Despite Loss, Platt Sees Positive Future for Green Party in SC

No one can claim Eugene Platt and the Green Party played the spoiler role in the First Congressional District race won by former Gov. Mark Sanford Tuesday.

"I want to congratulate Gov. Sanford on his win, and [Elizabeth Colbert] Busch on her run," Platt said. "I'm happy with what we did, giving people a third choice. So many times in South Carolina we only have two choices on the ballot, and a lot of times it's only one choice."

With less than 1,000 votes, according to unofficial results, Platt didn't manage to break 1 percent of the vote, but he isn't disheartened.

"I'm so relieved, but it was all worth it," Platt said. "The better part of 1,000 people voted for me, that's more people than I know."

His main goal during the election was to make more people aware of the Green Party as an option in elections, and he feels that he accomplished that.

"With a party this small the only thing we can do is grow," he said. "We're not going to go away."

At 74 Platt said he probably will not run for the First Congressional District seat again in 2014 when it comes up for a vote again. He plans to leave that to younger Greens, but said he'll remain active in the party, assessing the lessons from his own campaign and helping to recruit candidates for offices across the state.

"We've got some good candidates for Lindsey Graham's Senate seat and we'll be running people for a lot of races," he said. "We won't have someone in every race, but we're going to be around."

Platt is a member of the James Island Public Service Commission, a non-partisan elected position, a seat he has been elected to six times. He is also the author a a book of poetry, and plans to start writing again as early as tomorrow.

Platt's friend and adviser, and author of two books on third parties, Dr. David Gillespie said the close nature of pre-election polls had a lot to do with a lower than expected vote total for Platt.

"Political scientists call it strategic voting or tactical voting, normal people just call it voting for the lesser of two evils," Gillespie said. "When a race looks as close as this one did a lot of people are convinced they only have two viable options and don't necessarily follow their hearts. They come to see voting for a third party candidate as throwing their vote away, or worse helping to elect the wrong candidate."

Gillespie said there are a number of reasons that two parties dominate the US system. That third party candidates aren't covered as extensively by media outlets is one big factor he said. But an even larger obstacle in the current system is single-member districts.

"If we had proportional representation for the seven House of Representatives seat in South Carolina with everyone running at-large, we'd see a Libertarian or a Green get in there from time to time," he said.

He added that in many places around the country overly restrictive ballot access laws keep third parties locked out of the races, though that isn't one of major factors in South Carolina, where he said ballot access laws are actually fairly decent.

Both Platt and Gillespie are optimistic about the Green Party's future though, and they are happy not to have to fend off charges of swinging the election for Sanford by pulling too many votes from Colbert Busch. The party still bristles at the charges that the inclusion of Ralph Nader on the 2000 Presidential ballot cost Al Gore that election.

One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, Platt said, American Greens will have an elected member of Congress.

"It wasn't until just a year ago that Canada elected its first Green MP, and its a lot more progressive than the United States," Platt said. "We might have to wait a few more years to get one of our own in Congress."