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Peter Miguel Camejo (born December 31, 1939) is a financier, businessman, political activist, environmentalist, author, and one of the founders of the socially responsible investment movement. In 2004, he was selected by independent candidate Ralph Nader as his vice-presidential running mate.
Camejo is a first generation American of Venezuelan descent. In spite of spending his earliest years in Venezuela, he had been fortuitously born in New York City where his mother had sought health care. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he came with his mother to reside principally in the United States. On summer holidays he would return to Venezuela to visit relatives. The contrasts he perceived between his two "homes" during these early years greatly influenced his character: specifically, his passionate love of democracy and freedom, and his equal disdain for inequality and injustice.
He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley where he studied history. In 1967, after winning a student council election at Berkeley he was suspended for "using an unauthorized microphone" in a protest against the Vietnam War.
For most of his life, Camejo has participated in political movements advocating social, economic, and enviornmental justice. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Alabama, rallied with migrant farm workers, and protested the Vietnam War.
He was the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president in 1976 and co-founded the California Green Party in 1991.
In 2002 he was the Green Party's official candidate in the 2002 California gubernatorial election, polling 381,700 votes or 5.3%.
In 2003 he was the leading Green Party candidate for governor in an unprecedented California recall election, in which he polled 3% of the votes. Although an actor turned Republican politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, won the election (ousting the unpopular Democratic Party incumbent Gray Davis), Camejo's attendence and widely respected performance in all of the scheduled debates brought national support and worldwide attention to the Green Party. Without his having the rich financial funding of many of his opponents, Peter Camejo finished fourth in a field of 135 certified candidates: quite a feat in California, a state that was often described during the election as the fifth largest economy in the world.
In January, 2004 Peter Camejo initiated the Avocado Education Project that issued a statement known as the Avocado Declaration. The Avocado Declaration described how the Democratic Party and the Republican Party hinder social progress by working together to largely benefit a small wealthy constituency. It further advocated for a fiercely independent Green Party that would be capable of attracting nonvoters and disillusioned mainstream party supporters.
"The Green Party is at a crossroads," the Declaration began. Indeed, the central debate within the Green Party prior to its 2004 Presidential Nomination was about choosing to follow Camejo's advice of pursuing a confrontational campaign stategy promulgated in The Avocado Declaration, or to follow David Cobb's strategy of tending the party at the state and local levels by assisting a Democratic Party victory over the Republicans in the Fall. While Camejo advocated for attracting new party members by sharply defining campaign issues, Cobb feared a backlash against the party if it was perceived to help return George W. Bush to the White House.
Amidst charges that the nominating process had been corrupted by the influence of Democratic Party sympathizers, Peter Camejo's strategy was rejected by the Green Party and David Cobb was nominated as its presidential candidate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 26, 2004.
Despite losing the endorsement of the Green Party, Camejo continues to be a vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 Presidential election with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Nader was endorsed by the Reform Party on June 21, 2004. However, Camejo's Venezuelan birth may make him ineligible for the vice presidency under Article II's provision that the president and vice president be "natural-born" citizens.
Both Nader and Camejo say the main reason they are running in the 2004 election is because there are no other national candidates demanding an immediate withdrawal of American troops from an immoral and unconstitutionally pursued War in Iraq.
Peter Camejo is married and has two children. He lives in Folsom, California. He is the author of "The SRI Advantage- Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially", and other books.
External links
- Campaign website
- http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/recall/candidates/la-recall-camejo.story LA Times profile
- California election results
- http://www.votenader.org/media_press/index.php?cid=80
- The Avocado Declaration by Peter Camejo
- Article about the 2004 Green Party candidate selection