Michael Bloomberg Named Honorary National Interim Chairman of Arizona Americans Elect Party at National Convention of State Americans Elect Parties in New York

NEW YORK, June 2 --

Following his thoughtful and passionate keynote address to the first-ever national Convention of State Americans Elect Parties, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed to accept the position of Honorary National Interim Chairman of the Arizona Americans Elect Party, state party leaders today announced.

"We're absolutely delighted that Mayor Bloomberg has decided to support the Arizona Americans Elect Party in this fashion," said the party's first vice-chairwoman, Buffy Lehman Auchincloss.  "Michael has a big following among Arizona voters, and indeed, among people of good will throughout the United States, and we are privileged to have prevailed upon him to join our efforts to provide an electoral alternative in Arizona."

Speaking to the gathering of representatives from the dozen states, including Arizona, in which the Americans Elect Party will be on the ballot again in 2014, Mr. Bloomberg said, "The last time I checked, the Constitution said nothing about there being only two political parties; in fact, it doesn't have any mention of political parties in it whatsoever."

"It stands to reason," Mr. Bloomberg told the convention delegates, "that in a three-way or four-way election, the public has more choice than if it's a two-way race, just as it has more choice in a two-way race than a one-way race."

"Michael Bloomberg's positions on gun control, immigration, marriage equality, reproductive rights, climate change and other issues are in perfect sync with the positions held by most of us in Arizona's fastest-growing political party," said Arizona Americans Elect Party leader Trey Young.  "Plus it never hurts, in politics as in life, to have friends with money."

"Mayor Bloomberg has courageously criticized our backward state laws on gun violence and immigration," said the state party treasurer, Dr. Irina Tereshkova.  "We are hoping that our new Honorary National Interim Chairman will help us select and support Arizona Americans Elect Party candidates in next year's state and federal elections so we can make Arizona more like New York City."

At National Convention of State Americans Elect Parties, Bestselling Authors/Activists Sister Souljah and Tao Lin Meet with Arizona Americans Elect Party Leaders, Hail Party as "America's Hipster/Hip-Hop Party"

NEW YORK, June 1 --

The national Convention of State Americans Elect Parties continued today, with speeches by Americans Elect Corporation leaders Peter Ackerman and Khalil Byrd, and addresses by bestselling author/activists Sister Souljah and Tao Lin, who afterward met with leaders of the Arizona Americans Elect Party and proclaimed the state party "America's Hipster/Hip-Hop Party."

The convention is the first organized meeting of leaders of the Americans Elect Party in the dozen states where the political party will be on the ballot in 2014 -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin -- along with representatives of other unofficial Americans Elect state political parties.

The morning's events featured a talk by Peter Ackerman and Khalil Byrd on the future of the Americans Elect movement and the political parties spawned by their 2012 effort to find a presidential candidate through an online primary, which ended inconclusively.  Tomorrow New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has been suggested as a past and future presidential candidate of Americans Elect, will give the keynote address.

In the afternoon, leaders of the Arizona Americans Elect Party, as delegates to the national convention, took part in various workshops.  Rabbi Elana de Carvajal, Pima County co-chair, moderated a panel discussion entitled "Poverty, Property and Immigration," and Maricopa County co-chair Jaden Parascandola led a workshop, "Paths Toward Utopia," exploring how the Americans Elect Party can organize at the polls and in the streets in order to work toward a society free of all forms of social domination.

After inspiring speeches by Sister Souljah, author of such best-selling novels as Midnight: A Gangster's Love Story, The Coldest Winter Ever, and A Deeper Love Inside: the Porsche Santiaga Story, and by Tao Lin, author of the acclaimed novels Eeeee Eee Eeee, Richard Yates and the just-published Taipei, the two writer/activists met with Arizona Americans Elect Party leaders Trey Young, Irina Tereshkova and Buffy Lehman Auchincloss and called the state party, the one Americans Elect group to run candidates for Congress in 2012, "America's Hipster/Hip-Hop Party."

"This convention has been an exciting time for all of us in the Arizona Americans Elect Party as we prepare to run candidates for state and federal office in 2014," said party leader Trey Young.  "We're proud to accept the high praise and to learn from such brilliant thinkers as Sister Souljah and Tao Lin."

The Convention of State Americans Elect Parties will tonight host a party at the Westway nightclub in the far West Village and return for its final session tomorrow.

