2020 Candidates
Registrar of Voters
Registrar of Voters- Details
Candidates for Co-Chair (3 seats)
Tania Abbatello
Candidate for Co-Chair
Shoreline Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., 203-641-7964
As a candidate running for the position of co-chair of the Green Party of Connecticut, I’d like to give some background of my current and past involvement in serving my community. As a child, the spectre of a constantly looming nuclear war helped to shape the vehemently anti-war position that I still espouse. As a teenager I found that I was always very interested in politics and enjoyed lively debates in my high school civics class, mostly arguing from the left but occasionally tasked with taking the opposite position as my teacher was an excellent educator of multiple points of view. When I entered college, I was one of seven protesters of the Gulf War at Southern CT State University. During the Clarence Thomas hearings, my fellow students and I were inspired to form a local chapter of the National Organization for Women, of which I became treasurer. We organized marches and community actions, including a trip to the Mall in DC for a woman’s right to choose. Our organization helped to form the still-active LGBTQ Prism support group on campus.
Throughout the following years, I would volunteer my time as a poll worker for the Town of Madison. During the BP oil spill, I organized a Hands Across the Sand protest along the shore of Hammonasset State Park. After moving to Clinton and seeing such an active Green Party presence, I was inspired to become more involved with the party.
I am currently an Inland Wetlands Commissioner as a Green. I am also involved with the Sustainable CT committee. I have most recently been appointed as the chairman of the Clinton Green Party. I feel that our focus should be on bringing as many Greens as possible to local boards and commissions as part of a greater strategy to expand the party base.
Professionally, I am a local business owner as a partner in a small family-run independent insurance agency.
As a co-chair, I hope to bring the enthusiasm and focus of the Clinton Green Party to the state party at large. We’re currently facing an excellent opportunity to grow our party base as a result of so many like-minded folks who feel alienated by the two-party system. I look forward to being a part of a strategy that brings this party to the disenfranchised voters who have finally had enough and are looking for a party that truly represents THEM.
Peter Goselin
Candidate for Co-Chair
Hartford County Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
I am proud to have been the Green Party of Connecticut candidate for Attorney General in 2018. Today, more than ever, we need a grassroots political party in Connecticut that will represent the interests of working people, that will fight to dismantle white supremacy and oppression, and that will lead in saving our planet from capitalist greed.
As a lawyer in Connecticut for almost twenty-five years, I have been an advocate for the rights of individual workers and labor unions. In recent years my political and legal work has been focused on exposing police violence against people of color, protecting workers’ rights on the job, defending immigrant workers from wage theft and exploitation, and protecting our First Amendment freedom to protest.
As conscious and caring members of our communities, Greens know it takes more than voting to make change. Neighborhood groups, organizations that represent oppressed communities, labor unions, and direct action groups all play a role, along with political parties like the Connecticut Green Party. Petitions, picket lines, boycotts, and protests are, like running for office and voting, tools for creating a better world.
When activists organize to demand police accountability in their city, or call for a ban on plastic bags, or oppose dangerous budget cuts, we in the Connecticut Green Party should be right there with them. Not only supporting their work but inviting them: run your candidate for board of education or city council or state legislature on the Green Party ballot line. Let us make this tool available to you. To accomplish that goal, we need to take seriously the work of getting Greens onto more ballot lines, preserving the ballot lines we have, and reforming Connecticut’s elections system, including with ballot re-design and Ranked Choice Voting.
Video statement:
Tim McKee
Candidate for Co-Chair
General (At-Large) Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Candidates for CT Representative to the GPUS National Committee (5 seats)
Owen Charles
Candidate for CT Representative to the Green Party of United States
Shoreline Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
- At the NatComm we need to make more progress on non-toxic, productive, and efficient communication. I will continue to advocate for this exchange of ideas not insults. We need less endless micro-detailing of our platform and more work on engaging and growing a mass movement.
- We can institute voluntary Green membership dues of $50 per person (or pay what you can). This was advocated by the late Bruce Dixon, a NatComm member and great writer for Black Agenda Report who I was privileged to meet and talk with. I feel strongly we're missing out on a funding source because we don't even politely ask for it. Other political parties/organizations require dues that fund things to build a mass movement such as national offices, regional offices, regional organizers and outreach coordinators.
