John Eder

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John Eder (born January 18, 1969) is an activist, and American politician from the U.S. state of Maine. Eder lives in Portland and is a member of the Maine Green Independent Party, the Maine affiliate of the national Green Party. He has served in the Maine House of Representatives as the legislature's first member of the Green Party for two terms and was elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2004. Until his defeat in 2006 Eder was one of only a handful of independent or third party state legislators in the country and was the highest-ranking elected Green official in the United States.

Eder sits on the Green Party's Peace Action Committee working to end the wars in Iraq and Afganistan and to prevent the U.S from going to war with Iran. He is currently writing his first book which is part biographical account of his colorful life and service as the nations highest elected Green Party official and part how-to manual encouraging regular citizens to run for local office as a means to personal transformation. He travels the country lecturing and training citizen's in methods of grassroots organizing and electoral participation. He is presently serving on the Cumberland County Health and Human Services Committee.

1 Biography
2 2002 Election to Maine House of Representatives
3 Continued service in the House
4 2006 elections
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Biography

Raised in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Eder left an abusive and alcoholic home at the age of 15. After moving between friends and relatives and finally being homeless he entered the Hope House facility for troubled boys in Port Jefferson, New York. At 18 Eder entered college in Buffalo, New York to study philosophy. Disenchanted with college and suffering from post-traumatic stress resulting from negative childhood experiences, Eder soon grew restless and dropped out. He spent the next several years studying philosophy on his own and working at the Greyhound bus station in Buffalo. Inspired by Buddhist teachers and the writings of the Beat poet Jack Kerouac, Eder traveled around the country—backpacking, hitchhiking, riding freight trains, and doing migrant farm labor. He went from place to place volunteering and engaging in direct action around a wide range of social justice issues. He spent this period squatting amongst a network of travelers from New York City to Mexico. While living in Austin, Texas he did a short stint as a Hare Krishna. A girlfriend from this period of Eder's life recounts her relationship with him in an episode of This American Life entitled "Cringe." "I love connecting with all kinds of people and hearing their stories," Eder said. "In my travels I learned that American people, especially the poorest ones, would give you the shirt off their backs and that they valued family and relationships above all. It all made me very hopeful for this country."

In 1997 Eder took a cross-country bicycle trip that ended in Maine. He was briefly married to a woman who picked him up hitchhiking there. He lived in a solar-powered shack in the Western Maine Mountains with no running water and later attended massage school in Portland. In 1998 he was practicing massage, caring for the mentally ill, and painting houses when he became the co-chair of the Portland Green Party. Leaders of the Maine Green Independent Party asked him to run for an open seat in the Maine State House, formerly held by Maine House Speaker Mike Saxl, who was unable to run for reelection due to term limits. He met his wife, former park ranger Suzanne Kahn, in Acadia National Park. Kahn lives with Eder in Portland and works at the Children's Museum of Maine.

[edit] 2002 Election to Maine House of Representatives

As a first-time candidate in 2002, Eder took nearly 65% of the vote. His Democratic opponent, who had run for office in the past, received 35%. There was no Republican candidate in the race. Eder had widespread support from Democrats, Republicans, Greens, independents, small business owners, and active members of organizations such as the NAACP and the Maine People’s Alliance. Eder was endorsed by Maine Friends of Animals and the Maine Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, and by Representative Michael Quint. The week before Election Day Eder received the endorsement of all three Portland area newspapers: Portland Press Herald, The Portland Phoenix, and Casco Bay Weekly. Eder's campaign was managed by crime novel writer Patrick Quinlan, author of Smoked. On election night Eder received a congratulatory call from Ralph Nader. Nader sent Eder a box of books as well as several pieces of model legislation for Eder to introduce in the Maine Legislature.

Since legislators unenrolled with a political party typically caucus with one of the two major parties, it was assumed by Maine political observers that Eder would be forced to do the same. However, he was able to secure recognition of himself as the Green party caucus in the House. This established him as a truly independent figure in the legislature, giving him more power vis-à-vis the Democrats and Republicans than if he had just caucused with one of the two parties [1]. This gave him a full-time staff member, something individual legislators in the Maine House - who serve on a part-time basis - normally do not have.

[edit] Continued service in the House

In 2003 Eder was voted Portland's Best Politician in a readers poll conducted by that city's alternative weekly newspaper, the Portland Phoenix, just as redistricting in Maine was threatening to unseat Eder by separating him from his base of support in Portland's West End. The redistricting was seen by many as a deliberate effort by legislative Democrats to oust Eder. In response, Eder moved his residence to rejoin the district he had previously represented and face off against Democratic incumbent Rep. Edward J. Suslovic. In the end, his Democratic opponent found he couldn't compete against Eder's strong base of support.

Eder won with 51% of the vote, compared with 41% for Suslovic and 8% for Republican Arvina Magno.

In March 2005, Eder used his powerful position as a swing vote in the closely divided Maine House of Representatives to earn himself a seat at the table in budget negotiations on Governor John Baldacci's biennial budget. Eder came away with $200,000 for the Portland Bilingual Program and $500,000 to establish the state’s first "creative economy incubator" in Portland, along with an appointment for himself as co-chair of the Governor’s Creative Economy Council, which will advise the Governor on how this creative economy should be fostered.

On June 17, in the last days of the 2005 legislative session, Eder entered into budget negotiations with Democratic Party leadership and secured a commitment from Governor Baldacci on tax reform. Eder organized a handful of fellow "Progressive" Democratic representatives who refused to support the budget unless a bill for meaningful reform passed before the end of the session. But as pressure mounted to pass the budget, House members succumbed and voted in favor of it, but without securing a commitment to address the tax model. Finally, only Eder and Representative Joanne Twomey (Biddeford) remained. Then Eder was able to negotiate a letter from Baldacci committing to hold a special legislative session on tax reform. In the end Eder voted for the budget but Twomey never voted for the budget.

In 2006, with recent switches of several of their members from Democrat to unenrolled, the Maine Democrats hold a slim 74-73 numerical edge over Republicans in the House. Eder enjoys a position of advantage as the only third-party member in the House. Along with the unenrolled representatives (Thomas Saviello, Barbara Merill, and Richard G. Woodbury), he exercises enormous influence over votes that fall along party lines.

Eder enjoyed great support among Portland's residents. In April of 2006, for the third time in the four years since he began serving in the legislature, Eder was voted "Best Local Politician" in a reader’s poll conducted by the city's alternative weekly The Portland Phoenix. Of Eder's most recent readers poll award the Portland Phoenix staff wrote, "Seriously, how can you not like John Eder?"

[edit] 2006 elections

Eder lost the 2006 election to the Maine House by about 60 votes to Democrat Jon Hink. Eder entered the campaign as a favorite, and many environmental, gay-rights, labor, and progressive organizations lined up behind him.

A controversy erupted when Eder paid for the National Organization of Women chapter to make phone calls criticizing Hink and questioning Hink's position on abortion. The phone calls didn't mention that they were paid for by Eder. Hink is pro-choice, but didn't commit to supporting abortion rights in every circumstance. Hink claimed that the ads violated state election law by failing to disclose who was funding them. The state elections commision agreed, and fined Eder $100. ^[1]

Hink won the election with 51.5% of the vote to Eder's 48.5%

Eder is credited with propelling the Greens to their present position as the second party of contention in Portland by demonstrating that Green candidates offer a viable and attractive alternative to the Democrats. A record number of voters cast their ballots for Greens in 2006. In a post election article in Portland's online political magazine The Bollard,editor Chris Busby wrote, "...though the Greens in Portland lost Eder, they held their own on the school board, made a giant gain on the council, and darn-near unseated two popular and longstanding state legislators." In the four short years since Eder first won his break-through election the Greens have gone from holding one seat on the Portland's School Committee to holding eight seats in various municipal offices today.

Several young activist who have worked on Eder's previous campaigns won office in '06. Rebbecca Minnick won a seat on the Portland School Committee where she joins three sitting Greens on the nine member committee while David A.Marshall and Kevin Donoghue took seats on the Portland City Council becoming the first registered Greens to serve on that ostensibly non-partisan body and the two youngest members ever to serve in the council's history.