Arizona Americans Elect Party Leaders Travel to New York for Convention of State Americans Elect Parties

NEW YORK, May 31 --

The leaders of the Arizona Americans Elect Party, the state's fastest-growing ballot-qualified party, today traveled to New York City for the first Convention of State Americans Elect Parties, meeting their counterparts in the eleven other states where the Americans Elect Party will be on the ballot in 2014: California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Speakers at the gathering will include Peter Ackerman, chairman of the Americans Elect Corporation, a nonprofit corporate entity, and chairman of Rockport Capital Inc.; outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent; the best-selling authors and activists Sister Souljah and Tao Lin; and officials and directors of the D.C.-based Americans Elect Corporation, including Kahlil Byrd, Chief Executive Officer; Elliot L. Ackerman, Chief Operating Officer; Joshua S. Levine, Chief Technology Officer; and Sarah Malm, Chief Communications Officer.

Issues to be discussed are the relationships between the state Americans Elect political parties, such as the one in Arizona, which ran two candidates for Congress in 2012 and which is running candidates for other federal and state political offices in 2014, and the national Americans Elect Corporation; state and national leadership of any coalition of state Americans Elect political parties; and federal and state campaign rules and funding.

The Arizona Americans Elect Party delegation consists of party leader Trey Young; treasurer Irina Tereshkova; first vice-chairwoman Buffy Lehman Auchincloss; artistic director Richard Grayson; Maricopa County co-chair Jaden Parascandola; and Pima County co-chair Elana de Carvajal.

"We're quite excited to meet people from the national Americans Elect movement and those in other states like California and New Mexico where individuals and groups also hope to be running Americans Elect candidates for public office next year," said Dr. Tereshkova.

The Convention of State Americans Elect Parties takes place today, May 31, and this weekend, June 1 and 2, at the Hotel Gansevoort in Manhattan's Meatpacking District.

Arizona Americans Elect Party Supreme Leader and Council of Guardians Endorse J.L. Mealer of Mesa as Party's 2014 Candidate for Governor: "He'll Make Arizona Cool Again"

PHOENIX, May 24 -

In its semi-annual meeting at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix today, the Supreme Leader and Council of Guardians of the Arizona Americans Elect Party strongly and unanimously endorsed business leader J.L. Mealer of Mesa as the party's 2014 candidate for governor of Arizona.  

"We are grateful that Mr. Mealer has decided to run on the Americans Elect Party banner," said Trey Young, Supreme Leader of Arizona's fastest-growing political party.  "He'll make Arizona cool again."

"Although Mr. Mealer is a conservative and holds views different from the party leadership and most of the party's enrolled voters," said Dr. Irina Tereshkova, treasurer of the state party, "we are a political party that is open to everyone, and people of different views are welcome to join."

"We urge Mr. Mealer to make a strong race for governor and lead our party to victory in 2014, when we are assured of ballot access," said Buffy Lehman Auchincloss, the party's first vice-chairwoman.  "If he can get just five percent of the vote, the Arizona Americans Elect Party will achieve permanent ballot access without having to get petitions for 2016, when we can nominate our presidential candidate."

Jaden Parascandola, co-chair of the Maricopa County Americans Elect Party and speaker for the state party's Council of Guardians, said, "We are hoping other candidates of all political persuasions join J.L. Mealer in rounding out the Arizona Americans Elect Party ballot as our standard bearers for Congress, the state legislature, the corporation commission, secretary of state, treasurer, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction, and state mine inspector."

Trey Young emphasized that Mr. Mealer will run a campaign independent of the party apparatus:  "For now, we are just happy that the Arizona Americans Elect Party has found our candidate for governor in 2014." 

Arizona Americans Elect Party Leader Trey Young Joins New La Paz County Co-Chairs, Peace Activists Todd Trump & Blair Wojciechowski, to Call for an End to U.S.-Funded Wars & Occupations

QUARTZSITE, Ariz., May 22 -

Arizona Americans Elect Party leader Trey Young today joined the newly-appointed party co-chairs for La Paz County, peace activists Todd Trump and Blair Wojciechowski, to call for ending U.S.- funded wars and occupations, challenging militarism globally, and redirecting our resources into health care, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities.  

Introducing the new party leaders, Mr. Young declared the Arizona Americans Elect Party "the state's premier antiwar, anti-violence political group."  He said he was proud of "the accomplishments and activism of our cool young leaders in the county of La Paz, whose name, of course, means 'the peace' en español."

Mr. Trump, from the town of Parker, is a graduate student and teaching assistant in American history at the University of Southern California, from which he earlier received a bachelor's degree in American Studies and Ethnicity.  The author of  such scholarly articles as "'Keep Our Black Warriors out of the Draft': The Vietnam Antiwar Movement at Southern University, 1968-1973," he worked summers in the Washington, D.C., office of ANSWER, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, and in nearby northern Virginia at the International Journal for Peace Studies at George Mason University.