- At the State level, our 5 delegates can share thoughts and information with each other and CTGP members in advance and prepare a report for each monthly meeting. We can do a better job of sharing key info from the NatComm including votes and platform proposals, in order to solicit CTGP member input on these. I commend Tim McKee for doing this recently via the CTGP Yahoo listservs. To share more widely, we can utilize Facebook, monthly meetings, and local chapters and town committees.
- I'd like to see the Green Party play a key role in growing a mass movement, winning elections, and enacting the change we want to see. We must evolve out of our initial “Small Club” stage of development and welcome people in – to become a Party that inspires people and WINS ELECTIONS.
- I am a life-long activist, a Registered Nurse, a former Occupy-organizer, have held public office, run as a Green candidate, and founded and continue to be a leader of the Shoreline Green Party. If you’d like to know more about me, see my past statements on this site under candidates- 2017, 2018, and 2019 http://www.ctgreenparty.org/candidates-menu.html
Video statement:
Keith Foster
Candidate for CT Representative to the Green Party of United States
Shoreline Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tim McKee
Candidate for CT Representative to the Green Party of United States
General (At-Large) Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(See above)
Cora Santaguida
Candidate for CT Representative to the Green Party of United States
Fairfield County Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
David Younng
Candidate for CT Representative to the Green Party of United States
Shoreline Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Candidates for Secretary (1 seat)
Ronna Stuller
Candidate for Secretary
New London Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., 860-772-8439
A Green since 2004, I currently serve as Chair of the New London chapter/town committee. I'm a host of our long-running public access program “Thinking Green,” and I designed and maintain our website: www.nlgreens.org. I am a past member of the New London Board of Education and have served on the Planning & Zoning Commission since 2014. In 2011, after the proposed sale of a long-neglected park was defeated in a dramatic referendum, I co-founded the Riverside Park Conservancy and serve as its treasurer. In 2018, I helped found the SECT Community Land Trust, which recently renovated and sold its first permanently-affordable residence, and is seeking opportunities to host workspace for local non-profits and support cooperative agriculture.
Despite recent setbacks in statewide ballot access, the Green Party retains its unique potential to bridge the gap between the progressive movement and governmental action. Having minor party status allows us to offer electoral opportunities to activists fighting for social, environmental, and economic justice, and to influence Connecticut’s legislative agenda.
As GPCT secretary, my priorities are to provide technical support for Greens forming local chapters and town committees; seek out and nurture candidates with a progressive platform; improve communication among members throughout the state; share lessons learned during New London’s two decades of political activity; and maintain clearly written, accessible Green Party records.
I look forward to being part of a team that will work cooperatively to build our party, increase its relevance among voters, and offer a politics of hope with which we can face – and solve – Connecticut’s challenges.
Video statement:
- View NLGP-produced shows on our YouTube channel
- Learn more about Riverside Park Conservancy and Riverside Community Garden
- Learn more about New London Community Land Trust
Candidates for Treasurer (1 seat)
Bob Stuller
Candidate for Treasurer
New London Chapter - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., 860-271-9135
The Green Party of Connecticut is at a critical juncture. We have had some successes in recent years, forming a few new chapters and running a handful of successful campaigns. But losing multiple statewide ballot lines in last year’s election is a major red flag.
We must therefore adopt an attitude of urgency. Urgency to be relevant to the social movements of our time. Urgency to address the dual challenges of damage to our global ecosystem and damage to civil society. Urgency to respect our Ten Key Values, including Decentralization and Grassroots Democracy.
When we embrace those two Values, we begin to see the State Central Committee as the functional body it was designed to be: an administrative body coordinating among local chapters and directly representing Connecticut Greens without a chapter, always seeking to nurture the tender young growth of future chapters.
During my tenure as Treasurer of the New London Greens, I have handled the State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) paperwork via the eCris system through multiple municipal and State Representative elections. In the recent special election, I learned the ins and outs of Citizens Election Program (CEP) funding. During this process, I also had the opportunity to develop a comfortable working relationship with SEEC staff.
If elected I would pursue three objectives: First, I would initiate a process to produce realistic, transparent, balanced budgets focused on supporting Green candidates and local organizing efforts.
Second, I would implement an SEEC-compliant Anedot donation page for our website, leveraging our budgetary goals to motivate donors.
Third, I believe that – to ensure uninterrupted continuity of all SEEC and FEC required record-keeping – the Green Party of Connecticut should, at all times, have a Deputy Treasurer.