"We made our magic number," said an exuberant Mike Livingston, whose campaign for U.S. "shadow" representative drew 9,191 votes. That number was well over the 7,500 votes necessary to gain ballot status in the District.

The Green Party now joins the Democratic, Republican, Umoja and Statehood parties as the political organizations eligible to hold primary elections in the District. Ballot status also means voters can officially register as members of the party. Candidates affiliated with "official" parties are allowed to accept campaign donations twice as large as independents and don’t need to collect as many signatures to get on the ballot.

Independent candidates must gather 3,000 signatures to get their names placed on the ballot. But candidates for parties with ballot status need to gather only 1 percent of their membership’s signatures, or 2,000 signatures, whichever is less. For example, Statehood Party members need to gather only 40 signatures to get on the ballot because the party has just 4,000 registered members.

"My campaign lasted 22 weeks," Livingston said. "Seven weeks of that were spent on signature drives just to get on the ballot."

Getting ballot status was one of three major goals for the party, along with winning and raising issues important to party members, said Scott McLarty, the Green Party’s Ward 1 council candidate.

"As far as I’m concerned, we did two out of the three," McLarty said.

Even though his campaign for the council seat drew only 1,222 votes, McLarty said he felt he and Livingston ran successful campaigns.

"The major hurdles we faced were that we were the first local candidates for the Green Party and we were nearly invisible in the local media," McLarty said.

Both Livingston and McLarty said they are looking forward to the next election and using the advantages ballot status will afford the party.

"We’ll solidify our alliance with the Statehood Party," Livingston said, "so we can craft a progressive slate of candidates."

The Green Party was founded almost 20 years ago in then-West Germany as an alternative to the conservative Christian Democrats and the liberal Social Democrats. Using the slogan "We are neither left nor right; we are in front," the Greens brought together environmental, anti-nuclear power, pro-peace, and feminist activists who traditionally didn’t fit into the traditional German two-party system.

The Greens have become a force in today’s German parliament and have gotten attention in this country since the mid-1980s. In 1996, the Green Party ran Ralph Nader as a presidential candidate.

McLarty pointed out that the Green Party has two components: the electoral and the activist.

"We will revert now to our activist phase until the next election," he said.

"At the victory party, no one was disappointed," McLarty said. "Everyone was quite pleased."

Neither candidate received more than 8 percent of the vote.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator