In the summer of 1974, Howie Hawkins — a rising sophomore at Dartmouth College and fierce left-wing, anti-Vietnam War activist — started officer training in Quantico, Virginia for the Marine Corps.

A week into training, three captains came into his room in the middle of the night.

“We need to talk to you candidate,” an officer said.

They put Hawkins into a dark, bare interrogation room. A single lamp hung above a table where the officers told Hawkins to sit.

“What are you doing here?” one of the officers asked Hawkins.

 

As an ardent radical at Dartmouth and active member of the anti-Vietnam movement in the Bay Area before that, the officers were wondering why Hawkins enlisted in the Marine Corps. They had a file with pictures of Hawkins at anti-war demonstrations as young as a freshman in high school.

“My draft number came up so I joined the Marine Corps because you’re the best,” Hawkins responded.

Hawkins, now 63 years old, still has those anti-establishment, radical leanings as, for all intents and purposes, a political hero to New York state’s Green Party. At night, he works the late-shift unloading trucks at UPS, a job he has had since 2000.

Since 1993, Hawkins has run for more than 20 elected offices, including governor of New York, Congress, mayor of Syracuse and Syracuse Common Council. He has lost every single time.

Hawkins is now running for city auditor, a lesser-known position within Syracuse’s municipal government. The city auditor’s job is to perform independent audits of other governmental bodies within the city government, according to the Syracuse city auditor’s website.

Hawkins is challenging Democratic incumbent Marty Masterpole in what has become a contentious race for a lower-profile office than what Hawkins is used to. Two Democratic common councilors have publicly endorsed Hawkins instead of Masterpole, who is a member of their own party, according to Hawkins’ campaign website.

 

Additionally, Hawkins has used the media to attack Masterpole’s record as auditor, claiming that Masterpole hasn’t completed enough audits.

“This guy doesn’t have a good reputation for working hard,” Hawkins said.

While Hawkins is not an accountant and has never completed an audit, something he admits, Hawkins said he sees the auditor’s office as a “public interest research group for the people of the city.” He wants to use the auditor’s office to advance the issues that both parties are ignoring, he said.

Specifically, Hawkins plans to complete environmental and social policy audits, according to his campaign.

“We don’t need a lapdog who is part of the Democratic machine,” he said. “We need a watchdog who is independent.”

Hawkins describes his political ideology as “basically philosophically a socialist.” He said in all of his campaigns, a main component of his platform has been fiscal issues.

“The working people are paying too much and the rich aren’t paying enough,” Hawkins said.

 

Hawkins has always been on the forefront of left-wing progressive political movements since growing up in the Bay Area in the 1960s, a hotbed of left-wing activism. At age 14, Hawkins said he worked for the Peace and Freedom party. Founded in 1967, the party focuses on socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism and racial equality, according to the party’s website.

After graduating high school, Hawkins attended Dartmouth College, where he was known as a “campus radical,” he said. While at Dartmouth, he started the Dartmouth Radical Union, a campus left-wing organization. The group protested the Dartmouth administration’s refusal to divest in companies with ties to South Africa’s apartheid government, the Vietnam War, the school’s lack of diversity in its admissions policy and bringing an ROTC program on campus, Hawkins added.

Hawkins said he never graduated Dartmouth because he never fulfilled his foreign language requirement despite spending all four years on campus.

For most of the ‘80s, Hawkins said he worked construction jobs while moonlighting as a political activist. He was one of the founders of the National Green Party in 1984 and he volunteered for Ralph Nader’s political efforts. Hawkins still keeps in contact with Nader.

He moved to Syracuse in 1991 and two years later, he ran for Syracuse Common Council. He only received 3 percent of the vote. Since then, Hawkins has still never won an election.

“I don’t run expecting to win; I run to raise issues,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins cites his run for mayor in 2005 as a successful example of this model. He said because he ran on the issue of public power — the city’s ownership of utilities — he forced the city to deal with the issue.

 

“Howie raises hell,” said Michael O’Neil, a staff organizer for the New York state Green Party.

His most successful campaigns have been more recent. In 2013, Hawkins narrowly lost the District 4 Common Council seat by fewer than 100 votes. Last year, Hawkins earned the most votes for a Green Party candidate in any statewide office while running for governor.

In his long political career, while never actually serving in an elected position, Hawkins has helped the Green Party remain a fixture in Syracuse politics and legitimized the party, O’Neil said.

“(Hawkins) has contributed a lot both to the Green Party and to politics in this region and the state by the way he uses each campaign to focus on the most relevant problems,” he said. “With the city auditor campaign, he’s showing that this position can have real teeth.”

Published on November 1, 2015 at 11:08 pm

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