Green Party Senate candidate has roots as '60s activist

There is only one candidate for U.S. Senate whose face appears on his campaign yard signs. It is Aaron Dixon, and it's no accident that his Green Party is engaging in a little celebrity worship.

Long relegated to the political sidelines, the Green Party wants to broaden its appeal this year. If its candidate gets 5 percent of the statewide vote, the Greens will be granted major-party status, which means, among other things, that they could be included in the state's primary elections and voter guides.

Enter Dixon, 57, who never considered running for office and hasn't cast a vote since the mid-1970s. Although he carries a past riddled with minor scrapes with the law, Dixon has something unique to the Green Party: a rich personal history.

In 1968, activist Bobby Seale named Dixon to head the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party. As a Panther, he was a major player in the city's civil-rights movement, helping start a free health clinic, a breakfast program for school children, a food bank and the first urban summer camp in Seattle.

He now runs Central House, a Seattle nonprofit that provides transitional housing for homeless young adults and leadership training in local high schools.

Despite saying he was "in the race to win" when he announced his candidacy in March, Dixon said last week that he does not expect to outpoll Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell or Republican Mike McGavick in November.

Still, Dixon said his anti-war position was enough of a threat to the incumbent that representatives of the Cantwell campaign called him three times before the September primary offering to hold fundraisers for Central House. In one of the calls, Dixon said, a deal was explicitly offered — get out of the race, and money would flow to his charity.

The Cantwell camp did not directly rebut Dixon's version of events but said no one offered him cash not to run.

Dixon recruited

With roots in the European environmental movement, the Green Party of the United States promotes ecological health, feminism, nonviolence and social justice. Running on the Green Party ticket, Ralph Nader won 2.8 million votes in the 2000 presidential race, more than enough, many Democrats grumbled, to hand the election to George W. Bush.

In the 2004 Senate race, the Green Party candidate, Mark Wilson, received 1 percent of the vote.

Joe Szwaja, a longtime Green Party activist, said he and others recruited Dixon because he might attract minority supporters.

"We thought he could build coalitions with progressive whites. He was well-known and he helps us establish credibility in the black community," Szwaja said.

Politics is nothing new to Dixon, but seeking votes is a first.

In one of his first acts of civil disobedience, Dixon was arrested in 1968 for staging a sit-in at Franklin High School to protest the expulsion of two girls for wearing Afro hairstyles. The next month, at age 19, Dixon was named local leader of the Black Panther Party (BPP), which espoused independence and self-reliance in black neighborhoods. Guns were ever-present, and Dixon and others brought weapons to meetings with school and elected officials.

In the mid-1970s, Dixon left Seattle for Oakland, Calif., to work on political campaigns. By the early 1980s, he was broke, disillusioned and still hanging out with Black Panther members. Around that time, he was convicted of larceny for cashing about $7,000 in bad checks.

"I was trying to find my footing after having been involved in the BPP for 10 years, not really having a job in those 10 years, carrying a lot of anger around about the ways things had turned out and just being very angry at the system," he said.

Soon after, Dixon returned to Seattle to work a variety of social-service jobs.

Since 1990, he has amassed more than a dozen traffic infractions, including speeding and driving without insurance.

The chairwoman of the state Green Party, Jody Grage Haug, said Dixon's past was known before he entered the race.

"It's not quite up there with Halliburton or Enron or other corporations I could list," she said.

Another choice

As a candidate, Dixon sounds a lot like Hong Tran, the legal-services attorney who got 5 percent of the Democratic vote in September's Senate primary.

Both criticize Cantwell for voting to authorize force against Iraq in 2002. Both say Cantwell is guilty of prolonging the war by approving military-spending measures. Both contend Cantwell's environmental record is overrated.

Dixon said he differs from Tran in one important way: Dixon advocates a multiparty political system, while Tran sought to win over Democrats.

This may be a tough year to argue there are no differences between the major parties.

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said if she became speaker, she would "drain the swamp" and institute new ethics regulations. In its fundraising efforts, the Republican National Senatorial Committee warns that the president may face impeachment unless GOP lawmakers "help defend President Bush from vengeful Democrats."

Still, Dixon said, the voters he has met on the campaign trail want more choices on the ballot. "The Democratic Party and the Republican Party need to know there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with them," he said.

Deal offered?

In July, Wilson, who had left the Green Party, abandoned his Democratic primary challenge against Cantwell and joined her campaign.

A few days later, Dixon said, Wilson called him twice to say Cantwell had wealthy friends who might hold a fundraiser for Dixon's nonprofit organization.

A friend of Dixon's, whom he has refused to identify, also called about a fundraiser and asked Dixon to drop out, Dixon said.

The Cantwell campaign refused to allow Wilson to answer questions about the alleged exchange, but released a statement from Wilson: "I told Aaron before and after I joined the campaign that a Green challenge would only help to elect Mike McGavick. I decided to end my own campaign and join Senator Cantwell. I never offered Aaron or anyone else money not to run."

Dixon said he has raised almost $60,000. Among his contributors are Seattle School Board President Brita Butler-Wall and Amy Hagopian, president of the Garfield High School PTSA and a critic of military recruiting on high-school campuses. Hagopian's son, Jesse, is a Seattle public-school teacher and Dixon's campaign manager.

Regardless of who wins in November, Dixon said, he will continue his political work, though not necessarily with the Greens.

"Whatever it is, it has to be inclusive," he said.

Alex Fryer: 206-464-8124 or afryer@seattletimes.com