As director of the Minnesota chapter of the Ralph Nader presidential campaign in 1996, Ken Pentel helped gain recognition for the Green Party nationwide.
As a gubernatorial candidate this year, he said he hopes to do the same in Minnesota.
“We offer the most effective base for change of any party,” Pentel said. “I feel that there needs to be different people making important decisions as elected officials.”
Pentel, 37, said as governor he will decentralize economic and political power and pursue organic farming as means of investing natural resources more wisely.
“We need to build economics that give people full dignity,” he said.
In order to make higher education accessible to students, Pentel proposed a credit system which awards individuals with food, rent and entertainment credits for volunteer services.
“It’s a different way of rewarding people than we do now,” Pentel said.
He also applies a principle of change to corporate donations to universities. As governor, he said, he would work to eliminate private donations to public institutions.
“I believe that corporations’ influence on higher education has influenced our ability to provide a liberal base of knowledge access to everyone,” he said. “I want to make sure that universities are not conduits for corporate subsidy.”