On Last Day, Stein Goes Basement to Boston

SOMERVILLE — Campaign signs line the walls of a small basement room in a stout office building on Elm Street.

Many of these signs are written by hand on the backsides of discarded campaign posters for W. Mitt Romney and Shannon P. O’Brien.

A notice near the door reminds campaign staffers and volunteers to recycle. Half-empty bottles of Coca-Cola rest on the floor with a sleeping cocker spaniel.

A voice on the radio, tuned to election news, announces the day’s briefs.

“Starbucks against fair trade coffee? Couldn’t be!” Pat Keaney cries to the boombox from his desk near the door, where he is answering last-minute e-mail inquiries by undecided voters.

Keaney is campaign manager for Green Party gubernatorial candidate Jill E. Stein ’72-’73, and their campaign calls this unprepossessing room home.

As she returns to headquarters after a radio interview, Stein plans what she will do as voters head to the polls to determine the outcome of Massachusetts’ dead-heat governor’s race.

She polled around five percent in the final days before the election and became an increasingly important figure in the neck-and-neck struggle between Republican Romney and Democrat O’Brien.

Many Democrats said votes for the Green Party candidate could shift the election’s outcome in Romney’s favor.

Before heading out against from headquarters, Stein objects to her common portrayal as a “spoiler.” Her campaign, she says, has become a scapegoat for an unsuccessful Democratic effort.

“Republicans managed to win the last three gubernatorial races without the help of Greens,” she says. “The Democrats have to face the music.”

Stein works with Keaney to prepare an itinerary for the day. She and her supporters will visit some of the local polls to rally support.

Campaign staffer Michael Gainer, who spent the past few nights at headquarters, rolls up a rumpled sleeping bag.

Phones ring constantly. When a reporter from a local radio station calls Keaney, Stein rushes across the room with her notebook to speak with the reporter.

Her campaign is constantly hungry for media attention.

Though she has more public support than Independent gubernatorial candidate Barbara Johnson or Libertarian Carla Howell, her campaign manager says she’s been hurt by scant representation in the local media.

“When people hear Jill, they like her,” Keaney says. “Candidates like Dr. Stein don’t come around very often. She’s intelligent, she’s articulate, she’s knowledgeable about the issues.”

Bob Smith wanders into the office to announce that he has registered to vote for the first time in 30 years. He has no affiliation with the campaign but he stops by to present Stein and her staff with a support gift––aprons reading, “Don’t be afraid of work. Make work afraid of you.”

“Oh, I love him,” Gainer shouts after the campaign’s newfound supporter leaves.

Stein says her campaign’s success has burgeoned recently. She cites an online poll, based on potential voters’ responses to gubernatorial candidates’ public statements, in which she garnered 23 percent support, compared to 15 percent for O’Brien.

“Hope has kind of reached a critical mass,” she says. “We’re at a tipping point.”

She ran a “clean campaign” in accordance with the Clean Elections law, receiving most of her funding in small amounts from private citizens. She mounted her gubernatorial effort on resources totalling about $120,000. Romney and O’Brien each spent about $4 million in campaign funds.

“Whether we win the election or whether we have just established a credible third party that cannot be bought or sold, we have won,” she says.

In the case of defeat, she says, she plans to continue her activism from her position as a physician and instructor at Harvard Medical School, where she specializes in environmental health.

The staff and volunteers of the campaign headquarters gather handmade signs as they prepare to drive into Boston with Stein to rally support.

Gainer taps his desk and sings, “The media is not foolin’ me, ’cause I...” His voice trails off.

Outside, Stein climbs into a row of parked cars with her volunteers, carrying with her a box of take-out calzones and an old canvas knapsack.

The vehicles proceed through Somerville and Harvard Square on their way to their first polling site—the Jackson Mann School in Brighton.

The drivers struggle to remain together by following a white Volvo with an enormous green-and-white Jill Stein sign protruding from its roof. Car and sign together stand exactly 10 feet tall.

The Volvo toots its horn as it accelerates through Cambridge, headed toward Allston. Honks of support answer; a few pedestrians wave from the sidewalk.

“Don’t let me miss the bridge,” its driver mumbles.

Stein is catching a few minutes of sleep in the passenger seat of the car following. She wants to be refreshed for the evening, she says.

A single volunteer holds a Stein sign in front of the Mann School as the vehicles arrive.

Keaney sings a melody from the Star Wars soundtrack as he pulls a cloth campaign banner from the car and unrolls it at the corner of Cambridge and Beacon Streets.

Stein speaks with a passerby who happens to be a homeless advocate. He is concerned that a vote for Stein will win the governorship for Romney.

She replies with a speech she’s given many times before, telling him that 85 percent of the Massachusetts legislature is Democratic and citing financial cutbacks that Boston’s homeless programs have experienced under the Democratic majority.

“It’s amazing how many people just don’t know,” she says after he walks away.

She feels certain that the homeless advocate will support her in the polls that afternoon.

Meanwhile, the Stein supporters hold up signs to passing cars. The lampposts at the intersection are covered with the posters of other candidates, and some O’Brien representatives stand a few feet away.

They have planned similar campaigns at the Boston Public Library and in Jamaica Plain and other locations. Stein then rests for a couple of hours before heading to Slade’s, the restaurant on Tremont Street where the Green Party will watch the election returns roll in.

Stein says she’s not nervous about the election’s outcome.

“It’s time to stand up and vote for what we believe in,” she says, “and wait for the chips to fall.”