AZGP was founded in 1990.
In the early days, even before GPUS was reified into an FEC-recognized tax-exempt political party, The Arizona Green Party got 4 candidates elected to office. In 1992, Richard Doule was elected to the Board of Education in Bisbee, with 20.5% of the vote. In 1996, 3 more AZGP candidates won their races: Alva D’Orgeix, with 54.9%, won a seat on the Bisbee Town Council; Norm Wallen won a seat on the Flagstaff City Council with 19.3%; and Gerald Anderson, with 28.1% of the vote, won a seat on a Pima County Charter Review Commission.
Coming up through the years since 1992, AZGP has run 92 candidates in partisan and nonpartisan races, up and down the ticket, in 19 election cycles. Highlight – in 2000 we had 13 candidates on the ballot; in 2010 we had 11; and in 2016, a spectacular year, we ran 17 registered Greens for office in addition to our national nominee for President Jill Stein.
In 2016, AZGP participated for the first time in the state’s Presidential Preference Election, the PPE, held in March. Both Jill Stein’s and Kent Mesplay’s names were printed, and according to statute, Independents were allowed to request the Green Party ballot. In 2020, we reverted to intra-party balloting to determine our delegate-votes to the GPUS nominating convention, and Howie Hawkins was our write-in candidate for President, with his running mate Angela Walker for Vice President.
Green Party of the United States