It's not just home-town pride to say that trial lawyers and
progressive activists Greg Kafoury and Mark McDougal were
key figures in Ralph Nader's presidential bid. After all,
they, along with a few local visionary Green Party members,
are the ones who came up with the seemingly insane idea to
hold a political rally in Memorial Coliseum, and charge admission
for it. They pulled it off and took the show on the road,
hitting nine stadiums in nine cities and building up support
and media buzz for Nader's campaign.
Now that it's all over, Kafoury is back at work in Portland,
trying to rebuild the law practice he let slide while he
volunteered for Nader. Despite the fact that Nader failed
to get the 5 percent national vote needed to qualify the
Green Party for federal funds, Kafoury says the presidential
bid was a success. WW talked to him last weekend in his
office for a campaign post mortem.
Willamette Week: Is Nader sticking with the Green Party?
Greg Kafoury: He is sticking with the Green Party. He's
going to be working everywhere. He's going to work to create
a debate commission that will make it much more difficult
for the major parties to control the debates. If he'd been
in the debates this time, it would have been a three-way
race. There is going to be a lot of focus on campuses. We
need to make being Green the acceptable position for progressive
college students. People need to say 'What's wrong with
you' if you aren't a Green, and that's eminently doable.
We have the best people now. We just need to get more.
What do you think about the way Nader ran the campaign,
forgoing his 5 percent national vote to take out Al Gore?
If taking out Al Gore had been his goal, he would have
decapitated him cleanly. He would have gone to Miami the
last weekend or the last day. There was a strong sense that
the campaign was going to be decided in Florida. If he wanted
to take out Gore he wouldn't have spent the time he did
in places like Massachusetts, New York and California--places
where the election had already been decided.
But his posturing and the statements he made were much
more critical of Gore than Bush. It seemed personal.
Well, his contempt for Gore is bottomless. His view is
that Gore is a responsible human being because Gore is smart
and Gore understands what he is doing. When he sells us
out he is doing it with his eyes open. Nader does not view
George Bush as being a fully competent human being but more
as a rich boy being carried along on the strength of family
retainers and not anyone who is in any sense the master
of his own fate. Gore is.
Nader has made it clear that he wants to push the Democrats
by putting up more Green congressional candidates. Can we
expect, then, more candidates like Tre Arrow?
Tre is a remarkable kid.
Yes, he's a remarkable kid, but Greg, should he be running
for Congress?
Right now, in an election like this, a lot of our people
were simply raising issues. No one was threatening Blumenauer,
so it was an opportunity for Tre to reach people.
But who did Tre really reach that didn't already agree
with him? Here's a quote from someone: "So he climbed
up on a ledge and crapped in a bucket. My 2-year-old can
do that, but does that mean she's qualified to run for Congress?"
I think it's a good point.
I don't think that's a good point.
People saw him as a jokester candidate.
Well, in the long term, the Green Party needs to have people
with more breadth of experience, as we become more competitive.
It was an opportunity for Tre to reach people. People who
have spent time talking to him recognize that he's an extraordinarily
serious and smart and committed person. His philosophy is
relatively deep and very consistent and seriously thought-out.
He's not a simpleton by any means. He's not a ready-for-prime-time
politician, but in a race against Blumenauer, it doesn't
matter.
How can it not matter? He's the public face of the Green
Party. What about the people who want to see a real alternative
and all they get is Tre Arrow?
What Tre Arrow did was to risk his life over a rather extended
period time for an issue he believed in. That's a pretty
serious message, and in an age where politicians are processed
like cheese, someone who is real carries a lot of weight.
If he was at any risk of winning, then you'd evaluate him
differently. I'm saying this: When the party is in a position
where its candidates are not just raising issues but need
to be taken seriously as potential elected officials, then
you go from dreamers to more practical and technically knowledgeable
people.
Like Nader...
He's the only guy who's run for president who's overqualified.
Any number of things can happen. If Bush wins, for instance,
it may be that the Democrats will fight against Bush, will
adopt the core vision of the Seattle coalition as their
guiding vision.
Let's talk about those trees that Tre Arrow risked his
life to save. You are willing to sacrifice those trees in
order to send the Democratic Party into exile.
That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.
