Momentum Building For Jello Biafra Presidential Bid

The Green Party is building momentum to get spoken-word provocateur Jello Biafra on the presidential ballot, according to the chair of the party's national electoral action group. But Biafra, who is busy with his Alternative Tentacles label and his new release with Lard, does not plan to campaign actively.

"There's a building coalition for Jello nationally," said electoral action chair Mark Loveless, who cited support among voters aged 18-35 in New York, Illinois and California, where Biafra is a long-time member of the environmental/social justice party.

Biafra is on the ballot of the March 7 New York state primary, and he has been asked to appear at five state conventions, according to Craig Seeman, an officially uncommitted New York delegate who said he will vote for Biafra.

A Goshen, NY delegate nominated a surprised Biafra last December at the state convention. Biafra took fifth place among ballots cast by 120 delegates, who could vote for more than one candidate. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who got around 60% of the vote, took first place.

Biafra is expected to appear on several state primary ballots, Loveless and Seeman said.

State delegates from the around the country will haggle over their final candidate for the general presidential election at their June national convention in Denver. Loveless said that while Nader has greater name recognition, Biafra could get more support among the Green's core voters, who are younger and know his music label and his recordings with seminal punk band Dead Kennedys.

But a spokesperson for Alternative Tentacles said that Biafra would not pursue the country's highest office. "From Jello's manager's perspective, there's nothing going on," the spokesperson said.

Nevertheless, Biafra has announced his platform and his vice-presidential running mate Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Biafra's platform includes free health care, the abolition of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the election of police officers and the destruction of nuclear weapons. Biafra chose Abu-Jamal, a former radio journalist currently on death-row for shooting a Philadelphia police officer twenty years ago, in order to bring attention to the controversy surrounding his conviction, according to Alternative Tentacles. Jamal has not said whether he will accept the nomination.

Abu-Jamal can run for office, even though he is behind bars. Railway union founder and socialist Eugene Debs, jailed for violating the Espionage Act when he spoke out against U.S. involvement in World War I, ran for office in 1920 and received 3.5% of the vote. The following year, President Warren G. Harding, who ran against Debs, commuted his sentence.

"We can dare whoever gets elected to pardon Mumia the following year," said Seeman.