Ms. Wojciechowski, a native of Quartzsite, received her B.S. degree in mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and is currently working toward her Ph.D. in mathematics at Claremont Graduate University's Institute of Mathematical Sciences.  She has worked for peace at CODEPINK Los Angeles, Occupy the Military Industrial Complex, and V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls.  Earlier this year, she was a Los Angeles organizer for a global day of action on February 14, 2013 to strike, dance, and rise to end rape and gender violence.

The two new La Paz County leaders both joined the Arizona Americans Elect Party in 2012 and met while working for the party's antiwar candidate for Congress, Richard Grayson.  More recently, both Ms. Mason and Mr. Trump have been working in the ongoing campaign against  sexual harassment and assault in the armed services.

"I joined Americans Elect," said Ms. Wojciechowski, "because it's the one Arizona political party which will make sure that  power will no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people."

"Our party will work hard to establish the equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile, as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," said Mr. Trump.

"The Arizona Americans Elect Party is the state's fastest-growing political party," said party leader Mr. Young.  "We are on the ballot in 2014 and will field of slate of candidates committed to nonviolence activism." 

Hip-Hop Producer & Venture Capitalist Flash Amarasiriwardena and Conceptual Art History Scholar & Gallery Owner Remedios Gomez Named New Cochise County Co-Chairs of Arizona Americans Elect Party; Vow to Support Radical Transformation of State's Educational Priorities

BISBEE, Ariz., May 20 -

Trey Young, leader of Arizona's fastest-growing political party, the Americans Elect Party, today came to the steps of the elegant Cochise County Courthouse for a press conference at which he introduced the party's new county co-chairs, Remedios Gomez, a scholar of conceptual art and owner of a Bisbee art gallery, and Flash Amarasiriwardena of Bisbee and Austin, Texas, a hip-hop producer and principal of the venture capital firm Sandhill 128 Associates.  

The new county leaders pledged to make their focus the Arizona Americans Elect Party's goals of reforming what Ms. Gomez called "some of the nation's shittiest and most underfunded schools" and increasing what Mr. Amarasiriwardena termed "Arizona's abysmally low educational attainment rate."

Ms. Gomez is the owner of Arthropologie, an art gallery on Main Street featuring the work of local artists and nationally-known established artists such as Helen Berggruen, Joe Zucker, Johannes Atli Hinriksson, Yuko Shimizu, and Sadie Benning.  She has a Ph.D. in Art History from Princeton University and was chair of the Art Department at Wellesley College.  Ms. Gomez is the author of well-received critical biographies of the conceptual artists Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, and Yoko Ono, and she has served as a panelist on the interdisciplinary arts panel of the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

Mr. Amarasiriwardena was in the early 2000s best known as Lil Flash, a driving force as a hip-hop producer in the party-oriented Atlanta style known as "crunk."  A native of Mumbai with degrees in music and business administration from Emory University, Mr. Amarasiriwardena signed such classic acts as Xscape, Dem Bonez Boyz, FYM, Shawty Boi, and Lucidly Ghetto.  In recent years, as a venture capitalist in Austin, he has funded such successful tech startups as Marketic, Bizmondo, K Cube, and  TrueMooc; he and his wife, the actress Heidi Palover, own a ranch outside their second home in Bisbee.

Arizona Americans Elect Party Leader Trey Young hailed the accomplishments of the new Cochise County party officials and stressed that they would be the point persons for the party's drive to improve Arizona's failing education system.  "To support our children's learning is the most patriotic thing we can do," he said, stripping off his shirt in the 100-degree heat as the crowd of party members at the courthouse steps applauded.  "Our party pledges its support for education."

"Unfortunately," Mr. Young continued, "the influence of the assholes at the family-hating, unpatriotic Goldwater Institute and other crackpot right-wing agenda groups has made Arizona perhaps the stupidest, most ignorant state in the U.S."

"All that will change under the Arizona Americans Elect Party," said Ms. Gomez.  "We're going to kick conservative ass and institute a truly equitably funded system that will educate all Arizonans, regardless of income, location, race or ethnicity."

"The Arizona Americans Elect Party calls for a radical restructuring of learning in this state," added Mr. Amarasiriwardena, "which until now has not been able to train people for the high-paying jobs today's skilled knowledge workers get in other places, like my other home Austin or in Silicon Valley or Research Triangle or lower Manhattan or the suburbs of Boston and D.C."

"As our party motto states, let's make Arizona less of a shithole," Mr. Young concluded.  "That starts with mandatory, government-funded pre-K education and goes all the way to making Arizona's higher education system an innovative fount of lifelong learning.  We'll work with visionary leaders like past and present ASU presidents Lattie Coor and Michael Crow to implement their ideas for transforming one of the worst-performing states into one of the best."

