Green Party

Frances Kay Dellinger, an activist in third-party political groups, ended her life June 11 at her Northeast Baltimore home. She was 66. Friends said she had been treated for intestinal disease and depression for 18 months before her death. Born in Washington, D.C., she earned a sociology degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. A political activist, she organized a tenants union at an apartment house in suburban Washington and had worked for the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in the late 1960s.

Dennis H. Weaver, 67, master electrician Dennis H. Weaver, a retired master electrician and longtime Harford County resident, died Friday of cancer at his home in Street. He was 67. He started in electrical work in the Navy, and served as an aviation electrician from 1951 to 1954, during the Korean War. He was stationed in Norfolk, Va., for most of the time he was in the Navy. Mr. Weaver was among the first electricians to join what was a new Local 24 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Baltimore about 40 years ago. He was employed by Howard P. Foley Co. in Baltimore for more than 30 years.

Green Party thrives without money from PACs or corporations I was happy to see coverage in The Sun of the Green Party winning status as a national committee ("FEC awards Green Party national committee status," Nov. 9). But while the article was technically accurate, it missed an important point about the Green Party: We do politics differently than Democrats and Republicans, especially with regard to money. Although national committee status allows us to accept donations of up to $20,000 per year from individual donors, the Green Party of the United States caps donations at $10,000.

WASHINGTON -- Four years ago, public activist -- some would say public agitator -- Ralph Nader ran for president. Or, as he puts it, "stood for" president. The distinction is that in 1996, when he got about 1 percent of the vote, he just loaned his name to the Green Party ticket but did hardly any campaigning. This time around, Mr. Nader is running and running hard. At the close of a seven-state swing through the Midwest this month, he will have campaigned in all 50 states in a drive to gain ballot position in each of them, at the same time building grass-roots organizations.

WASHINGTON - Dismissing criticism that his Green Party candidacy helped elect President Bush in 2000, Ralph Nader said yesterday that he is weighing a bid for the White House next year. The veteran consumer activist, whose third-party presidential campaign drew 2.8 million votes in the last election, criticized Democrats for not aggressively challenging the Bush administration's economic policies and its handling of corporate fraud. The party's candidates, he said, have not shown that they are a sound alternative to Bush.

Ralph Nader slouched casually through the stone doorway at St. John's Methodist Church in Baltimore Wednesday afternoon wearing his standard issue, coal-gray, off-the-rack business suit, looking tall and lean and remarkably at ease. The edgiest, meanest, most bodacious bad boy of American politics, the man Paul Starr, editor of the American Prospect, recently called "the delusional and destructive Pied Piper of progressivism," who Michael Dukakis wanted to "strangle with my bare hands" after the election, who the Nation says led the "quixotic quest to elect a reactionary Republican to the American presidency," who the New York Post's Jack Newfield wrote should be "shunned and shamed," the man who put the fear back into frightened liberals looked happy!

WASHINGTON -- Although he will be on the ballot in November in about half the states, it wouldn't be quite right to say that Ralph Nader is running for president. That would suggest activity.From a bare office, with a bare bookshelf and bare walls, that he has just moved into, the defiantly black-and-white nominee of the Green Party is waging a sort of passive-aggressive presidential campaign.If you build it -- and if you do all the work and raise all the money and leave me alone, he told the liberal, ecologically minded Greens last year I still might not come.

PRESIDENTIAL candidate Ralph Nader is standing on a bar of soap in a political rainstorm. Midway through 2004, while his electoral base shrinks, one of the great American reformers of the 20th century is drifting out to sea. When the Green Party's national convention refused to endorse Mr. Nader for president a few days ago, the delegates were not rejecting his strong anti-corporate and pro-democracy politics. On the contrary, the convention was acting on the basis of such principles. Greens from every region of the country recognized that Mr. Nader -- proudly unaccountable to any institution but himself -- has steered his campaign into a steadily worsening tangle of contradictions.

Keith Losoya is doing the unthinkable, running for a state Senate seat in the bluest of blue cities. Baltimore City, after all, has more than eight Democrats for every registered Republican. Not good odds for a non-Democrat. So it comes as no surprise that the city's 24 Democratic legislative candidates - mostly incumbents - are expected to win the city's six legislative districts. Most have practically quit campaigning after more competitive primary elections in September. One senator and three delegates represent each district.