Cantwell to face test from left

OLYMPIA – Inside the Olympia Free School – beside the anti-free-trade-agreement poster, a couple of old computers and a Tupperware tub of Chicken Fiesta – Aaron Dixon sketches out his plan.

“I think it’s time that Maria is challenged,” he said. “I think it’s time that the Democratic Party is challenged.”

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s re-election bid has drawn an opponent from her left flank: a former Black Panther sharply critical of the Democrat’s support for the war in Iraq.

Aaron Dixon, a 57-year-old father of six, is running as the Green Party’s candidate for Cantwell’s seat. He’s calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, with third-party mediators sent in to try to negotiate an end to factional violence.

“We have to bring those troops home,” Dixon said. He plans a campaign kickoff April 8.

Dixon’s odds of victory: virtually zero. But his candidacy could siphon some votes away from Cantwell in November. It also adds to Seattle-area criticism that Cantwell’s war stance and some other recent votes put her at odds with some of her political base. In January, she told the Associated Press that she has no regrets over the vote to authorize war and that she had favored regime change in Iraq since becoming a member of Congress in 1993.

“We may not be victorious in unseating her. But we will be victorious in building a political grass-roots movement,” Dixon said. “And we will be victorious in putting people like Maria Cantwell on notice that the people are not going to sit around while they twiddle their thumbs and vote for these insane policies.”

He’s not the only challenger targeting Cantwell’s war support. Mark Wilson is opposing her in the Democratic primary.

Democratic Party leaders say they’re not worried. The criticism won’t affect the real race, they say: between Cantwell and the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, former Safeco CEO Mike McGavick.

A third-party candidate likely helped Cantwell six years ago. Libertarian Jeff Jared got 64,734 votes in that Senate race. It was only a tiny fraction of the more than 2 million votes cast for Cantwell and Republican incumbent Slade Gorton. But even small numbers of votes were critical that year. Cantwell beat Gorton by just 2,229 votes.

But Democrats say it’s a mistake to think McGavick will get as much support as Gorton, who was a powerful, well-known incumbent.

“This isn’t 2000,” said state Democratic Party spokesman Viet Shelton.

Polls for months have shown Cantwell comfortably ahead of McGavick. A Rasmussen Reports poll Monday showed her leading McGavick 49 percent to 36 percent.

“I think Aaron Dixon’s going to get 1 or 2 points,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz.

Cantwell’s campaign manager, Matt Butler, said her accomplishments speak for themselves: making sure troops have needed supplies and body armor, increasing federal health care reimbursements, opposing efforts to raise Bonneville Power Administration power rates.

And if the race between Cantwell and McGavick tightens up, Western Washington University political science professor Todd Donovan said, worried liberals who plan on voting for Dixon as a protest would likely rethink that.

“If you’re a Democrat who’s pissed off about the war, are you going to risk putting a Republican in there?” he said.

Dixon is an unlikely candidate for Senate. He’s never held elected office. He registered to vote, according to state records, but has never cast a ballot.

“As a revolutionary, voting wasn’t something we were involved in,” he said.

His revolutionary years started in the late 1960s, when 19-year-old Dixon joined the Black Panther Party and was soon tapped to lead the new Seattle chapter.

It was a different time. Gun-toting Panthers, in black berets and leather jackets, would hold military drills in a Seattle park. When a local landlord refused to rent them a storefront headquarters, Dixon’s autobiography recounts, “Later that night, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the storefront, causing superficial damage.” The landlord changed his mind.

The Panthers, constantly worried about police raids, fortified the office with sandbags and steel plates.

“It wasn’t uncommon for 12 or more Panthers to be sitting around the office holding their weapons,” Dixon wrote in his autobiography. “The community’s response to us was mixed. There was fear and apprehension among many. On the other hand, there was a sense of pride and hope, particularly for the disenfranchised, the victims, the hopeless.”

When a black mother complained to the Panthers that her son was being harassed and beaten up at a predominantly white Seattle school in 1968, Dixon said he and a dozen other members showed up with carbines and shotguns in the principal’s office.

When women would complain about domestic violence, the Panthers would dispatch a group of armed members to confront the boyfriend or husband, Dixon wrote.

Dixon and the Panthers set up a free breakfast program for Seattle schoolchildren. They set up a medical and legal clinic staffed by volunteers.

After four years in Seattle, he headed to Black Panther Party headquarters in Oakland, Calif. By the late 1970s, the party had dissolved, riven by internal strife, drug addiction by leaders and pressure from law enforcement. Dixon soon returned to Seattle to care for his cancer-stricken father.

He went to work for community groups as a gang counselor and a youth case manager. Three years ago, he founded Seattle’s nonprofit Central House, transitional housing for homeless youth.

“I had never considered running for political office,” he said. “It had never even entered my mind.”

Four months ago, he was approached by Green Party officials who asked him to run. Dixon said he hopes to galvanize a coalition of supporters: urban progressives, Native Americans, farm workers and poor Eastern Washington whites. The unifying issues: unhappiness with the war and a desire to reduce poverty. The billions of dollars being spent on the conflict, he said, could do wonders here.

“We intend to go well outside our membership to recruit for this campaign,” said Chris Stegman, a member of the coordinating council for the state Green Party.

Democrats point out that Cantwell’s gotten consistently high marks from environmental groups, including for her recent move to head off drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“My first question about Aaron is, ‘What is the Green Party he’s running with?’ ” said Pelz. “I thought it was an environmental party.”

Dixon said he agrees with much of Cantwell’s environmental voting record. But the primary issue for him, he said, is the war. Both Cantwell and McGavick support it, he said. He wants the troops on the next plane out of Baghdad.

“I don’t look at myself as a spoiler,” he said. “I’m giving people a choice.”