Laura Wells (born January 2, 1948) is an American political activist,

perennial candidate A perennial candidate is a political candidate who frequently runs for elected office and rarely, if ever, wins. Perennial candidates are most common where there is no limit on the number of times that a person can run for office and little cost ...

, and financial and business analyst. She is a former candidate for

U.S. Representative The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...

for

California's 13th congressional district California's 13th congressional district is a California's congressional districts, congressional district in the U.S. state of California. Adam Gray, a Democratic Party (United States), Democrat, has represented this district since January 20 ...

in the November 2018 election and the

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...

in the 2010 governor's race in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. She supports making significant changes to

Proposition 13 Proposition 13 (officially named the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation) is an amendment of the Constitution of California enacted during 1978, by means of the initiative process, to cap property taxes and limit property reassessmen ...

and to the current super-majority voting rule in the Sacramento legislature. In 2002 she garnered nearly a half million votes in her run for California state controller. At the last 2010 gubernatorial debate in California, which excluded all third party candidates, Wells was arrested upon attempting to enter the building to watch the debate. "The San Jose Mercury News", Wednesday October 13, 2010

Background and education

Laura Wells was born and raised in

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. She earned her BA from

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public university, public research university in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 375 programs. It is Michigan's third-l ...

in 1969, where she was a scholarship student, majored in foreign languages, and was elected to the

Phi Beta Kappa society The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

. Wells earned a Masters of Education at

Antioch University Antioch University is a private university with multiple campuses in the United States and online programs. It is the continuation of Antioch College, which was founded in 1852. Antioch College's first president was politician, abolitionist, and ...

, and later worked in finance, business analysis and computer programming. Wells has resided in California for more than 30 years. She has one daughter, Natalia, born in Oakland, now a musician and graduate of the

University of California at Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located in Monterey Bay, ...

. Wells is engaged to Charles Goodwin, a former probation counselor in the juvenile division.

Politics and public service

Wells has served in numerous county and state-level leadership positions in the Green Party of California since she registered with the Green Party in 1992. She was a founding member of the Green Party County Council in Alameda County (1992–94; 2002–04) and co-founder and managing editor of the national Green Party newspaper, ''Green Focus'' (2002–2004). In 2006, Wells served on the executive committee of the "IRV for Oakland" (

Instant Runoff Voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV; ranked-choice voting (RCV), preferential voting, alternative vote) is a single-winner ranked voting election system where one or more eliminations are used to simulate runoff elections. When no candidate has a ...

) campaign while running for state controller. IRV is a voting system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, rather than selecting only one candidate, a method which eliminates the so-called

spoiler effect In social choice theory and politics, a spoiler effect happens when a losing candidate affects the results of an election simply by participating. Voting rules that are not affected by spoilers are said to be spoilerproof. The frequency and se ...

in elections. Wells helped garner support for IRV from U.S. Representative

Barbara Lee Barbara Jean Lee (; born July 16, 1946) is an American politician who has served as the 52nd mayor of Oakland since 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Lee previously served as a United States House of Repr ...

of Oakland and other local representatives of most political parties in Oakland, including Greens, Libertarians, Peace and Freedom, Republicans, and Democrats. In November 2006, IRV achieved 69% voter approval. On January 5, 2010, the Oakland City Council voted to adopt IRV for its mayoral and council elections. In 2002 and 2006, Wells ran campaigns for state controller, receiving 419,873 votes in 2002, the most ever for a Green Party candidate in a statewide partisan race in California. Greenparty.org In 2009, Wells appeared on the Fox News program "Your World" several times to discuss tax fairness in California. Wells has also participated in ten international delegations to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

to study innovations in participatory

democracy Democracy (from , ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitiv ...

and new

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

s, and has broadly worked in a range of volunteer and professional capacities for community and labor organizations, including Pesticide Action Network (North America), Women's Economic Agenda Project, and SEIU United Healthcare Workers (West). She co-founded Green Focus, a party newspaper.

2010 campaign for California governor

In January 2010, Laura Wells announced her candidacy for governor of California in the 2010 election.Chang, Jack. "The Sacramento Bee" Saturday January 16, 2010 Wells won the Green Party primary on June 8, 2010 with over 78% of the votes. Wells' campaign emphasized the California budget and tax issues, particularly

, passed during

Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic P ...

's tenure as governor, which she says must be changed, in part because it primarily benefits

corporations A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...

over individuals. In a position paper on Proposition 13, Wells wrote:

Prop. 13, in 1978, was promoted to California voters as a way to reduce taxes and to stop fixed-income seniors and others from losing their homes due to escalating property taxes. Since then, the bulk of the "tax relief" goes places the voters never intended--giant corporations. Corporate properties are rarely re-assessed since corporations don't die and seldom sell.

Wells also favored lowering the margin needed to pass a budget and raise taxes in the state from two-thirds to a simple

majority A majority is more than half of a total; however, the term is commonly used with other meanings, as explained in the "#Related terms, Related terms" section below. It is a subset of a Set (mathematics), set consisting of more than half of the se ...

. She supported increasing funding for education, and the use of a 'split-roll tax' to keep cap residential property taxes while allowing higher property taxes for businesses. In a January 2010 interview with ''The Sacramento Bee'' discussing her views on taxes and the budget in California, Wells stated:

The two parties, the Democrat and Republican parties, do not address the root causes of the problem," Wells said. "That's off the table for them. ... To get what we want and to have the revenue that pays for it we need to have a budget that makes sense.

Wells has also addressed the difficulty that third parties have in running candidates for state elections:

... she says he difficulty for third partiesis a result of the "locked-down" system the Democrats and Republicans have put in place. As a case in point, she said she had to pay $6,000 for a 300-word ballot statement when she ran for state controller in 2006, a fee she said blocks minor-party candidates from running.

Wells supports a Single Payer Universal Health Care solution for California, and if given the opportunity, says that she would gladly sign SB 840 (the Single Payer bill introduced by State Senator Sheila Kuehl) into law. Wells also supports the use of clean,

sustainable Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions (or pillars): env ...

, local energy, including publicly owned utilities, Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) and localized (distributed) electricity generation, instead of nuclear power or

carbon sequestration Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool. It plays a crucial role in Climate change mitigation, limiting climate change by reducing the amount of Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, carbon dioxide in the atmosphe ...

. Wells also opposes government

bailouts A bailout is the provision of financial help to a corporation or country which otherwise would be on the brink of bankruptcy. A bailout differs from the term ''bail-in'' (coined in 2010) under which the bondholders or depositors of global syste ...

of large corporations and banks and proposes the creation of a State Bank for California which could partner with local banks and credit unions, and potentially improve their ability to lend. Other Green Party candidates, such as the 2010 Illinois gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney, also support a State Bank proposal. Wells has been endorsed by San Francisco for Democracy sf4democracy.org and numerous elected officials, described at her campaign website.

Arrested at debates

On October 12, 2010, Laura Wells was given a ticket to watch the California gubernatorial debate at Dominican University in San Rafael by a friend of hers and used it to enter the building. Wells was initially allowed in, but upon being recognized as the Green Party gubernatorial candidate, she was approached by security and asked to surrender the ticket on the grounds that it was not issued to her, but to her friend. When she refused to surrender the ticket, she was handcuffed and taken from the building and put into a police car, and arrested for "trespassing at a private party". She was later released. Wells stated:

Republicans and Democrats will go to any lengths, even arresting candidates, to keep the truth from California voters. There are solutions, but voters aren't being allowed to hear from independent candidates.

Electoral history

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Green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...

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write-in A write-in candidate is a candidate whose name does not appear on the ballot but seeks election by asking voters to cast a vote for the candidate by physically writing in the person's name on the ballot. Depending on electoral law it may be poss ...

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Libertarian Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according ...

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References

External links

Laura Wells' Gubernatorial Campaign WebsiteGreen Party Candidate Excluded from California Governor’s Debate
- video report by ''

Democracy Now! ''Democracy Now!'' is an hour-long TV, radio, and Internet news program based in Manhattan and hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Wells, Laura Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area Living people Women in California politics California Greens 1948 births Wayne State University alumni Antioch University alumni Candidates in the 2010 United States elections Candidates in the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections Candidates in the 2022 United States elections 21st-century American women politicians 21st-century California politicians