Paint the Twin Cities green
![]() | | Green Party first-time mayoral candidates Farheen Hakeem and Elizabeth Dickinson challenged established, well-financed incumbents and made strong showings in Septembers primary elections. Photo by Kris Drake. | | | |
By Joanna Imm
Before this year, Elizabeth Dickinson and Farheen Hakeem didnt have much in common. Dickinson is a former community affairs manager and lobbyist for the Minnesota AIDS project, an actor and a founding member of the advocacy coalition Clean Energy Now. Hakeem has a bachelors degree in math and studied math education at the graduate level; she works for the Girl Scout Council of Greater Minneapolis. But this year, both women ran strong Green Party grassroots
campaigns against the incumbent mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and both voiced the same reason for running: they felt they had no choice.
When Hakeem announced her candidacy for mayor of Minneapolis, she became the first Muslim-American woman to run in Minnesota and, at 29, one of the youngest candidates ever. After seven months working with a fraction of her opponents budgets, Hakeem won 14 percent of the vote in the September primary. She was particularly encouraged by the support she found in south Minneapolis. Supporters will see her pounding the pavement again: shes planning to run in the 2006 elections, though she hasnt yet decided for which office.
Elizabeth Dickinsons campaign in St. Paul speaks volumes for the success a low-budget grassroots campaign can have. Dickinsons budget was a fraction of Mayor Randy Kellys budget, yet she garnered nearly 20 percent of the primary vote. After the primary, Dickinson co-founded Sustainable St. Paul, a
grassroots group of Greens, Democrats and Independents who will focus on keeping in the public eye issues such as a St. Paul renewable energy standard, instant runoff voting and limitations on the size of big box stores.
Through the campaign Dickinson said she gained insight into what it will take to truly make politics open to all. To really level the playing field, she said, each candidate should receive a modest amount of money and be prohibited from raising money on her own. Youd see democracy transformed and I think women in general would be creative with small budgets, she said. If a candidate knows how to stretch her money during a campaign that should tell voters a lot about how they will deal with the reality of city budgets.
If you really want to see new faces in government, she added, you have to change the system.
Dickinson had had no plans to run for mayor, but many people asked her to consider it. Then, she said, I felt that I had to do
it.
Hakeem, like Dickinson, speaks of her campaign as a necessity. A few years ago she would never have imagined running for office. Her long-term goal is still to teach math. But, she noted, As women of color, our communities have so much of a need and who else is there to empower our communities?
Dickinsons and Hakeems campaigns showcased Minnesotas Green Party as a valuable organization for progressive women candidates.
The Green Party is great at promoting women, said Hakeem. It was a great risk to nominate me. The Democrats wouldnt do it. [The government] is bombing people who look like me. And the Republicans want to deport me, she joked. On the other hand, Hakeem said, the Green Party and others arent great at making people of color feel welcome in politics.
Both Hakeem and Dickinson look forward to the day when a candidate receives attention not because shes a woman, or a person of color, or from a third party, but because shes
running a strong campaign full of powerful ideas.
I would never trade it for the world, Hakeem said of the experience. I was the litmus test. Nobody knew what to expect, neither did I.
Now that she knows what kind of support is out there, she can tell others that theres nothing to fear. I can go back to my community and say Why arent you running?
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