Cliff Willmeng Green Party Candidate for Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District

At the recent Green Party State Convention, several candidates were chosen for state wide and federal races including Cliff Willmeng who will run for Colorado’s 2^nd Congressional District, challenging Democratic incumbent Jared Polis. Willmeng says that he is running as a Green candidate because of the party’s open democratic structure “it has an orientation and a platform geared towards regular folks. These things are amendable and they represent a whole lot of values that the country embraces that just do not get a political voice based on the dominance of these two political parties.”

Willmeng says that the current two party system is not serving the majority of people in the country. “It has just becoming abundantly clear that the two dominant parties in American political life are failing to do an adequate job of representing the 99% of the people.” Willmeng points to the issues like the Trans Partnership as an example of how incumbent Jared Polis is out of step with his constituents. “He and I see decision making and power from a polemically opposite point of view. I am trying to bring power back to the communities and back to people so that it can benefit ourselves and working folks and the environment and representative Polis who is doing right by his class of folks, is pulling power upwards and up out of the communities to the state, national and federal level and with the Trans Pacific Partnership all the way up into international corporate tribunals.”

Willmeng has been an organizer for East Boulder County United, which is a member of Frack Free Colorado and is a supporter of the Community Rights Movement which calls for more local control over activities like fracking. He has previously ran as a candidate for Lafayette City Council and he says he supports workers’ rights, community rights and more environmental protection.

“All of these things essentially have common thread, they go back to who this government is meant to represent and who it is representing in actuality, and my position and I think folks like me believe that the government should be there to advance and expand the rights of people and to protect the environment and the oil and gas industry feels the opposite. Or maybe in a similar vein, the oil and gas industry feels that the government is there to protect their interests and their rights.”