Jesse Johnson Announces his Official Entry into the Presidential Race

Gains West Virginia Ballot Access for Green Party Candidates

After more than 8 months of negotiating, cajoling and applying the necessary legal pressure to his home state, Jesse Johnson has succeeded in getting, not only his name on the West Virginia ballot, but all four Green Party Presidential candidates on the ballot.

Despite the affiliation between the West Virginia Mountain Party and the Green Party, WV lawmakers had threatened to withhold the ballot line on the basis that the names of the parties are dissimilar, leaving Johnson as the only green Presidential candidate on the state's ballot. However Johnson and his lawyer successfully argued that this decision would also call into question all past elections in which an affiliated party had a different name, e.g. the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota as an affiliate of the Democrats, and many more.

Now that Johnson has opened the door to all the Green Party candidates, we expect to see some more campaigning on the East Coast. Johnson hopes to take a nationwide tour, by rail in the next two months.

"Green values are the values of American citizens," Johnson said. "I intend to gain their votes by defending our Constitution and our environment passionately, protecting the jobs and families of working-class Americans through sensible trade and health care policies, and ending not only the warin Iraq, but war as a means of foreign policy as well as the unforgivable bedrock of our economy."

Johnson has run to state level campaigns before as a candidate for Governor
of West Virginia in 2004 and U.S. Senator in 2006.