You said it. You told me. You said 'We're not worried
about a few trees up at Eagle,' you said 'We¹re worried
about saving the entire world.'
The WTO is a threat to the world environmentŠthose who
embraced Gore because he ordered a reconsideration of Eagle
Creek were selling out for a trivial gain in their own backyard.
It was an extraordinary loss of vision on their part.
But how can you say that to people like Ken Rait, for
example, of Oregon Natural Resource Council, who has spent
his entire adult life working on the ground saving the few
remaining old-growth trees? They are now all at risk because
of Nader's campaign.
Garbage. If you look at what Clinton has done in regard
to the forests, it always has a loophole. There is always
an opportunity to keep the timber companies happy. They'd
better toughen up. We've got a world to win here. For those
who are paying attention, we just had a conference to create
enforcement mechanisms for the Kyoto agreement, which has
to do with such fairly significant issues as making sure
the earth neither roasts nor gets so hot that the ocean
currents change and we're thrust into an ice age. Clinton
came in, as a lame duck, after the election and made perfectly
clear that he was there to represent the interests of the
coal companies, the oil and gas companies and the nuclear
industry. Now, while the Democrats may not cut down quite
as many trees as the Republicans, we're losing the planet
here, and we need to be serious people, not sentimental
people.
Have you gotten nasty emails, nasty phone calls? Are
people spitting at you on the streets?
I've had remarkably little antagonism. I've had a tremendous
number of people who expressed great pleasure that we did
what we did and who are rather sheepishly telling me they
voted for Gore. There is a very thin veneer of Democrat
establishmentarians who are hot under the collar about the
Nader campaign, but if you want to know the real sentiment
of the American people, look at the fact that there is stupifyingly
little intensity and almost a dearth of interest in who
ultimately wins the presidency. People recognize that it
doesn't make a helluva lot of difference whether it's George
Bush or Al Gore. How else can you account for the fact the
only demonstrations anywhere in the county are pitifully
small and organized by party professionals? Nobody really
gives a damn about Al Gore.
I told several Democrats I was coming to interview you
today. I have to say that your name was taken in vain more
than once. There are people who are angry with you.
Establishment Democrats are under the illusion that at
heart Al Gore is really kind of a progressive guy. And they
have rocks in their heads. He's Bill Clinton. There are
a lot of old-line Democrats who think Al Gore is kind of
like Mike Dukakis and George McGovern. He's not. The most
important thing in the long run is that the Democratic leadership
council has to be removed from power because there is no
hope for the future of the party as long as it's the party
of Clinton and Gore and Lieberman. There are tremendous
people in the Democratic Party.
Wait, let me get clear on what you're trying to do here.
Are you trying to build the Green Party or save the Democratic
Party?
That is up to the Democrats. I care about the issues. I
don't care about labels. If the Democrats moved to adopt
a progressive agenda, that would be wonderful. If they outflank
the Greens and absorb the Greens as part of their coalition
and adopt the position of the Seattle coalition: workers
and environmentalists and intellectuals....that would be
great. We don't need a Green Party if the Democrats become
Green.
What will it take for labor to go Green in 2004? We'll
be coming out of four years of Bush. Labor and other progressives
will be so freaked out after enduring that they'll be desperate
for a winnable Democrat...
You're getting way ahead of yourself. That's not how it's
going to happen. What will happen is the Democrats, once
this election is settled, will be in the throes of crisis
about who they are. Al Gore will say 'I was robbed, I deserve
another chance.' People will say ,'Yeah that's great, Al,'
until they start thinking about the fact this is a guy who
blew an election where he had more going for him objectively
than anybody this century and who was running against an
airhead.
Do you really think you've thrown the Democratic Party
into a crisis?
The crisis is, Who are we? Are we the party of the DLC
or have they just lost the election that could not be lost?
The answer is obvious. If we're not going to hand the party
over to Lieberman or Hillary in the next four years, who
will we be looking to? What kind of candidate can reenergize
the party?
Why do you think that?
Because that's where the future of the Democratic Party
has to be or it cannot endure. It cannot survive in the
long run as me-too Republicans. Because the Greens will
cripple them. We will destroy them.
Oh, the way the Christian right has destroyed the Republican
Party?
The Christian right took over the Republican Party. There
aren't any middle-of-the-road Republicans to speak of anymore.
