Mike Cease is A Green Party candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission.
Cease has run for public office before. He lost a race for Pima County Recorder in 2016 and later lost races for Tuscon City Council and Mayor of Tucson. He currently serves as Secretary of the Arizona Green party.
In our wide-ranging conversation Cease highlights the four pillars guiding the party philosophy: grass-roots democracy, social justice, environment, and peace and non-violence.
"It's an attack on democracy itself and it's an attack on all 4.5 million registered voters in Arizona. They are suppressing our voices, and they don't want our positions heard." Mike Cease
Cease says the first pillar is under attack, evidenced by the omission of Green Party candidates in the recent Arizona Clean Elections Debate that featured only Republican and Democratic candidates. He says suppressing the voices of the Green Party is an injustice to state voters, who break down evenly among Democrats, Republicans and Independents when it comes to their voter registrations.
State Republicans have called for an investigation into why the Green Party was omitted from all statewide debates.
Cease says omitting the Green Party from the ACC debate means topics went missing from the discussion. For example, while Cease says rate cases get attention because they impact residents, issues like policing investments by Arizona businesses that support the ongoing conflict in Gaza, combatting drought, and the slow roll of clean energy programs in the state are topics left unaddressed.
"There are Arizona companies that are doing business in the weapons manufacturing industry that go directly to supply these horrible atrocities." Mike Cease
Cease speaks to KAWC about these issues and the challenge of getting the word out as a third-party candidate.
A portion of this interview aired on Sept. 9, 2024 on KAWC's Arizona Edition Friday program.
