South Royalton
Stein, a physician and political organizer with an emphasis on the environment, is running as the Green Party’s presidential candidate for the second time.
She also was in the 2012 race, and has run for statewide office in Massachusetts, as well.
Describing herself as a “mother on fire,” Stein said that she can win, if only the people whose personal finances would improve under her progressive policy initiatives heard her message and came out to support her.
“I think there are so many mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers on fire out there, that I think we do have the power to get our democracy back,” she said, speaking in an animated and conversational style.
“There are 44 million young people and not so young people that are trapped in predatory debt,” she said. “We will bail out the students like we bailed out the crooks on Wall Street.”
If a grassroots groundswell happens in the next eight weeks, it could prevent both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump from securing a majority of Electoral College votes, which would throw the election into the House of Representatives to choose a new president from among the top three finishers.
Stein is competing with Libertarian Gary Johnson in an effort to bleed votes away from Clinton and Trump, each of whom has historically unprecedented unfavorable ratings among the voting public.
National polling averages show Stein, a Lexington, Mass., resident, at about 3 percent, far behind both the frontrunners and Johnson’s 9 percent.
But Stein’s campaign feels she has a particular appeal to supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who bowed out of a race against Clinton earlier in the summer, disappointing many progressive voters who had already rejected both Clinton and Trump as viable options.
During a question and answer session that took up most of the one-hour program, Matt Mollica, a VLS student who is registered to vote in the swing state of Ohio, questioned Stein about how her limited political experience qualified her to hold the highest position in the country.
Stein’s response drew applause.
“What I do not bring to office is experience in making backroom deals. … The United States of America was not founded on the idea that we need experts to rule over us,” she said.
After the event, Mollica, who said he planned to vote for Clinton, said it wasn’t the response he was looking for.
“I thought it cut down the other candidates,” he said. “I was more trying to get at her qualifications.”
Caleb Roebuck, a 24-year-old VLS student from Maine who formerly supported Sanders, asked Stein how she would achieve one campaign promise — the politically daunting task of phasing out all fossil fuel use by 2030.
Stein answered that it would be a multi-step process, in which the military would be reduced by half and about $40 billion in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry would be taken away, freeing up money for a green energy stimulus package.
The key to achieving the political will to take these steps, she said, was eliminating student debt.
“This is what engages the most important engine,” she said. “Suddenly we have the ground troops to weigh in and be the democracy in that agenda.”
Roebuck said after the event that he was happy with the response.
“I’m leaning very heavily toward Jill Stein,” he said.
He said the decision came down to a dilemma that will sound familiar to those who were torn between Sanders and Clinton.
“It comes down to the inner conflict of ‘do you vote your conscience or vote to keep Trump out?’ ” he said. “I’m tired of sacrificing values I like in fear of someone else.”
Stein also spoke about the political protest in North Dakota that earned her an arrest warrant last week on misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief.
Following a police-protester clash that resulted in pepper spray and canine units being used against members of the local Standing Rock Sioux tribe, Stein has acknowledged spray-painting a bulldozer that had been used by the firm building an oil pipeline that opponents say has disturbed Native American burial grounds.
She called the company’s actions “an incredible assault on human rights.”
After declining to participate in a lockdown, Stein said, Sioux activists “said, ‘Well, would you join us in writing a message on this piece of construction equipment that was just used to mow down our burial sites?’, and how could any human being say no to that?”
Stein returned repeatedly to other staples of her campaign platform, to invest in local food systems that support family farms and move away from genetically modified organisms; provide a “welcoming path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants; eliminate “police brutality and the racist war on drugs;” and tackling climate change, in part by “empowering (prosecutors) to fully protect public health and the environment.”
Some millenials in attendance said that they liked Stein’s message, but that she hadn’t earned their vote.
Emily Donaldson, 23, runs a small environmental education nonprofit from her hometown of Reading, Vt.
She said that she felt that Stein was more in line with her views on how to achieve environmental change than Sanders, whose populist rhetoric, she said, alienated corporations and investors who are needed as allies in the global campaign to combat climate change.
“Jill has great ideas in terms of ensuring environmental stewardship is part of a larger framework,” she said.
But Donaldson said she is still wary of casting a vote that could undermine the Democrats’ ability to maintain the White House.
Elliot Rosenbaum, a VLS student from Chicago and a former Sanders supporter, said he was impressed by Stein’s public speaking skills, but was still leaning toward Clinton.
He said he didn’t see how Stein’s longshot scenario was possible, because, he said, it depends on an anti-establishment groundswell on Election Day, followed by support from establishment Congressional politicians.
“I like practical results,” he said.
Stein urged voters who liked her platform to take a leap of faith with her.
“We can have an America and a world that works for all of us, that puts people, planets and peace over profits,” she said.
“The power to create that world is not just relegated to our hopes and dreams,” she said. “That power is right here, right now in the Vermont Law School. That power is in our hands.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.