Arizona Americans Elect Party Leader Trey Young Introduces Yavapai County Co-Chairs Nina O'Neill von Stauffenberg & Dr. Alexander von Stauffenberg, Food Movement Activists, Who Will Fight to Reform Agriculture & the Food Industry

PRESCOTT, Ariz., May 15 -

Last evening Arizona Americans Elect Party leader Trey Young announced at a Prescott fundraiser and dinner party that food movement activists Nina O’Neill von Stauffenberg and Dr. Alexander von Stauffenberg would be the party’s new co-chairs in Yavapai County and would lead the party's vision for reforming agriculture and the food industry and providing Arizonans with safe, healthy and humanely-produced meals, locally sourced whenever possible.

The von Stauffenbergs live in Prescott, where they own Mekong Delta, a fusion Asian restaurant; Cookies and Scream, a vegan bakery; Artisan du Chocolat, an artisanal chocolate shop; and Top of the Hops, a tasting bar and culture center for craft and imported beers. 

Ms. O'Neill von Stauffenberg is also on the board of Arizona Meals on Wheels.  A native of Chicago, she graduated from Loyola University Chicago and received an associate degree in culinary arts from the Culinary Institute of America. 
 
Dr. von Stauffenberg is a former staff associate at the International Food Policy Research Institute, an organization in Washington that focuses on environmentally sound policies to alleviate hunger and poverty.  He received a doctorate in cultural studies at the graduate school of North American studies at the Free University of Berlin.  

Both Dr. and Ms. von Stauffenberg were major contributors last year in the effort to pass California's Prop 37, a measure that would have required most foods made with genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled.

"People by the millions have begun, as the slogan goes, to vote with their forks in favor of more sustainably and humanely produced food, and against agribusiness," said Mr. Young, leader of Arizona's fastest-growing political party, which has appeared on the ballot since 2012 with a slate of progressive candidates for state and local offices.  

"Dynamic young Arizona Americans Elect Party leaders like the von Stauffenbergs have revitalized local farming and urban communities," Mr. Young said, in introducing the couple.  "At the same time they have raised the bar on the food industry, which now must pay attention to things like sustainable farming and the humane treatment of animals."

Arizona Americans Elect Party's New Mohave County Co-Chairs Brooke Epstein and Razvan Codrescu Promise to Work for Party Goal of Protecting Women's Reproductive Rights, Supporting Planned Parenthood

KINGMAN, Ariz., May 10 -

Trey Young, leader of the Arizona Americans Elect Party, traveled to Kingman today to introduce the party's new Mohave County Co-Chairs, Brooke Epstein and Razvan Codrescu, who said they would build party membership and concentrate efforts on achieving the party's goal of working for women's reproductive rights and supporting the work of Planned Parenthood in the county and state. 

Ms. Epstein, 28, is a coordinator with the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in Kingman, where she administers health insurance benefits for the organization’s staff members and for those of its affiliated congregations.  She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis University and received a Master of Public Health degree in global health from Harvard University.  Ms. Epstein's mother, Claire Katz-Ngandé, a  retired obstetrician and gynecologist who specialized in obstetric fistula repair, ran a clinic in Sierra Leone where Ms. Epstein served as a volunteer.

Mr. Codrescu, 27,  is the chief executive of Andover Brand Econometrics, a consultancy in Lake Havasu City that advises pharmaceutical companies on market decisions. He was a White House Fellow in 2009 and 2010 in the office of the Secretary of Commerce.  After studying with the Rumanian School of Ballet and working as a performer with the Zurich Ballet, he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in economics from Vassar College.

The Mohave County Co-Chairs agreed that, given their backgrounds in public health and in order to build party membership in the county, they would concentrate on the Arizona Americans Elect Party's support of women's reproductive rights.

"Unfortunately, recent legislation signed into law in Arizona has reduced access to abortion care, a development that particularly hit low-income and rural women of the state the hardest," said Ms. Epstein.  "The Arizona Americans Elect Party's 2014 candidates will work toward repealing these draconian laws and return quality and safety-oriented reproductive care to all women in Mohave County and elsewhere."

"We must restore and increase state funding of Planned Parenthood," Mr. Codrescu said, "which is committed to providing every woman with the full range of quality, affordable reproductive health care with a strong focus on preventive care."

"Women have a friend in these dynamic new Americans Elect Party leaders," said the state party leader, Mr. Young.  "The feminists of the  Arizona Americans Elect Party, female and male, will end the war against women in this state and throw the troglodytes out of the state legislature and Congress."