At the “Building a New World” conference held May 22-25 at Radford University, the New River Voice had the opportunity to sit down over lunch and chat with one of the Green Party’s Presidential candidates, Jesse Johnson. We’ll give you more from the interview with Johnson later this week, but first we want to take some time to introduce you to this Presidential candidate whose name is not necessarily well-known.

First, this Jesse Johnson is not the same one that was the original guitarist for The Time and who was part of Prince’s Minneapolis music scene in the 1980s. This one is 49 years old and was born in Charleston, West Virginia. He did not sing “Get to Know Ya” on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. That was the other Jesse Johnson, although this one is an artist in his right.

If you pay close attention in the movie Hook, you’ll see Johnson as a pirate. Overall, he was in Los Angeles for about 15 years, acting and directing on stage and screen. Since returning to West Virginia, Johnson has become an advisor to the West Virginia International Film Festival and started West Virginia Film Investment, which is designed to lure movie makers to the Mountain State.

West Virginia’s Johnson is not new to politics. He is chair of the Mountain Party, which is essentially West Virginia’s arm of the Green Party. Johnson, in addition to his Presidential candidacy, is concurrently running for Governor of West Virginia on the Mountain Party ticket, and he ran for Governor in 2004 as well and received nearly 3% of the vote that year. In 2006, Johnson received his party’s nomination for a Senate seat, where he received almost 2% of the vote.

One of the notes about Johnson that interested us was the fact that in March he was given the endorsement of former Democratic Presidential candidate and, at the time, Libertarian Presidential candidate, Mike Gravel. Just recently Gravel, a former Senator from Alaska, lost the Libertarian nomination for president and essentially bowed out of the presidential race.

In announcing his endorsement for Johnson, Gravel said, “I’m supporting Jesse because he began his political career with the determination that the environmental plundering must stop. He placed every other interest on hold to run for office, in his home state and now nationally, to challenge the corporations that destroy our national resources and then harvest from this practice a toxic energy source; coal. The mountaintop mining practices devastate the landscape by blowing apart mountains and then carbon belching plants burn the coal creating a form of energy that serves as one of the major contributors for global climate change.”

The New River Voice has covered the issue of mountaintop removal in the past, and Johnson’s stand against this practice caught our attention. Gravel continued in his endorsement statement: “We must have a voice in the political realm speaking earnestly and intelligently about all of our environmental needs. Johnson and the Green Party have that environmental credibility that we Democrats have lost.”

Gravel, a long-time Democrat before recently seeking the Libertarian nomination for President, is certainly a proponent now for third-party candidacies. “We’ve seen the havoc the two parties can wreak, on a global scale, by locking out the voices of reason, by eliminating the third party voices,” Gravel said. “I want to amplify those voices to save our country from our own shortsighted and greedy actions. If we want to end the war in Iraq, provide health care to all citizens, educate our young people, we’re going to have to start not only working together with these alternate parties: but literally working to support them. That’s why I’m supporting Jesse Johnson’s campaign for President.”

We want you to find out more about Jesse Johnson, so visit the New River Voice on Thursday, June 5, for a more on Johnson based on our extensive conversation with him in Radford. In the mean time, if you’re wondering just what it is that Greens believe. Click here to hear Jesse speak.