Dont Like Davis? Cant stomach Simon?
The Green candidate wont be winning this time either but he'll be trying to
shake things up. Meaning speaking some truth rather than the usualy
politspeeches.
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Los Angeles Times
May 28, 2002
A Man of the '60s for the 21st Century
Governor's race: Green Party candidate Peter Camejo won't win, but he wants
to make waves.
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI, TIMES STAFF WRITER
He's a financier who wants to become governor, thinks Californians are
overtaxed and says he is disgusted that Gray Davis failed to follow basic
business principles during the energy crisis.
The candidate is not Republican Bill Simon Jr., but the Green Party's
nominee for governor, Peter Miguel Camejo. He is probably the only person on
the ballot in November who has sailed in the Olympics, been expelled from
Berkeley, run for president as a Socialist and founded his own money
management firm.
Camejo, 62, travels in a 10-year-old Infiniti convertible plastered with
"Ralph Nader for President" bumper stickers, touting his new book on
socially responsible investing (with introductions written by both Nader and
a former Reagan administration official) and taking potshots at the
political establishment. On an Oracle official's handing a $25,000 campaign
contribution to Davis' director of e-government in a bar: "If he's going to
engage in corruption, he should at least do it right. It should be in
unmarked bills."
On the prevalence of religion in politics: "If it was really true that
people turn over in their graves, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington
would be sources of perpetual energy."
Camejo says he is under no illusions that he will become California's next
governor--"my wife would kill me"--but relishes the threat his candidacy
could pose to Davis by peeling off liberal voters. And he says he is
unconcerned about the possibility that, if the race tightens, he could tip
the election to the conservative underdog Simon, far further from Camejo
ideologically than Davis.
"You can't solve problems gradually and peacefully," Camejo said. "You have
to make it an explosion."
Democrats say they're not worried. "Since most voters don't take them
seriously, we don't," state party strategist Bob Mulholland said of the
Greens. He noted that after 10 years as an official party, Greens compose a
little less than 1% of California's registered voters. "There's no more
solid evidence of their inability to get any base in the state of
California."
The 146,251 registered California Greens lag far behind the state's 5.3
million registered Republicans and 6.8 million Democrats. The Greens racked
up nearly 40,000 new California members in 2000 during Nader's presidential
run but barely added any voters in the last year, according to state
statistics.
In most California elections, 4% to 5% of the voters abandon the two major
parties to back other candidates, but no single party has been able to
consolidate that wayward segment of the electorate. Nader pulled 3.8% of
California voters during the 2000 presidential election, but analysts
attribute that relatively robust showing partly to his celebrity.
That means that the only effect Camejo is likely to have on the governor's
race is to take votes from Davis in a tight contest, a scenario that clearly
pleases the Simon campaign. The other third-party candidates--on the
American Independent, Libertarian and Natural Law tickets--can also only
hope to peel a relatively few votes from the two main parties.
Bruce Cain, a political scientist at UC Berkeley, said it's too early to
tell whether Camejo will be a spoiler. "There will be leftists who will take
a look at the Greens," Cain said. "It would certainly be a help to the
Democrats if the guy was a total kook."
Business and Leftist Politics
After 45 minutes of speaking to six UC Santa Cruz students recently about
the need to legalize gay marriage, ban the death penalty, implement a $10.50
statewide minimum wage and save California's remaining old-growth forests,
Camejo scrunched into a supporter's hybrid gas-electric car and grabbed his
cellular phone.
"Tell me what happened at the close?" he asked after exchanging pleasantries
with the caller, a hedge fund manager. "What are the futures doing now? Did
they continue down at the close?"
The Camejo campaign is full of such intersections of 21st century capitalism
and 1960s radicalism. He laces his talks with standard leftist applause
lines--condemning U.S. aggression during the war on terrorism, or talking
about how corporations need to be reined in.
But moments later, he gleefully rattles off terms like "Triple-A Muni at
10%" while excitedly talking about a new business venture to structure loans
to help homeowners install solar energy. He argues that California's taxes
are too high and that money is wasted on giveaways to both corporations and
public sector unions.
On the stump, Camejo takes on the demeanor of an irascible college lecturer
who has always harbored dreams of becoming a stand-up comic. In a jacket and
slacks with a crown of wiry hair, he skips from one point to another, hands
bouncing, frequently interrupting himself to make some acidic wisecrack or
fulminate about the world's injustices.
One staple is for him to brandish a paper graph of the price of natural gas
in California over the last several years. During a renewable-energy forum
at a library outside Santa Cruz, Camejo traced the prices as he asked when
Davis chose to ink $43 billion in energy contracts.
"Here?" His finger moved up the curve. "Here? No, here!" He pointed at the
peak. "I can see any time now, they'll announce the worst trade in the
history of humanity," Camejo fumed. "This is three standard deviations off a
trend line!"
Camejo's blend of business sense and left-wing politics brings him full
circle. He was born in New York to one of Venezuela's wealthiest families;
his father, Daniel Camejo, is a prosperous resort developer.
