By
Sheila Bapat
It's not easy being Green.
Especially when you're running for United States Senate.
Vance Hansen is doing it right now. The Green Party candidate and former Glendale English teacher is running against somebody Arizona has liked for a while: Sen. Jon Kyl.
Kyl served four terms as a U.S. representative before becoming a senator in 1994. Given Arizona's tendency to swing right, Kyl is still in the right place at the right time.
But incumbency alone doesn't mean he is right for the people of Arizona.
And that's what Hansen's race intends to prove.
When Kyl voted against the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, Hansen wrote him a letter in protest. He then upped the ante and decided to run against the senator.
"I'm upset about campaign finance practices, both parties are guilty of corruption," Hansen said. "Democrats are as bad as Republicans. Politicians are beholden to corporate America."
Kyl is a perfect example of this. Scanning the Federal Election Commission's list of Kyl's contributors is predictable and stunning at the same time.
Political Action Committees range from Ford Motor Companies Civic Action Fund to Coors Brewing Co-Political Action. Coors employees contributed one thousand dollars to Kyl in 1999. All of these contributions are perfectly legal and fall within the FEC's guidelines.
But they still prove Hansen's point. Status quo Arizona politics represent corporations extremely well.
Hansen, on the other hand, has received few contributions that don't come from his own wallet.
"I've done no active soliciting of funds," Hansen said. "I'm winging it on my own."
UA chemistry professor Henry K. Hall, Jr. is one of Hansen's supporters and contributed one hundred dollars to his campaign.
"Hansen was written about in the Arizona Daily Star, and I liked what I saw," Hall said. "I think he is a very appealing candidate. Senator Kyl is going to totally submerge him in money. But he might be able to defeat the man."
Kyl has help from a member of the opposite side of the ideological spectrum: UA communications professor Robert Kenski.
"I think Kyl has done a great job for Arizona," said Kenski, who is Kyl's Southern Arizona regional director and has worked for him since 1995. With nothing but third-party candidates challenging him, Kyl's campaign is not sweating Nov. 7.
"Kyl is not taking anything for granted," Kenski insists. "He firmly believes in asking people for their vote. We do have a race. If you take things for granted, you never know."
Does Hansen have a chance against someone as politically and financially established as Kyl? No. But at the very least, races like his are symbolic of the political system's reluctance to allow anyone without a strong war chest to take office.
If you don't have the cash, you can't get elected. Even if you could do a great job in office.
Hansen is a progressive facing a conservative without any moderate Democrat to get in the way. He is very appealing to the liberal segment of Arizona - which actually does exist.
He taught English at Glendale Community College for twenty-five years and has never tried on the politician's hat until this election. A lifetime of being fed up with the status quo finally fueled his ambition.
The candidates are about as different as night and day with their positions on key issues like the missile defense system, global trade and campaign finance reform on opposite tips of the ideological spectrum.
"Kyl has been far right-wing conservative," said Prof. Hall. "He is super militarist, he's never met a weapons system he didn't like. I think he is a very poor senator for Arizona. But I like Hansen's views on ecology, he has a progressive and enlightened approach."
Hansen's platform can be found at http://www.VoteOldGoat.com, after a moniker his English students coined him with. He represents the segment of the population that actually wants the status quo to change; unseating an incumbent like Kyl is necessary for that to ever happen.
Arizona being the way it is, it's hard to imagine a third-party candidate winning anything against an incumbent.
But Arizona will never know what it could be missing out on if it continues to vote the same people into office.
"I will admit, the odds against me are strong," Hansen said. "This is the most radical thing I've ever done."
