Peter Camejo

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Peter Miguel Camejo

Peter Miguel Camejo (born December 31, 1939) is a financier, businessman, political activist, author, and one of the founders of the socially responsible investment movement. In 2004, he was selected by independent candidate Ralph Nader as his vice-presidential running mate.

Contents

1 Early life
2 Politics

2.1 1976 Presidential Election
2.2 Gubernatorial Races
2.3 2004 Vice-Presidential Race
2.4 Future political campaign(s)

3 Family Life
4 Political criticism of Peter Camejo
5 Publications
6 External links

Early life

Camejo is a first generation American of Venezuelan descent. Although he spent his earliest years in Venezuela, he was born in the Queens borough of New York City where his mother lived when she moved to America, giving him American birthright. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he came with his mother to reside in the United States — although on summer holidays he would return to Venezuela to visit relatives. He competed for Venezuela in yachting in the 1960 Summer Olympics.

He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he played soccer and began his involvement in left-wing politics, and the University of California, Berkeley where he studied history. In 1967, after winning a student council election at Berkeley, he was suspended for "using an unauthorized microphone" in a protest against the Vietnam War.

Politics

Initially, Camejo focused his political efforts into the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyist party. He was the SWP's presidential nominee in 1976. Within a few years, however, Camejo broke with the SWP and adopted a political agenda more closely aligned with democratic socialism.

1976 Presidential Election

Camejo ran for President of the United States in 1976 as a nominee of the Socialist Workers Party. He received 90,986 votes, or 0.1 percent of the vote, and did not win any electoral votes.

Gubernatorial Races

During the 1990s, Camejo joined the Green Party. In 2002 he was the Green Party's official candidate in California's gubernatorial election, polling 381,700 votes or 5.3 percent[link], the largest vote total for a third party in the California governor's race in more than 50 years.

In 2003, he was the leading Green Party candidate for governor in an unprecedented California recall election, in which he polled 2.8% of the votes. Camejo finished fourth in a field of 135 certified candidates.

2004 Vice-Presidential Race

In January 2004, Camejo initiated the Avocado Education Project that issued a statement known as the Avocado Declaration. The Avocado Declaration described actions by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as hindering social progress by working together to largely benefit a small, wealthy constituency. It further advocated for a fiercely independent Green Party that would be capable of attracting nonvoters and disillusioned mainstream party supporters.

"The Green Party is at a crossroads," the Declaration began. Indeed, the central debate within the national Green Party prior to its 2004 presidential nomination was whether to follow Camejo's advice of pursuing a confrontational campaign stategy promulgated in The Avocado Declaration or to tend the party at the state and local levels and assist a Democratic Party victory over the Republicans in the fall. While Camejo and his allies advocated attracting new party members by sharply defining campaign issues, others -- remembering the party's experiences in the 2000 presidential election -- feared a backlash against the Green Party if it was perceived to help return George W. Bush to the White House.

Camejo submitted himself as a candidate in the Green Party of California's March 2, 2004 Presidential Preference Primary. Before the primary, he made it known (though not in the state's official voter guide) that he was not planning to run for president and that any delegates pledged to him would be released as 'uncommitted' in order to allow for greater flexibility in the nominating process. The popular former gubernatorial candidate got 76 percent of the vote in the Presidential Preference Primary and also accumulated a few pledged delegates from other states.

In June 2004, Camejo accepted the vice-presidential spot in the independent campaign of former two-time Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

At the Green Party convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 26, 2004, supporters of NOTA or those who realized that "Anyone But Bush" was insurmountable, tended to support the nomination of presidential candidate David Cobb, while Camejo's supporters rallied behind him and called for an endorsement of the Nader/Camejo campaign. However, the presence of other issues such as Nader's non-membership in the party, non-presence at the convention, Camejo's subterfuge in California, and alliance with the Reform Party kept the nomination vote from being merely a referendum on strategy. Cobb won the nomination in the second round.

Nader and Camejo continued their campaign as independent and Green candidates, having been endorsed by the Reform Party on May 11, 2004.

Both Nader and Camejo said the main reason they ran in the 2004 election was because there were no other national candidates demanding an immediate withdrawal of American troops from what they believe is an immoral and unconstitutionally pursued War in Iraq (though Cobb, Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik, Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka, Socialist Party USA candidate Walt Brown and Socialist Workers Party candidate Róger Calero also opposed the war). However, unlike all of these candidates, because Ralph Nader was regularly invited to appear on mainstream news, the Nader and Camejo team were the only candidates which had a regular voice in the mainstream media arguing to bring the troops home.

The Nader/Camejo ticket came in third in the election, polling approximately 460,000 votes (.38 percent).

Future political campaign(s)

At the 2005 Green Party National Convention, Camejo stated he would not be a candidate for President in 2008. Instead, he said he was considering another run for California Governor in 2006. He is now an official candidate for Governor in California for the 2006 election.

Family Life

Camejo is married and has two children. He lives in Folsom, California. He is currently Chief Executive Officer of Progressive Asset Management, a financial investment firm that encourages socially responsible projects. He is the author of "The SRI Advantage- Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially", and other books. His newest book is "California: Under Corporate Rule," written with Green Party members Todd Chretien, Sarah Knopp, Rachel Odes, Don Bechler, Mehul Thakker, Forrest Hill, and Donna Warren, due to be released soon.

Political criticism of Peter Camejo

Camejo's activities as a student activist at Berkeley earned him a spot on then-California governor Ronald Reagan's "ten most dangerous people in California" list, for his presence at anti-war demonstrations. [link]

Some have criticized Camejo for entering the recall effort to depose Gray Davis. According to critic Peter Daniels, Camejo "moved quickly to lend his support to the right-wing effort to depose Davis." [link].

Another critic, Joseph Kay, writing on the World Socialist Website on 7 July 2005, states, "...How, Camejo was asked, did his election campaign advance the struggle for socialism, when neither Nader nor he ever spoke of socialism or sought to connect opposition to war, inequality and attacks on democratic rights with opposition to the capitalist system? Camejo’s answer was unequivocal: The Green Party is not socialist and never will be socialist. Socialists should join it, but it will not be a vehicle for socialism. “The works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky are not embedded into people,” he declared. “That’s okay, because hundreds of thousands are beginning to listen and beginning to break with the Democratic Party. There is an opening here, which we have to pursue. If a wing of the labor movement breaks with the Democratic Party, would they call themselves socialist? No. Would we support them? Yes. We don’t want the Green Party to be socialist... The last thing I am going to do is get on TV and explain what happened in the Soviet Union. It is not ideas that will win, but practical issues.”

In 2004, Camejo established the Green political group Greens for Democracy and Independence (GDI), designed as a declaration of independence from the Democratic Party. Some Greens preferred None of the Above (NOTA) and chose David Cobb as a compromise to avoid association with Ralph Nader.

Later, Camejo created a California political action committee to run candidates for California Green County Councils, the local leadership bodies of the California Green Party. Many Greens find outside intervention in local elections as a contravention of the Green Ten Key Values of Decentralization and Grassroots Democracy.

In 2006, Camejo declared himself the Green candidate for governor of California. Only one local group, the San Francisco Greens local, refrained from endorsing Camejo's third bid for the governorship. In 2002, however, Camejo earned more votes than Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon in San Francisco, a rarity in third-party politics.

Publications

While a member of the Socialist Workers Party, Camejo wrote the book Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877. The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction, published by Pathfinder Press. [link]

External links

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Ralph Nader presidential campaign, 2004

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