana and tax it heavily. “Tobacco is far more dangerous.” He’d also decriminalize cocaine and heroin, making it available through doctors. “Then you’d undermine the criminal world.”

On the environment, he believes no tree older than the state should be cut--anything that took root before 1850. Only 4% of these original old-growth trees remain, he says. Greens are pushing for a 2004 ballot measure.

“There are too many people on the planet,” Camejo continues. The answer? Only two children per woman, achieved voluntarily through education and empowerment.

“You have to fight the Vatican on this. Oppression of women under the guise of religion is not acceptable. That goes for Muslims and that goes for Catholics.”

But Camejo admits to “a contradiction.” While worried about population growth, he also advocates legalizing all immigrants who are here illegally. “I’m against having a caste system.”

Camejo thinks Davis is corrupt. But isn’t he concerned about helping elect a conservative?

“If Davis were knocked out because the Greens got a big vote,” he replies, “it would move all politics in California in the direction of a more progressive agenda. And that’s more important long term than whether Simon or Davis are in.”

Camejo is a credible anti-Davis protest vote for Democratic libs--if they’re willing to risk electing a right-winger.