CC Grad Takes on Hillary for Senate

A Columbia College graduate announced yesterday that he would run for the U.S. Senate next year and challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton from the left in next year's Democratic primary.

Steve Greenfield, CC '82, held a morning press conference in Lerner Hall's Satow Room, co-sponsored by the Columbia College Democrats, that drew a handful of political enthusiasts and a few political reporters.

As the state Republican Party contends with perceptions of internal turmoil amid public statements by influential party leaders urging the anticipated Republican frontrunner for Senate, Jeanine Pirro, to run for attorney general instead, Greenfield's challenge raises a potential new thorn in Clinton's side.

"We have a senator who was never a New York resident to begin with, who is promising, if re-elected, to spend the first two years of her next term being a part-time legislator and full-time presidential primary candidate," he said. "Is this democracy?"

Greenfield lives in New Paltz, a mid-sized town in the Hudson Valley, where he is a musician and volunteer firefighter. He was a longtime member of the Green Party in the same town where Mayor Jason West, a fellow Green Party member, made headlines in 2004 by performing same-sex marriages.

He became a Democrat, he said, because he "didn't want to inadvertently assist in the process that keeps the antiwar segment in this country positioned in the public and the press as a fringe party."

His challenge to Clinton from the left came in response to her failure to oppose the Iraq war as well as a rightward tilt in her positions, he said.

Clinton "boasts of having cosponsored more Republican initiatives than any first-term Democratic senator in history [and] ostensibly represents a state where upwards of 80 percent of the registered Democrats are opposed to most of her positions," he charged.

In addition to withdrawing troops from Iraq, a platform released by Greenfield expressed support for repealing the USA Patriot Act, setting up a national health insurance system, establishing a cabinet-level Department of Peace, and impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

"As Senator I will take at least one action every day to advance the cause of impeachment," the platform reads.

As national Democrats debate how much Clinton's Senate re-election contest next year will affect her chances for the presidency in 2008, Greenfield also brought back accusations that the former first lady's out-of-state origins would hinder her from representing New Yorkers.

Following his speech, Greenfield answered several questions from the audience, including why he opposed the Patriot Act.

"The devil's in the details," he said. "The threat of terrorism is real, ... the problem with the Patriot Act is [that] it replaces judicial oversight. Those protections were put there for a reason."

It remains to be seen whether Greenfield will get on the ballot. He will have to gather a minimum of 15,000 signatures distributed across at least half of the state's congressional districts.

Representatives of the state Democratic and Republican parties and the Clinton campaign were not immediately available for comment.