David Cobb (politician, 1962)

David Cobb

David Keith Cobb (born December 24, 1962 in San Leon , Galveston County , Texas ) is an American lawyer and politician . He was the Green Party's presidential candidate for the 2004 presidential election .

Career

After working on a fishing cutter in the Gulf of Mexico , as a construction worker and as a waiter, he studied law at the University of Houston Law School until 1993 . He then worked as a lawyer in Houston for several years .

In the 1980s he was involved in the Democratic Party's presidential campaigns for Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown . As a result of this engagement, he became disaffected with the Democrats and refused to engage with them again. Instead, he turned to topics such as more democracy and performed at readings, seminars and workshops across the United States with various civic groups. He took the view that corporations and large firms had become unelected government institutions and that the response was a nonviolent democratic revolution .

In 2000, Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader asked Cobb to organize his election campaign in Texas. Cobb even closed his law firm for it . The campaign was quite successful and Cobb became Secretary General of the US Greens. In 2002 Cobb ran with the support of the Greens as Attorney General in Texas. While unsuccessful, the Green Party of Texas grew significantly during its campaign.

2004 presidential elections

In 2003 David Cobb was proposed as a possible presidential candidate for the Green Party, which Cobb accepted - combined with an indefinite resignation from his general secretary post. With Ralph Nader's announcement in late December 2004 that he would not run as a candidate for the Greens, Cobb was seen as a potential top candidate. On January 13, 2004, David Cobb won the country's first green primary, that of the District of Columbia , in which he defeated local activist Sheila Bilyeu. Meanwhile, Nader announced an independent candidacy and sought support for the Greens rather than a nomination for them. Shortly before the Green Party nomination conference in Milwaukee in June 2004, Nader announced the election of Peter Camejo , a well-known member of the Greens, as his vice-presidential candidate. Finally, at the party congress, Cobb and Pat LaMarche were elected as vice-presidential candidates.

Cobb emphasized his will to lead a campaign that should promote the further development of the Green Party by pursuing a “strategic states” or “smart states” strategy. H. should take into account the wishes of the individual regional associations as far as possible. In addition, he wanted to focus his campaign on so-called "safe states", in which either Democrats or Republicans had a relatively large lead in predictions. They in turn concentrated their campaign on the undecided " swing states ".

While some Greens called on voters to vote for Democratic candidate John Kerry to prevent re-election of George W. Bush , other Green supporters called on voters to vote for Cobb and LaMarche. The two candidates themselves used the slogan "Vote your conscience" (for example: "Choose your conscience") and appeared in both "swing states" such as Wisconsin and "safe states" such as California .

On October 8, 2004, Cobb was arrested for what he called an "act of civil disobedience ". He and several supporters broke through a number of police officers as they face Cobbs exclusion from the presidential debates in St. Louis , Missouri protested . In the November 2004 election , Cobb received 118,000 votes nationwide. After the election, Cobb, along with Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik , sought a recount of the votes in Ohio , although neither candidate claimed victory and Cobb was not even on the Ohio ballot. Both justified their request by saying that the principle was important to them and that they wanted to make sure that all votes were counted correctly. You referred to isolated irregularities. On October 6, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell stated that George W. Bush had won by 119,000 votes over John Kerry. That was a significantly lower margin than previous counts had shown.

David Cobb currently works for the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution and also works as an organizer of the Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County Association.

Web links

• Official campaign website
• Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution website
• Democracy unlimited of Humboldt County website