Howie Hawkins has run for city councilman, Syracuse mayor, Onondaga County executive, New York state comptroller and seats in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. He has not won a single election.

‘You don’t have to win office to win your political goals,’ Hawkins said.

Hawkins is a Syracuse politician who has been supportive of Syracuse University student activism. Last spring, Hawkins showed up to the student protests against commencement speaker Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

And Hawkins is now trying his hand at running for office, once again, as the Green Party candidate for New York state governor.

Some have called him crazy. Some call him overambitious. But he and his staff said his campaign is one of frank discussion of ideas and issues, instead of raising money from special interest groups.

Mark Dunlea, a senior adviser to Hawkins, has known the candidate for about 20 years, he said. He first met Hawkins in person at Goddard College in Vermont at a left-wing student network meeting.

Dunlea joined the Green Party in part because of his dissatisfaction with the two other major political parties in the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans, primarily because they represent the interests of the wealthy and powerful, he said.

‘We want a very different world than Barack Obama. … The Democrats are just as corporate a party as the Republicans,’ Dunlea said. ‘The rich have two parties, and we don’t have any.’

Years before their meeting in Vermont, Hawkins had graduated from Dartmouth College in nearby New Hampshire. He had run cross country in college and takes that love of running on the campaign trail, as well. Politics is ‘more like a marathon than a sprint. … You have to be in it for the long haul,’ Hawkins said.

In the 1980s, Hawkins organized protests against apartheid rule in South Africa. He called for the construction of a shantytown on the College Green at Dartmouth to demonstrate the conditions apartheid laws created. In months, the shantytown protests spread around college campuses across the nation. Within the year, the U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, overriding then-President Ronald Reagan’s veto.

‘You just keep plugging away,’ said Hawkins. ‘You light a fire and, sometimes, it catches.’

Hawkins moved to Syracuse in 1981, having grown up in San Francisco in the 1960s. He described his experience with the civil rights, women’s rights and anti-Vietnam movements of his youth as important to who he is today.

‘It was exciting,’ Hawkins said. ‘People really thought they could have an impact on things, and we did.’

It was that experience with the turbulent 1960s and living near the Haight-Ashbury district, known for its countercultural attitude, that inspired his activist spirit.

Hawkins said his main aim in running for New York state governor is not victory, but to build support for the Green Party in New York, which currently is not a recognized political party.

Nationally, the Green Party has adopted a platform of ecologic sustainability, grassroots political participation and involvement of the state in business affairs. Members of the Green Party seek a political situation in which the people, not entrenched interests, have a greater say in government.

At the local level, Hawkins has called for a living wage ordinance and for public utilities instead of private ones. Both ideas caught hold in Syracuse in 2005, Hawkins said. He also said ‘you can’t find a politician in Syracuse that doesn’t give lip service to sustainability,’ a cause he has championed for years.

What drives Hawkins to continue running is the alternative — doing nothing.

‘I don’t know when to stop. I mean I just keep going,’ he said.

Ursula Rozuma, the upstate campaign coordinator for the Hawkins campaign, agreed. ‘He might be too committed for the Green Party and campaigning. There’s only so many hours in the day,’ she said.

Rozuma has also considered an alternative. She said she’d rather work for a candidate she believed in rather than one that will win.

‘He doesn’t have a prayer,’ said Jeff Stonecash, a professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at SU. Stonecash said money, which Hawkins does not have enough of, is a necessity for any successful campaign.

But progress has been made as far as Hawkins’ success in elections. When he first ran for city council in 1992, he received 3 percent of the votes. In 2008, he received 42 percent of the votes for councilman.

He said, ‘I don’t pay much attention to the cynics and the smart alecks.’

ajswab@syr.edu

Published on September 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm