Native American Press/Ojibwe News

Green candidate McGaa launches campaign in tight three-way Senate race

By Clara NiiSka - June 7, 2002
U.S. Senate candidate Ed McGaa wrote in his bid for Green Party endorsement, “I am running to Win because this position is as open as the Governorship was last election.”

McGaa was endorsed by the Green Party of Minnesota at its May 18th convention on the second ballot despite a contingent of Greens, including Indian activist and former vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke, calling for “no endorsement” and urging GP delegates to back incumbent Democrat Paul Wellstone against the likely Republican challenger, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman.

After McGaa’s endorsement, Wellstone met with northern Minnesota tribal officials in Bemidji, actively courting Native votes and praising LaDuke’s efforts to persuade the Greens not to nominate a candidate in the senate race.

Wellstone also reaffirmed his ties with the tribal establishment at Red Lake, which has been a DFL stronghold at least since the late 1950s when Hubert Humphrey’s support underwrote Roger Jourdain’s successful efforts to restructure tribal government and establish Jourdain’s powerful thirty-one year reign as chairman.

By late May, incumbent Red Lake chairman Bobby Whitefeather openly supported Wellstone’s run for a third senate term. Whitefeather, however, stands for election himself on July 17th, and challenger and former tribal chairman Gerald “Butch” Brun is not the DFL ‘party man’ that Whitefeather is.

Green challenger McGaa, who earned a law degree from the University of South Dakota as well as “studied under” Chief Eagle Feather and Frank Fool’s Crow, is an enrolled Oglala Indian from Pine Ridge reservation. Over the recent Memorial Day weekend, McGaa reaffirmed his connections with northern Minnesota Indians at the Leech Lake Spring Pow-wow, held at the Veterans Memorial Grounds at Cass Lake.

McGaa, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Korea and was decorated for his combate service as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, evinced his support for Indian veterans at the Leech Lake pow-wow – arousing the concern of some Green party members deeply committed to the “Non-violence” planks in the Green’s platform.

McGaa met with Green party members at a May 30th meeting in Minneapolis, and again on June 4th, to address “concerns regarding values” expressed in the party platform and the “statements and ideas expressed publicly by Ed McGaa.” Among the primary concerns at the May 30th meeting was “Nonviolence.”

McGaa told Press/ON that should he win the Senator’s seat he would form an advisory committee to address issues at the foundation of the Minnesota Green Party’s platform, particularly non-violence, and to help bridge the differences between Indian peoples’ “values approaches” and those of Euroamericans.

The Minnesota Green Party’s endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate is currently putting together his campaign organization. He says that he plans to campaign “throughout the state,” and – as a candidate for Minnesota’s third political party with “major party” status – hopes to participate in the debates.