SJVGreens Minutes
Minutes of St. Joe Valley Greens Congress
May 10, 2007; Tom Brown, recorder
I. Call to Order
The SJVGreens held a Congress on Thursday, May 10, 2007, at the GLBT Resource Center in Mishawaka. Karl Hardy called the meeting to order at 7:05 PM.
Members Present: Karl Hardy, Lance Howard, Kathleen Petitjean, Dave Vollrath, Tom Brown.
Guests Present: David Goodrich, Al Koch
II. Background Information
The purpose of the Congress is to decide whether to run one or more candidates for public office in St. Joseph County in the general election this November.
The January Congress authorized Karl to do political research and submit his findings as a set of proposals. His research leads him to suggest Greens stand candidates for office.
Karl presented information about the recent primary election and answered questions concerning ballot access requirements for various local offices, write-in versus petition gathering, candidate filing and petition submission deadlines.
III. Will the Greens run candidates for local office in the fall election?
The consensus is the St. Joe Valley Greens should run for office this Fall.
IV. What are the specific goals of running candidates for office?
- raise awareness of Green 10 Key Values
- model for other state Green organizations
- gain experience and begin to insitutionalize electoral Green culture
- keep momentum for election reform moving ahead
- hold election board accountable for their mistakes and anti-democratic attitudes
- expand the political discourse
- publicize the number of unopposed incumbent elections and virtual one-party rule
- develope a minimum and maximum platform or program for each race
Please note that winning elections and gaining power are not included in our goals. Contesting seats, at this point, is an opportunity to learn about the political process and to share and discuss our values with citizens.
V. Who will run for office?
Dave Vollrath volunteered to run for City Council in Mishawaka. Kathleen Petitjean volunteered to run for Common Council, 1st District, in South Bend. Karl Hardy will run for an at-large seat on the South Bend Common Council, and Tom Brown will run for mayor of South Bend.
Greens will gather signatures to place Kathleen on the ballot. Karl estimates only 40 certified signatures are required. The rest of the slate will run as write-in candidates, partly to keep the write-in vote issue from last November alive. The St. Joseph County election board counted 500 machine-cast write-in votes but did not assign the votes to any of the three individual candidates. The races affected were Secretary of State and U.S. Senate.
Dave Vollrath will ask Charlotte Pfeiffer to talk with us regarding running for office in South Bend. We may need to meet again within 1-2 weeks to prepare for filing to run.
VI. Adjournment
Karl adjourned the meeting at 9:10 PM.
VII. Next Meeting
The next monthly SJVGreens meeting is Thursday, June 14, at the GLBT Resource Center, Mishawaka, IN. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and ends at 9:00 pm.
St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN