Politics & Power Quote by Peter Camejo

A Green Party candidate would be "very different" is less a policy claim than a demand for oxygen in a political room engineered to starve third parties. Peter Camejo is making an argument about attention before he’s making one about ideology: in a system where Democrats and Republicans set the agenda, control debate access, and define what counts as “serious,” the first battle is simply being allowed to speak without being treated as a spoiler, a protest vote, or a punchline.

The phrasing is deliberately modest. “Should be heard” doesn’t insist the Greens should win, or even be embraced; it asks for the minimum democratic courtesy: exposure. That’s strategic. Camejo understood that once you argue over electoral viability, you’ve already conceded the frame. By staking the claim on voice rather than victory, he reframes legitimacy as something owed to the electorate’s range of views, not granted by party infrastructure or donor networks.

The subtext is a critique of bipartisan sameness. “Very different” implies that the major parties are, in practice, variations on a constrained consensus: market-friendly, security-minded, cautious about structural change. In the Green tradition, that “difference” typically signals environmental urgency, anti-war skepticism, corporate power as a central villain, and a willingness to name systemic problems rather than manage them.

Camejo’s context matters: late-20th-century American politics where “choice” often meant two brands of the same product, and where media gatekeeping and ballot rules made alternative candidates invisible. The line is an appeal to democratic imagination: you can’t weigh an option you’re not allowed to hear.