Hayes is Green Party candidate for District 2 commissioner
Campaign based on ‘moral values that the Green Party has to offer’
Charles County resident Stanley Hayes said that he had not planned to run for office until the opportunity literally appeared at his front door.
“This came knocking on my door,” Stanley said. “These people asked me if I was a Green Party member, and I asked, what is that? They talked to me for a bit and I said, OK, let’s have some kind of representation.”
A resident of Charles County for 27 years, Hayes describes himself as a grandfather to four granddaughters and an “anti-war Vietnam veteran,” having served in the United States Air Force for a year in that country during the war.
Hayes is running for District 2 Commissioner as the Green Party’s nominated candidate. He will be facing Democratic candidate Thomasina “Sina” Coates, a federal information technology manager and local business owner.
There are no Republican candidates running for the District 2 seat, which represents western Charles County on the Board of County Commissioners.
Hayes said that he is motivated to run because he is concerned about today’s political climate, which he describes as a “de-mob-racy.”
“Even though it’s a minority party, the Green Party is the only moral party that I’ve identified,” Hayes said. He said he is basing his campaign on “the moral values that the Green Party has to offer to the entire community, nation,
The 10 key values of the Green Party in the United States, which are shared by the party’s state and local branches, are a focus on grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, nonviolence, decentralization, community-based economics, feminism and gender equity, world [and] universe.” respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility, and “future focus” and sustainability.
“Everything in this policy is basically where I’m coming from,” Hayes said. “It is the only sensible means to conserve human life [and] protect the earth.”
Two of the issues that Hayes plans to focus on in his campaign are better drug treatment policies and education.
“We have a drug problem that has to be addressed, not so much in a criminal way, but in a medical and health way,” he said.
“We need to eliminate the criminal aspect of addiction [and] find a way to address these people’s individual needs.”
With regard to education, Hayes would like to see changes that focus more on the development of students as individuals.
“I’d like to see a focus on education from the aspect of respecting [students’] own individual humanity, in the sense of their being aware of the quality of life has to offer without having to face the denigration of all of the economic, social and racial aspects,” Hayes said.
“There needs to be more in the way of developing their human talents,” he added. “Everyone has human talents that need to be expressed.”
One way that could happen, he suggested, was to more closely tie education in with current events in the county.
For example, students could learn about environmental preservation efforts such as the Watershed Conservation District testing their by drinking water at home.
Hayes said that the mission of the Maryland Green Party, which is to “renew democracy in Maryland through community-based organizing, without support from corporate donors,” by providing “real solutions to real problems,” reflects how he plans to campaign.
“I will probably be knocking on doors in the local community to let it be known that there is another alternative to political representation,” he said.
As he talks to people, Hayes said that he will focus on how the Green Party’s values can improve residents’ quality of life.
“I want to focus on making [Charles County] a better place for us to live,” he said.