This campaign was a major first project for our new party and it brought us more interest and publicity than we normally could have expected to receive during our first year of existence. Support for the Hoffman campaign resulted in the establishment of a number of Green Party locals, plus we made quite a few important new contacts, people who might otherwise have drifted into our orbit only after many years of hearing about the Greens "here and there." We made important strides toward learning to do media work and (perhaps even more important) toward establishing our own media.

Madelyn received just under 11,000 votes. I believe that breaking the 10,000 vote threshold is significant in the sense that it puts us a cut above the "marginal tier." We were the only third party to do so aside from the Libertarians (who, with their matching funds, had a war chest of well over a half-million dollars) and the Conservatives (who, after years of organizing, were able to field a slate of more than 80 candidates for the state legislature along with their gubernatorial candidate). Before the election I had suggested that if we were to get a tenth the vote total of Sabrin and a quarter the vote total of Pezzullo we would be doing pretty well. We actually did get a tenth the number of votes Sabrin received and more than a quarter of Pezzullo's total.

The Green Party was brand new, had little money, and ran just two candidates this year, but the potential of our party is indicated by the interest in our message in all our public appearances, and also by the fact that we probably got the most numbers of votes per dollar spent (as did the Nader and Carol Miller campaigns). This is a goal the Greens should strive for in every election.

Naturally we need to take a long range view and keep a realistic perspective. It could not have been expected that an alternative party formed in March of this year could have been a big factor by November. On the one hand, the Sabrin phenomenon had a downside for us because whatever attention the press deigns to give to third party candidates was given to the one that had the resources to get into the debates (the Conservative Party complained about this, too). On the other hand, Sabrin played his candidacy as such an appeal to the right wing of the electorate that it put us in the position of being the viable alternative for progressive independent voters. I think this election provides a foundation toward staking our claim to be exactly that, the progressive alternative in the state of New Jersey.

We should be proud of what we've accomplished in so short a time and pleased to see how our Green community is expanding and gaining support. Vote totals aside, enough cannot be said about the efforts of our candidates. In a debate near the end of the campaign, Nick Mellis sat right square between the two Dems and the two Reps and he made it clear that they would be facing a Green Party challenge in their town for years to come. Nick's candidacy points the way toward the dozens and then hundreds of local races that we must participate in during the coming years.

But it has been Madelyn who has really gotten the idea of a "Green Party of New Jersey" into the public arena so quickly. Two years in a row, she took on challenges that few us would have the chutzpah or endurance for. When she appeared last year with Ralph Nader in the role of his New Jersey running mate, she looked like she had been involved with politics at the Presidential level all her life! And this year ... well, she was front and center, she was The Candidate -- and she had to take all the heat and cold and lukewarm. Through it all, starting way back last winter, she has been doggedly out there and out there and out there some more. I think I can speak for just about all of us when I say that she has earned our support and our respect and our love.

- Steve Welzer