It was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he enrolled in
1958, that Peter Camejo caught the activism bug. He dropped out to march for
civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and, later, to organize against the
Vietnam War. A staunch anticommunist, Daniel Camejo looked askance at his
son's politics, but the two remained close; they sailed together in the 1960
Olympics for Venezuela.
Like many radicals during the 1960s, Peter Camejo found his way to Berkeley.
His role in campus activism there led then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to brand him
"one of the most dangerous men in America." In the fall of 1967, as he ran
on an activist slate for a position in student government, police arrested
Camejo the night before the election, apparently for speaking at an
unauthorized rally. He was not charged with a crime, he recalled, but was
expelled after winning the election.
Though he recalls that he remained "pretty square" in personal
demeanor--close-cropped hair, no drugs--Camejo remained something of a
perpetual activism machine for the next decade. He traveled throughout Latin
America trying to free political prisoners. He was deported from Mexico
while trying to liberate his activist brother, who was at the time
imprisoned in Mexico City. Back in the United States, Camejo in 1976 ran for
president on the Socialist ticket. "We got on the ballot in 18 states," he
recalled proudly, and he won 91,314 votes.
Throughout the decade, Daniel Camejo recalled fretting about his son's
future. "It was an honor to have a son doing what he was doing," said the
elder Camejo. But, he added, "we tried to induce him to do something for
himself."
As the rollicking '70s moved into the more staid '80s, the younger Camejo
came to a realization: He was unemployed and broke, and did not even have a
college degree. He applied for a job with the post office in California.
A friend warned that postal work would aggravate Camejo's bad back. "Go work
in one of the brokerage houses," the friend advised. "They like people who
talk real fast."
Camejo landed at Merrill Lynch and began working as a broker. But he did not
lose his political edge. In 1987, when the firm rejected his proposal to
create an individual retirement account that gave money to AIDS groups,
Camejo could not compromise. He formed Progressive Asset Management, a
company in the Bay Area city of Concord that steers clients' money into
companies that follow certain social criteria--declining to use sweatshop
labor, sell firearms and so on.
Throughout his business years, Camejo has kept a toe in leftist politics. He
was one of the original U.S. Green Party members when the party registered
in 1991. He became a trustee of Contra Costa County's pension fund and led a
movement to have it push the companies it invests in to act progressively.
In 1998, the California Green Party began to cast about for candidates for
statewide office. Former Rep. Dan Hamburg agreed to run for governor, and
Camejo was poised to put his name on the ticket for a lower office. But
Camejo pulled out at the last minute to fend off a Wall Street firm's raid
on his brokerage.
This year there is nothing holding him back. Next month he will step down
from his position on the Contra Costa County pension board to free himself
up to spend more time campaigning.
Campaign Has Small War Chest
The campaign has raised about $20,000 in contributions, usually netted in
small increments at fund-raisers like one held at a brew pub near UC Davis
during the Whole Earth festival. (The campaign saves money by having the
candidate--who said he made $306,000 last year and is worth "under $2
million"--pay his own travel expenses.) In contrast, Davis has more than $30
million in the bank and Simon more than $5 million to communicate with
voters via television, radio and mailings.
Devoting so much time to such an impractical pursuit amuses some of Camejo's
friends, like business colleague Joe Sturdivant. "To be honest, that is a
puzzle," said Sturdivant, a self-described conservative who has been friends
with Camejo for 15 years. "He's fit into the capitalistic system quite well,
but he still cares about some of the social issues."
The effort makes sense to the candidate. He says he sees it as a chance to
bring more Latinos and other ethnic minorities to the Green Party and
publicize proposed voting reforms that would allow a run-off should one
candidate fail to get the majority of votes--a method that he argues would
break the two major parties' grip on the electorate.
Camejo says he has changed since he ran for president. "I've re-evaluated my
views about how to achieve things," he said over a late lunch at the
Cheesecake Factory in Marina del Rey. "There's less nuttiness."
Later that day, Camejo braved a traffic-choked, 21/2-hour drive to North
Hills to speak to about 35 people at a progressive church. To pass the time
until the main speaker arrived, various members of the crowd took turns
addressing the graying audience on the threats of corporations selling water
and the merits of complex, European-style voting systems.
Camejo gave his standard hourlong talk, taking swipes at Sen. Barbara Boxer
and U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland)--the only member of Congress to vote
against a motion giving President Bush leeway to retaliate for Sept.11--for
saying positive things about the president's war on terror. After the
gathering disbanded, Terrie Brady approached Camejo and softly said that she
thought it was counterproductive to attack Boxer, one of the nation's most
liberal senators.
Camejo launched into a rapid-fire debate with Brady, tossing out the names
of Bay Area politicians he believed had betrayed their beliefs. "I don't
know the situation," Brady protested.
"Well," Camejo replied in a steely tone, "I'm trying to tell you
something.... If you enter politics, you can choose to tell the truth, or
you can lie."
There was a long silence, then Brady and Camejo parted.
1:37:03 PM 
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