In the 2014 gubernatorial race in New York, the Green Party is in sixth place on the ballot, after Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Working Families Party and Independence.

But in the run up to the election the Green Candidate, Howie Hawkins, was polling at 9%, and higher in some places. If he maintains that lead through Election Day, he stands a good chance of taking the third-place slot on the ballot away from the Conservative Party and moving Green into the slot right after Republican. “This,” Hawkins told a crowd at a stump speech, “would be a calling card for the next election.”

Why is Green polling better than it traditionally has? Part of the reason has to do with Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Working Families Party (WFP). Early in the year, one faction of WFP wanted to endorse law professor and political activist Zephyr Teachout as its candidate for the governor’s office. Cuomo made quite a few concessions and promises to the WFP and thus secured their party’s nomination.

At the time, State Senator Jon Bonacic and others said Cuomo “sold his soul” to garner WFP backing. Among the promises he made was that he would campaign to help the Democrats take back the state senate, which is now headed by Republicans with the support of five breakaway Democrats. Critics say Cuomo’s support of Democratic candidates has been lackluster.

Among the other promises Cuomo made was to support an increase in the minimum wage, and to work for public financing of campaigns. Some in WFP believed that would be the end of the matter. But Teachout, having been asked by some in the WFP to run on their line, decided she would instead run in the Democratic primary. Teachout, who campaigned in Sullivan County at least three times, put in a very credible showing. She garnered more than 176,000 votes compared to Cuomo’s 300,000.

A lot of the people who voted for Teachout are now not inclined to vote for Cuomo either on the Democratic line or the WFP line. Instead a considerable number of Teachout supporters are planning to vote for Hawkins.

Hawkins, in turn, appealed for Teachout voters to back him in a press release on October 27. He wrote, “I am making a direct appeal to all those who supported and voted for Zephyr Teachout. I am appealing to all those who care about women's equality, fracking, Albany corruption, clean energy, full and equal funding of schools, the end of high stakes testing, and all the other progressive values Ms. Teachout stood for.”

Teachout said she was not endorsing any candidate this year, and her followers should vote their conscience, because, with Cuomo so far ahead in the polls, there is no chance that his Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, is going to win.

The education issue has been particularly effective for Hawkins. Educators are upset with Cuomo because he has been a strong supporter of charter schools, which many educators believe shortchanges students in the public school system. In remarks to a newspaper editorial board days before the election, Cuomo called the public education system a monopoly and promised to “break” it.

That drew the ire of many educators, and Cuomo’s attitude about public educations was one of the reasons Hawkins garnered the endorsement of six teachers unions in the state.

As part of his campaign materials, Hawkins writes, “The current Governor, Andrew “1%” Cuomo, has gone out of his way to attack public education. He supports the corporate privatization of our schools by pushing high-stakes testing linked to the Common Core Standards to evaluate schools, students, and teachers, undermining teachers' professional autonomy, and favoring private charter schools over public schools.”

Hawkins’ goal for this election seems to be to make the Green Party a bigger, stronger part for the elections to follow.

His biography says, “After attending Dartmouth College in the early 1970s, Hawkins worked as a carpenter in New England and helped start up a construction workers cooperative that specialized in solar and wind energy installations. He moved to Syracuse in 1991 to be Director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives working for an economy that is cooperatively owned, democratically controlled, and ecologically sustainable. He presently works unloading trucks and rail cars at UPS where he is a member of Teamsters Local 317 and active in US Labor Against the War and the national Teamster rank-and-file reform caucus, Teamsters for a Democratic Union.”