Green County Supervisor Dan Hamburg re-elected

Long-time Northern California Green Dan Hamburg was re-elected to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors in June 3 elections. Running unopposed, he will represent the county's Fifth District, which includes the town of Ukiah in the east, and stretches over hills of Redwoods to the Pacific coast in the west.

"I'm fortunate to have been re-elected county supervisor for one of the most beautiful and politically progressive districts in California," said Hamburg.  "The 1500 square mile Fifth District of Mendocino County is home to the 'back to the land' movement, a major staging area for the historic struggles to protect the ocean from oil rigs and old growth forests from chain saws - and most recently, named host of the Stornetta Public Lands, the first shoreline addition to the California Coastal National Monument."
 
In November 2010, Hamburg was elected Supervisor with 57.4% of the vote.  "When I ran for this position in 2010, I said that only the Ten Key Values of the Green Party could save us from the many calamities we face.  I've translated those values into clean energy, water conservation and high-speed internet initiatives.  I've worked to instill operational efficiencies in local government, changes that are difficult but necessary in the highly skewed economic circumstances in which we live.  With large units of political and economic power becoming ever more neglectful of basic human needs, our challenge is to create alternative models that are vibrant and sustainable."
 
Hamburg's involvement in Mendocino County activism and politics goes back to the 1970s, when  was director of the Ukiah Valley Child Development Center and served on the Ukiah Planning Commission. In 1981, he was elected County Supervisor for the first time, and served four years.  Then in 1992, Hamburg was elected (as a Democrat) to serve for one term to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he focused on single-payer national health care, protecting old-growth forests, and restoring fisheries. (Hamburg was defeated in 1994, as part of national Republican landslide that swung control of the Congress.)
 
"Having once served as a US congressman, people often ask me if I'd like to go back to national, or even state politics.  My answer is no and not just because I love living in the place I've called home for four decades.  It's because I see the greatest opportunity for meaningful change happening in places like Mendocino County where dreams of peace and social justice are alive and the "get 'er done" spirit remains well intact."
 
Hamburg joined the Green Party in 1996, after being inspired by the 1996 Ralph Nader presidential campaign, and disillusioned by the Democratic's support for Welfare Reform and the Defense of Marriage Age under President Clinton. Hamburg then gave one of the nomination speeches for Ralph Nader at the 1996 Green Party presidential nomination convention at the University of California Los Angeles. 
 
In 1998 Hamburg became the Green Party of California's first-ever candidate for Governor, receiving 104,179 votes and 1.24% of the vote. Today he is the highest elected Green in the state, among the 53 Greens currently holding office.
 
Outside of electoral politics,  Hamburg's resumé includes being hired in 1995 as an advisor to the new government of Nelson Mandela, where he spent a year in South Africa. In 1996, Hamburg became executive director of Voice of the Environment. In that capacity, he has worked on many political campaigns including stopping a nuclear waste dump at Ward Valley, turning back an attempt by Wal-Mart to restrict first amendment rights, protecting California’s “heritage trees,” and much more.  In 2004, Hamburg was a leader of the successful Measure H campaign to ban genetically-modified organisms in Mendocino county. That ordinance was the first of its kind in the United States. 

 

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