That's because of the dedication of the hard right. They've
moved the Republicans to the right, the Democrats have chased
them and the Greens are saying to the Democrats that if
they don't abandon this political me-too-ism, the Greens
will take them out.
But Gore did not need the Nader voters to beat Bush.
He needed the Bush voters who abandoned him. He lost to
Bush. He did not lose to Nader. The Democrats will move
even more to the center.
I don't think so. If you look at the effort that Gore made
to bring down Nader's votes, what you'll see is, starting
at the convention, he moved rhetorically sharply to the
left. He adopted all this populist rhetoric, then unleashed
his hit squad of old-line liberals to make personal attacks
on Nader as the election drew close. Gore changed his campaign
rather drastically in order to deal with the threat from
Nader.
Is this anything more than woolly-headed liberalism?
Look at what we did to Al Gore already. We pushed him rhetorically
90 degrees to the left. The fact is that nobody believed
him. That's why nobody is on the streets today saying this
election is being stolen by the gangster tactics of the
Republicans. If they thought Al Gore believed what he said,
this country would be in a great crisis right now. I think
it's important that Gore lose. I think the greatest feather
in Nader's cap would be if he took out Gore and Lieberman
and gave the Democratic Party space to find itself.
How will you prevent the Greens going the way of the
Reform Party?
The Reform Party was simply a vehicle for Perot.
Is the Green Party not simply a vehicle for Nader, now?
I think the Green Party will be dominated by Nader for
as long as he chooses. They know that he's the real threat
to corporate control.
What about Winona LaDuke? Wasn't she sort of a weak
vice-presidential candidate? Wouldn't someone like Cornel
West reach a broader base of people?
Cornel West would be a tremendously exciting vice-presidential
candidate, and I would love to accompany Cornel West to
Harlem someday and help arrange a rally for him. I think
a lot of Greens are very impressed with him.
Is he interested?
Yes.
What about LaDuke? I've talked to people who were put
off by her sort of woo-woo spirituality.
Winona is an old Green Party Green, and she has other commitments
besides being a candidate. She also has little children
and is breast feeding and that is something of a limitation.
I think as the party becomes more grown-up, I think we need
people who can go full time all the time. Like Nader.
How much of a personal sacrifice is this? You've told
me semi-seriously that you don't have much of a business
left. It¹s Saturday. You're working today.
Eh. My partner and I have 300 cases.
Are you broke?
[quiet]
Did he pay you or was it volunteer?
He laughs. Mark and I supported the Green Party financially
independent of Mr. Nader. Both nationally and locally. So,
when the Texas Green Party needed help to get on the ballot,
we gave them $10,000.
Personal money.
Yeah.
Why?
Money is only good for what you can do with it. It doesn't
do any good sitting in the bank somewhere. My sacrifice
is much less than that of, for instance, Laird Hastey, one
of the Portland gang. He gave up a teaching job at a community
college and he'll never be able to get that kind of a job
again, because he walked away from it at the time he was
supposed to start teaching. That's a real sacrifice.
And how about the Kafoury clan? How did they take you
leading the Nader charge?
We are an old-fashioned, old-country Lebanese family. We
stick together.
None of them said, 'Greg, what the hell are you doing?'
Stephen thought it was important that Nader let people
know that they should vote for Democrats for Congress unless
they had a helluva good reason not to, and Nader, in fact,
came to that position at the end of the campaign.
So they never asked you to stop?
Are you kidding?
OK, back to the campaign. What were the funniest moments?
At Madison Square Garden, I was about to go deliver the
money pitch, where I give a short speech and ask for money,
and I had in my pocket this big blue pin, and in pink cursive
writing it said on it, "Another Babe for Nader,"
and here's Ani DiFranco, a twentysomething, one of the more
gorgeous creatures alive near the state, and Susan Sarandon,
who's my age, but who is extraordinarily good-looking and
an extraordinary woman altogether. So I'm looking at the
two of them and I say to myself, I'll bet Susan Sarandon
is sufficiently cool and post-feminist that she will appreciate
my button. So I gave it to her. She looked at it and she
pinned it below her beltline on the inside edge of her hip
on her leather pants and then went trotting up on stage.
That was a special moment.
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