Local opinion: Vote blue no matter what?

Richard Grayson calls me a potential "spoiler" for Arizona's 6th Congressional District election. Good. Anyone who opposes a rotten political system is free to vote their conscience.

Richard Grayson is running concurrently as a Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Alaska and for State Representative in Arizona LD7. He chooses to run on the Green Party’s ballot line while calling himself a “vote blue, no matter who” Democrat. He recently wrote to Independent Political Report: “I look forward to the coming death of a ballot-qualified Arizona Green Party and hope that it is finally killed for good.” Grayson cynically supports MAGA Republican sham candidates Risa Lombardo for governor and Duwayne Collier for secretary of state in their brazenly corrupt efforts to hijack the Green Party ballot. Grayson wants to discredit and destroy the Arizona Green Party.

The Green Party has no control over who files as candidates for the party's primary. It does have an endorsement process for party members to express their opinion about candidates running in the party's primary. In June, active Green Party members voted to endorse five candidates and actively oppose five others. The state Green Party endorses Carlos Melendez for Governor, Jon Robert Ralston for Secretary of State, Mike Cease for Corporation Commissioner, Brendan Trachsel for State Representative in LD6, and Gary Swing for US Representative in CD6. All Arizona Green Party-endorsed candidates are registered write-ins for the party's primary.

The Arizona Green Party actively opposes Risa Lombardo and William Pounds for governor, Duwayne Collier for secretary of state, David Redkey for Congress in CD3 and Richard Grayson. None of these candidates are involved with the Green Party, yet they choose to exploit the party's ballot line for their own purposes.

The archaic winner-take-all voting system in the United States is a sham. It perpetuates the charade of meaningless elections without effective ballots. Exclusionary, misrepresentative elections lend a false air of legitimacy to a system that has never been legitimate.

Richard Grayson recycles the tiresome “spoiler” candidate suppression argument to oppose candidates outside of the two cartel parties participating in rare competitive elections. Legislators could eliminate this red herring complaint by implementing sincere multiple-choice voting methods: proportional representation for legislators and ranked-choice voting for executive offices.

The real problem is the lack of fair, inclusive representation for everyone. Proportional representation with multi-member districts would enable 98% of voters to elect state legislators of their choice. Over 90% of Arizona voters could elect their favorite Congressional candidate.

Genocide and military imperialism are values shared by Democratic and Republican politicians. Nonviolence and social justice are foundational Green Party values. I oppose all U.S. foreign military aid and foreign military intervention. Democrat JoAnne Mendoza spent 20 years in the U.S. military as it committed genocide, murdering millions of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. The imperial presidency acts like a military dictatorship.

When I filed as a Green Party candidate for Arizona's 6th Congressional District, eleven registered candidates had filed statements of interest for the Democratic Party's primary in the district. JoAnna Mendoza was the only Democrat who qualified for the Democratic Party primary. She raised millions of dollars for her campaign before she ever added a platform or any campaign issues to her website.

District demographics predetermine outcomes for most US elections. In 2024, 97% of incumbent US Representatives were re-elected. About 4% of U.S. House districts are considered “swing districts” like Arizona CD6, competitive only between two cartel parties. In 2024, about $37 million was spent for or against the two cartel party nominees in Arizona CD6, including outside spending. About 77% of donations tracked by Open Secrets came from out of district.

I am running a zero-dollar campaign. If a zero-dollar candidacy credibly threatens multi-million dollar campaigns, the existing election system is worthless.

For the 2026 election, Arizona's 6th Congressional District has been rated by "270 to Win" as the third most competitive U.S. Representative district out of 435 for the two duopoly parties. I will be on the general election ballot as the Arizona Green Party's endorsed candidate, alongside Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani, Democratic challenger JoAnna Mendoza and Libertarian Jereme Peters.