Green Party of Virginia

The Green Party of Virginia (GPVA) is the Virginia state affiliate of the Green Party of the United States.

GPVA focuses on local elections for offices such as the Virginia House of Delegates, town council, board of supervisors, and soil & water conservation district (SWCD) board of directors. The party earned its first electoral victories in November 1997 when Phil Welch was elected to the Buena Vista Soil & Water Conservation District board [http://216.92.191.78/elections/candidates.php?candidateId=1015&electionId=77&year=] and Stephanie Porras was elected to the Lexington Soil & Conservation District board [http://216.92.191.78/elections/candidates.php?candidateId=1174&electionId=77&year=] . Since that time, several other GPVA members have run for office in both partisan and non-partisan races, with some success at the town council and SWCD level.

The most notable campaigns for office by a GPVA candidate in a partisan election have been Josh Ruebner's 2006 and 2007 candidacies for the Arlington County Board of Supervisors. Ruebner received extensive local media coverage for both campaigns. In 2007 he received a vote from 10.3% of Arlingtonians who came to the polls (two votes may be cast for the Arlington County Board of Supervisors race; he received 3,253 votes from among the 31,511 people who were counted as having voted), an unusually high percentage for a Virginia third party candidate running under a party label.

In 2004, Carey Campbell staged a hostile takeover of the northern Virginia chapter of the GPVA, to which the party reacted by expelling her from the party and disaffiliating itself from the chapter. The chapter was recreated by Campbell's supporters as a separate party, the Independent Greens of Virginia, with a greater emphasis on fiscal conservatism than the GPVA.

Presidential Elections

*2000 Ralph Nader 59,398 votes, 2.17% [http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G00/VA.html#Pre]
*2004 David Cobb 104 votes (write-in) [http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G04/VA.phtml]

Current Officeholders

*Kathleen Harrigan, Fredericksburg Soil & Water Conservation District Board of Directors
*Daniel Metraux, Staunton Soil & Water Conservation District Board of Directors
*Chris Simmons, Loudoun Soil & Water Conservation District Board of Directors

External links

* [http://www.vagreenparty.org/ Green Party of Virginia]
* [http://www.gpus.org/ Green Party of the United States]
* [http://www.voteruebner.com/ Josh Ruebner 2007 campaign site]