John Eder

Eder was the first member of a third-party to serve in the Maine Legislature since 1915 when representatives of Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party (United States) held legislative offices there.

Eder remains the only state legislator in the country to serve a full term as a Green and to be re-elected as a Green.

John Eder (born January 18, 1969) is an American activist and politician from Maine.

Eder, a Republican, lives in Waterboro.

He is a former member of the Maine Green Independent Party and the Maine Democratic Party.

He served in the Maine House of Representatives as the legislature's first member of the Green Party for two terms and was elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2004.

Following redistricting passed in 2003, Eder won re-election in 2004.

In September 2005 during the break between legislative sessions Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

Two weeks later Eder deployed with the Red Cross to drive a food canteen truck and provide case management to victims of the storm.

Until his defeat in 2006 Eder was one of only a handful of independent or third party state legislators in the country and was the highest-ranking elected Green official in the United States.

Eder lost the 2006 election to the Maine House by about 60 votes to Democrat Jon Hinck.

Eder entered the campaign as a favorite, and many environmental, gay-rights, labor, and progressive organizations lined up behind him.

A controversy erupted when Eder paid for an automated phone call to voters with a recorded message from the head of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) endorsing Eder and questioning Hinck's position on women's rights based on Hinck's answers to NOW's candidate questionnaire.

Hinck declared himself pro-choice, but he did not commit to supporting a woman's right to an abortion in every circumstance.

The phone calls didn't mention that they were paid for by Eder's campaign.

Hinck claimed that the call violated state elections law by failing to disclose who paid for them.

A new law passed earlier that year required that an automated robocall include a "tag" identifying who paid for them.

The commission fined Eder $100.

Hinck won the election with 51.5% of the vote to Eder's 48.5%

Eder is considered a founding father of the Green Party in Portland.

Eder is further credited with changing Portland's political landscape by bringing young voters in Portland into the political process and paving the way for the Greens to assume their present role as the second party of contention in Portland, Maine's largest city.

Several young activists who Eder mentored have since won political office in Portland.

Former Eder campaign volunteers David A. Marshall and Kevin Donoghue took seats on the Portland City Council, becoming the first registered Greens to serve on that body.

In November 2008 Eder was elected to the Cumberland County Charter Commission.

Eder finished second out of five declared candidates running a write-in election for two seats.

Eder travels the country speaking to regular citizens about to run and win local office as a way to demystify politics and feel empowered by taking personal responsibility for their own governance.

In 2010, his former Legislative Aide, Ben Chipman, won a seat in the Maine Legislature.

Eder ran for Mayor of Portland, Maine in 2011.

In 2014, Eder won a race for an at-large seat on the Portland Board of Education.

In 2018, Eder unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for a seat in the Maine House of Representatives in Biddeford.

He claimed that "Democratic values" moved him to join the party.

Eder had previously broken from Green Party tradition and supported Democrats while maintaining his Green voter registration, including future Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling.

Eder, then a Green Independent, won election with 65% of the vote, defeating Democrat Michael V.. Saxl.

Since legislators not enrolled with a political party typically caucus with one of the two major parties, it was assumed by Maine political observers that Eder would be forced to do the same.

However, he was able to secure recognition of himself as a one-member Green Party caucus in the House.

He negotiated to have a dedicated staff person assigned to him, something individual legislators in the Maine House, who serve on a part-time basis, do not have.

With this Eder established the first ever Green Party Minority legislative office in any state.

In his first session Eder introduced legislation to give tax incentives for the purchase of alternative fuel vehicles, a bill to create a single-payer health care system in Maine and another to limit corporate power.

He passed legislation protecting schoolchildren from cancer-causing chemicals.

This was the first legislation sponsored by a Green to be passed through a state legislature and signed into law in the United States.