It was an early test in Jeremy Good’s campaign for the county’s highest elected office. He had joined his rivals Gerry Connolly (D) and Mychele Brickner (R) at the Pimmit Hills School earlier this month for his first forum as a candidate in front of about 150 residents.
“This isn’t going to be that long because I don’t really feel prepared and, to tell you the truth I just wanted you to know that the Green Party is here,” he said.
Good, a Green Party member who is running as an independent, then laid out his platform. “We don’t believe in the war on terror,” he said. He also said that preserving species from extinction and cutting down pollution was a Green Party priority.
“All these things are kind of interrelated.”
During the question and answer segment, a woman stood up and challenged him.
“You said you don’t support the war on terror,” she said. “But the terrorists knocked down 911. But if we don’t fight for our rights, well, we let them kill us.”
Good looked slightly taken aback, but then answered: “We’ve got to make nonviolence a guiding principle of society. We’ve killed more innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq than died on 9-11. We’ve got to stop thinking that the military can solve all our problems.”
“THAT WAS the first time for me,” he said a few days after the forum. “It was very difficult. I think I’ll maybe get better at these things.”
Campaigning is hard work, as he’s finding out. A 31 year-old Denver native from a family involved in Colorado politics, Good said he resisted politics as long as he could. But all that changed when his daughter was born four years ago.
She “galvanized” him, Good said. “You want to make sure [your children] don’t get hurt the way you did when you were growing up.”
In 2000, Good watched as Ralph Nader’s campaign seemed to be gaining momentum. From that point on, he threw his lot in with the Green Party.
“I was so impressed by this extremely dignified man who had devoted his whole life to public service.”
Now he is trying to bring the Green Party’s message to the voters of Fairfax County, where he has lived since January.
It is a “conservative” message, he said, adding “we believe in living within our means.” Good speaks often of the roughly $500 billion federal deficit. If military spending were cut back, he said, the government could save some money and send more of it directly to the states.
“We want to decentralize,” he said. “We should get back more of our tax dollars and use them for all these other things, schools, rail, for more sidewalks, for more bridges over highways.”
His opponents, Connolly and Brickner, note that none of the issues he talks about are problems that can be addressed at the county level.
“I don’t believe that’s what this race is about but I give him credit for stepping up to the plate and speaking,” said Brickner.
“Clearly Mr. Good has no experience or apparent interest in Fairfax County,” said Connolly.
Good, for his part, said he’d “like to look Gerry [Connolly] in the eye and say, 'I hope you’re getting what I’m saying.’”
IN HIS FIRST foray into local politics, Good said his first priority will be to bone up on the issues. “My main campaign strategy is to try to learn more about the Fairfax County budget.”
But even if he never achieves the insider’s knowledge of the county’s multi-volume budget, he can still make some voters aware of the Green Party, he said. And that is why he threw his hat in the ring.
“We don’t really have any illusions or presumptions,” he said. “I don’t expect to win but maybe I could [convince] people who might be very credible candidates to run for Congress.”
His campaign is primarily a recruiting tool to help boost the Green Party’s membership, which, in Northern Virginia stands at about 250 people, said Good.
“I want to reach out more to individuals,” he said. “Join the Green Party. We need you.”
But not everyone in the local Green Party is behind his evangelical effort. None of the Northern Virginia chapters of the Green Party have endorsed him.
“We just didn’t think he could run a serious enough campaign to make a dent but more power to him and I hope he does well,” said Jim Lowenstern, who heads the Northern Virginia Greens.
Good said that most of the Greens in Northern Virginia are not interested in electoral politics but rather in building a party base. But this brings up a chicken-or-the-egg question for the young party. Do you wait until you have a solid party structure to field candidates or do you field candidates first to draw attention to the party?
“It’s hard for smaller candidates to compete when to get elected to these offices like the Fairfax County Board you’ve got to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Lowenstern.
Rick Herron, however, who ran unsuccessfully as Green for Congress against Jim Moran in 2000, said he supports Good’s effort.
“Both parties are deep in the pockets of big business. Jeremy understands that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, you’re part of the problem.”
“One of the reasons why the Green Party is becoming resurgent is it’s getting a lot of young people, a lot of disillusioned people joining its ranks,” he added.
Good served as Herron’s campaign manager in 2000, filling out the paperwork and organizing what Herron called his “kitchen cabinet” of advisers. Herron recalled that Good would organize meetings in restaurants at the Springfield Mall where he would invite speakers on current events to help Herron and anybody else who happened to attend get a better grasp of the issues.
EVEN IF Good knows that his campaign is a long-shot one, he is undeterred. “Regardless of my chances of success, it’s extremely critical to have a Green Party,” he said.
That party, he added, is the only one willing to link the federal deficit with military spending and advocate for better environmental protection.
And the twenty-first century will come to be dominated by environmental concerns, according to Herron.
“The Green Party seems to be the only one, especially in Europe, that understands this,” he said. “It’s akin to the Republican Party before the election of 1860. It’s a young party establishing itself on the issues that are of utmost importance to level the playing field.”