{"id":6613,"date":"2012-09-26T08:31:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T12:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6613"},"modified":"2012-09-26T08:54:09","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T12:54:09","slug":"ny21-a-strong-night-for-donald-hassig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/09\/26\/ny21-a-strong-night-for-donald-hassig\/","title":{"rendered":"NY21: A strong night for Donald Hassig"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It’s been a tough campaign for third party challenger and perennial North Country activist Donald Hassig.<\/p>\n

The Green Party candidate has been blasted by progressives for running a lackluster campaign, with no real organization and few major events.<\/p>\n

Some have suggested that he might give the Green Party a bad name, a charge Hassig has rejected.<\/p>\n

Bob Gorman, at the Watertown Daily Times, has suggested that Hassig might be suffering from mental illness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And Hassig himself, in an interview with our Natasha Haverty<\/a>, conceded that he had no real chance of competing in the NY21 House race.<\/p>\n

But there is a long, vibrant and healthy history of protest and issue-raising candidates in American politics and last night Hassig was at his best.<\/p>\n

Sitting on the stage with Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Matt Doheny, Hassig seemed to be the only guy actually having fun.<\/p>\n

He avoided the kind of distracting behavior — i.e. dancing and rambling on ad nauseum — that has distracted attention from his message.<\/p>\n

And he repeatedly chided the other politicians for what he described as their cautious, unimaginative ideas — a charge I suspect that many voters would share.<\/p>\n

Hassig also threw out some big ideas of his own, which drew significant amounts of applause from the big crowd at Queensbury High School.<\/p>\n

He proposed turning America’s military into a purely defensive force, withdrawing from the World Trade Organization, and banning corporate farms.<\/p>\n

“Our country is faced with great challenges,” Hassig said.\u00a0 “This is a time for digging down in our inner being and thinking about how we’re connected to everything, a time for making huge changes.”<\/p>\n

Hassig suggested that while he might be a long-shot or even a non-shot in 2012, his ideas will be mainstream by 2020.\u00a0 Then he pumped his fist in the air and gave a cheerful whoop.<\/p>\n

Siena’s poll earlier this month suggested that 6% of North Country voters are considering casting their ballots for Hassig, which means that — if their survey is correct — one out of twenty people you see on the street today are leaning green.<\/p>\n

For all Hassig’s troubled history, you could see last night why some people would find appeal in his radical, let’s-change-everything-and-love-Mother-Earth brand of politics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a tough campaign for third party challenger and perennial North Country activist Donald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6550,7004,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6617,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6613\/revisions\/6617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}