David Cobb
|
|
David Keith Cobb (born 1963, San Leon, Texas) is an American lawyer and activist, and was the 2004 presidential candidate of the Green Party of the United States (GPUS).
Cobb graduated from the University of Houston Law school in 1993 and for several years maintained a successful private practice as an attorney in Houston, Texas. During the 1980s, Cobb had campaigned for the Democratic Presidential candidacies of Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown. As a result of his experiences, however, Cobb became disenchanted with the Democratic Party and declined to campaign for them any further. Instead, he turned his activism to the issues of democracy and corporations, appearing at lectures, seminars, and workshops throughout the U.S. with various citizens' groups to promote his view that corporations have become unelected governing institutions and that a nonviolent democratic revolution is needed in response.
In 2000, Green Presidential candidate Ralph Nader asked Cobb to organize his campaign in Texas, and Cobb closed his law practice to do so. He coordinated a successful ballot access drive in the state. Concurrently, Cobb became the GPUS's General Counsel.
In 2002, Cobb ran for Attorney General of Texas on the Green ticket and used his candidacy to "barnstorm" in areas of Texas with little Green representation. He was unsuccessful in the election, but the Green Party of Texas grew dramatically during his campaign, from four local chapters to 26. The next year, Cobb was tabbed as a possible Presidential candidate by a Green committee, and he accepted the challenge, taking an indefinite leave of absence as General Counsel.
With the announcement in late December 2003 that Nader would not seek the nomination of the Green Party for President in 2004, Cobb began to be considered by some Greens as the front-runner for the party's nomination. On January 13, 2004, David Cobb won the first Green primary in the nation, that of the District of Columbia, beating local activist Sheila Bilyeu and several write-in candidates and gaining the early lead in the race for the nomination. Nader eventually announced an independent campaign for president and sought the "endorsement" rather than the "nomination" of the Green Party. Shortly before the Green Party presidential nominating convention in June, 2004, which was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Nader selected Green Party member Peter Camejo as his running mate. On June 26, on the second ballot, the convention selected Cobb as the Green presidential candidate. The party also nominated Pat LaMarche as its candidate for vice-president.
Cobb stated his intention to run a campaign focused on building the Green Party and to pursue a "strategic states" or "smart states" strategy that would take into account the wishes of Greens in each state and would focus on states that traditionally are "safely" won by the Democratic candidate, or "safely" won by the Republican candidate, with a large margin of victory. Such so-called "safe states" are also referred to in campaign literature as "neglected states" because the Democratic and Republican candidates traditionally put most of their campaign energy into more competitive "swing states." Cobb's campaign said that, in each state, the campaign would aim to follow the wishes expressed by Greens in that state. While some of Cobb's erstwhile supporters urged swing state residents to vote for Democrat John Kerry in order to stop the re-election of President George W. Bush, other Cobb supporters encouraged votes for Cobb and LaMarche in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The candidates themselves used the phrase "vote your conscience."
On October 8, 2004, Cobb was arrested for what he and his supporters consider an act of civil disobedience, breaking a police line while protesting his exclusion from the presidential debates in Saint Louis, Missouri. Also arrested was the Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik. The private entity Commission on Presidential Debates describes its candidate selection criteria on its website (http://www.debates.org/pages/candsel2004.html).
In the November 2004 presidential election, Mr. Cobb placed sixth in the popular vote total nationwide, earning over 118,000 votes, but received no electoral votes.
2004 Ohio recount
After the 2004 election, Mr. Cobb and the Libertarian nominee (Mr. Badnarik) sought a recount of the Ohio vote and announced that they would challenge the 2004 presidential voting results in Ohio, even though neither challenger was claiming to have won the election, and even though Mr. Cobb had not even been on the ballot in Ohio. The challengers explained that it was an important matter of principle, to make sure all the votes were counted, and counted accurately. They pointed to alleged irregularities of various kinds.
On December 6, 2004, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell certified that George W. Bush had won Ohio by about 119,000 votes over John Kerry. This was a considerably lower difference than earlier unofficial counts had reported, but it still amounted to a margin of about two percentage points. A formal legal challenge to the certified vote could not be filed until the official Ohio certification, which made it official that George W. Bush could expect 286 electoral votes, to John Kerry's 252 electoral votes.
If the recount had shown that Ohio's 20 electoral votes should actually have been awarded to Mr. Kerry instead of going to Mr. Bush, this would have meant that Mr. Kerry (with 272 electoral votes) and not Mr. Bush (with 266 electoral votes) would have won the 2004 presidential election.
Few observers believed that a recount in Ohio could result in a John Kerry victory over George W. Bush; indeed, the electoral college would be required to meet before the results of a recount in Ohio could be tallied.
Update: the legally binding recount began Dec 13, 2004 (http://www.votecobb.org/).
See also
External links
- Official Cobb for President website (http://www.votecobb.org/)
- Better World Links on the Presidential Election (http://www.betterworldlinks.org/president.htm)
- CounterPunch email interview with David Cobb (http://www.counterpunch.org/frank10042004.html)
| Preceded by: Ralph Nader | Green Party Presidential candidate 2004 (a) (lost) | Succeeded by: — Template:Succession footnote Template:End boxde:David Cobb fr:David Cobb |