Green Party candidate follows heart to homeless shelters

“We have a village idiot running this country,” said Green Party vice-presidential candidate… “We have a village idiot running this country,” said Green Party vice-presidential candidate Pat Lamarche. “But he’s not just stupid. He’s cruel.”

LaMarche spoke to about 30 students and Oakland residents at a “town hall meeting” in Wesley Posvar Hall Tuesday night.

In an atmosphere more candid than the party’s highly publicized campaign meet-and-greet sessions, audience members were encouraged to voice their opinion on the other presidential candidates.

Asked for a show of hands, more than three-quarters of the audience said they will vote for Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

LaMarche responded, “I encourage you to vote from your heart. If you want to vote for Kerry, you have to do what you have to do. “

“This is the last time I plan to run for anything without asking anyone for their vote,” she added.

LaMarche, a single mother of two children, first ran for office in 1998, in a gubernatorial race in Maine with only $20,000 in funding. During that election, she received 7 percent of the vote.

For the upcoming election, LaMarche and the Green Party’s Presidential candidate David Cobb have thus far only spent $100,000, a tiny sum compared to the hundreds of millions spent by President George W. Bush and Kerry.

LaMarche spoke of her admiration for her running mate. “Like me, [Cobb] was born into poverty,” she said. “He worked to get into to college and has managed to finance this campaign with his own savings.”

She also recounted her unusual campaign schedule in recent weeks. A few weeks ago, she embarked on a “Left-Out Tour,” a two-week-long experience staying in 14 different homeless shelters in 14 cities across America.

A self-proclaimed history buff, LaMarche said she had wondered what a 16th-century Spanish prison was like. “I don’t need to anymore,” she said. “I have seen them; we have them in this country, and they’re called homeless shelters. They are abhorrent.”

Two weeks ago she slept “in the mud” outside Boston with several other homeless people and a number of Massachusetts Green Party activists, after spending the day trying to get into a Boston homeless shelter. In other parts of the country, she managed to find a bed.

“I have come to the conclusion that no one should be president or vice president if they’ve never spent a night in a homeless shelter,” she added.

LaMarche resents the criticism she received as a Green after the 2000 election result, with many Al Gore supporters claiming that the third party vote swung the election to Bush.

“I voted Ralph Nader in 2000, and I am proud that I voted with my conscience,” she said.

Laura Schaffner, a sophomore at Pitt, complained that if the Green Party wanted to involve college students it needed to spend time speaking about its campaign goals.

“All I got from the meeting was reasons why I shouldn’t vote for Bush,” she said.

High on the Green Party’s agenda is an end to the Iraq conflict. The flyer for Tuesday’s event proclaimed, “The unjust, illegal and immoral war in Iraq must be brought to an end now.”

LaMarche commented that no one has gone so far as to call Bush a liar. “I do it every chance I get,” she said. “Someone told me I was only doing it because I knew I couldn’t win, but I do it because I am honest.”

LaMarche added that she feels fortunate to be able to “campaign on what I believe in.”