As an anti-war candidate, Dixon says he's no 'spoiler'

"I do not look at myself as a spoiler," Aaron Dixon insisted Thursday as the one-time Seattle Black Panther leader announced his anti-war Green Party candidacy opposing Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.

At a news conference at an assisted-living center in the Central Area, the black community activist made clear that his campaign is built around the Iraq war and the one-term senator's votes supporting it as well as her votes for the Patriot Act and a few other Republican military and security initiatives.


		Meryl Schenker / P-I
	Aaron Dixon announced his Green Party candidacy for the U.S. Senate Thursday.

"If she was against the war, then I would be a spoiler, stealing her anti-war votes," Dixon told a roomful of supporters and news media. "If both the Republican challenger (businessman Mike McGavick) and Cantwell are in support of this war, then they are competing amongst themselves for the voters who are pro-war. I am the anti-war vote."

History, however, suggests Dixon isn't likely to become anything more than a spoiler who, in a close general election, could peel enough left-leaning votes away from the Democratic senator to jeopardize her re-election.

In the past half-century, the highest vote for any third-party candidate in any statewide race in Washington was 7.8 percent, for Ruth Bennett, a Libertarian who ran for lieutenant governor in 2000. John Miller ran for state attorney general as an independent in 1980 and came in second, with 38 percent, in a three-way race. But he had been a well-known Seattle city councilman.

Mark B. Wilson ran as a Green against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray in 2004 and got 1.1 percent. He ran for Congress as a Libertarian in 2002 and is opposing Cantwell in the Democratic primary this year. Like Dixon, Wilson is campaigning as an anti-war candidate.

Dixon said Cantwell "has proved to us again and again that she sides with the big businesses and corporations over working people" by voting for the Central American and North American free trade agreements.

Asked what Cantwell should do about the war, Dixon said she should persuade other senators "that the (U.S.) troops should be withdrawn immediately."

He said Green Party leaders asked him to run and that even if he loses, "we definitely will have victory in the future."

State leaders of both major parties acknowledged that Dixon will take votes from Cantwell.

"We welcome his candidacy," state Republican Chairwoman Diane Tebelius said.

"I think that the Republican Party has learned from its excesses in the past that it's not good to have a third-party candidate out there who could siphon away votes from their main candidates," Tebelius said. "So I would think it could be a problem for the Democrats."

State Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz said Cantwell "has a double-digit lead in the polls right now, and we don't think the people of Washington state want to help get Mike McGavick elected, and be one more vote for George Bush, by voting for a third-party candidate."

A prominent figure in the militant black power movement in Seattle in the late 1960s, Dixon, 57, was a co-founder and the first leader of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party. As a student, he helped found Black Student Union chapters at Garfield High School and later at the University of Washington.

In 2002 he founded Central House, which provides housing for homeless youths and helps youths of color become community leaders. He previously was a drug and alcohol counselor, a gang counselor for the city of Seattle and a worker in other social programs.

Seattle School Board President Brita Butler-Wall spoke at his news conference, saying he is needed because of "the shortsighted priorities of those members of Congress who have said yes to war. ... Our young people need us to just say no to expensive, unnecessary, fraudulent military hysteria."

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