Presidential and vice-presidential candidates from third parties are speaking with Utah voters this week.
Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins and vice presidential nominee Angela Walker joined a virtual meeting with the Salt Lake Democratic Socialists of America Monday night.
Hawkins first proposed a Green New Deal, to fight climate change and provide jobs, around 10 years ago during his run for governor of New York.
“Democrats took the slogan, diluted the content, and now have buried it,” Hawkins said. “You're not going to get a green new deal from the Democratic Party … Growing inequality has led to declining life expectancies for the working class and that's inexcusable in a country as rich and developed as ours. So we've come for an economic bill of rights. This is always part of our Green New Deal.”
Libertarian vice presidential nominee Spike Cohen said, if he and presidential nominee Jo Jorgenson are elected, one of their top priorities would be eliminating the government's role in healthcare.
Cohen said the lack of government approved COVID-19 tests in the U.S. during the early stages of the pandemic is a good example why.
“We won't know for quite some time how many hundreds of thousands of lives in this country could have been saved if the government had simply gotten out of the way of the medical professionals trying to do their jobs,” Cohen said.
In 2016, the Libertarian candidate for president, Gary Johnson, won 3.5% of the vote in Utah and Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein received less than 1%.
