Ben Manski

The 2012 presidential campaign of Jill Stein was announced on October 24, 2011.

Jill Stein, a physician from Massachusetts, gave indication in August 2011 that she was considering running for President of the United States with the Green Party in the 2012 national election.

She wrote in a published questionnaire that she had been asked to run by a number of Green activists and felt compelled to consider the possibility after the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis which she called "the President's astounding attack on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – a betrayal of the public interest."

In a survey conducted in September 2011, Stein suggested that she would announce her intentions by the end of that month and later stated that she would announce her intentions in October.

On October 24, 2011, Stein launched her campaign at a press conference in Massachusetts, saying: "We are all realizing that we, the people, have to take charge because the political parties that are serving the top 1 percent are not going to solve the problems that the rest of us face, we need people in Washington who will refuse to be bought by lobbyists and for whom change is not just a slogan".

Stein's decision to enter the presidential race stemmed from a mock election at Western Illinois University where she fared well.

The mock election featured the Green ticket of Stein/Mesplay, the Democratic ticket of Obama/Biden and the Republican ticket of Romney/Ryan, with Stein receiving 27% of votes, Romney 33% and Obama 39%.

Encouraged by this success, she decided to run.

During an interview with Grist Magazine, Stein said:

"If I can quote Alice Walker, 'The biggest way people give up power is by not knowing they have it to start with.' And that's true, for the environmental movement, the student movement, the antiwar movement, health-care-as-a-human-right movement — you put us all together, we have the potential for a Tahrir Square type event, and [to] turn the White House into a Green House in November."

In December 2011, Wisconsin Green Party leader Ben Manski was announced as Stein's campaign manager.

Stein received the presidential nomination of Green Party at its nominating convention in Baltimore on July 14, 2012.

The campaign received enough contributions to qualify for primary season federal matching funds from the Federal Election Commission, and on July 11, 2012, Stein selected anti-poverty activist Cheri Honkala as her running mate for the Green vice-presidential nomination.

Stein became the presumptive Green Party nominee after winning two-thirds of California's delegates in June 2012.

In a statement following the California election, Stein said, "Voters will not be forced to choose between two servants of Wall Street in the upcoming election. Now we know there will be a third candidate on the ballot who is a genuine champion of working people."

Stein won the presidential nomination of Green Party on July 14, 2012, at its nominating convention in Baltimore.

On July 1, 2012, the Jill Stein campaign reported it had received enough contributions to qualify for primary season federal matching funds from the Federal Election Commission, making Stein the second Green Party presidential candidate ever to have qualified, with Ralph Nader being the first in 2000.

On July 11, 2012, Stein selected anti-poverty activist Cheri Honkala as her running mate for the Green vice-presidential nomination.

Shortly the selection was made, Stein's campaign manager Ben Manski had said Barr's shortlist for running mates had included Roseanne Barr, her chief opponent in the party's primaries.

On August 1, 2012, Stein, Honkala and three others were arrested during a sit-in at a Philadelphia bank to protest housing foreclosures on behalf of several city residents struggling to keep their homes.

Stein explained her willingness to be arrested:

"The developers and financiers made trillions of dollars through the housing bubble and the imposition of crushing debt on homeowners. And when homeowners could no longer pay them what they demanded, they went to government and got trillions of dollars of bailouts. Every effort of the Obama Administration has been to prop this system up and keep it going at taxpayer expense. It's time for this game to end. It's time for the laws be written to protect the victims and not the perpetrators."

On September 7, 2012, Stein was a guest of Bill Moyers for the program Moyers & Company, "Challenging Power, Changing Politics", along with Cheri Honkala and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The program centered on the role of money in politics, the Wall St. Bailout and potential solutions, such as reversing Citizen's United.

Senator Sanders stated, "Fraud is the business model for Wall Street."

Jill Stein also described her decision to run for president, problems with the current administration, and aspects of her platform, such as how to fund her Green New Deal:

"Why should Wall Street be exempt from a sales tax? If you put a small sales tax on Wall Street transactions you not only generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year which could fund our Green New Deal, but you also rein in this reckless speculation in gambling on Wall Street which is a good thing all around."

In early September 2012, at the height of the Democratic National Convention, the Stein campaign ran their first national television ad campaigns.

Google TV attempted to block the "Enough!"

ad from airing, claiming that the use of an (partly bleeped) obscenity violated TV indecency rules and was "inappropriate language".

The Stein campaign argued that the ads already complied with Federal Communications Commission regulations regarding appropriate content.

Google eventually reversed their position, and ran the ads, but the controversy drew attention to the campaign and the ads themselves.

On September 2, Stein spoke before two hundred medical marijuana proponents in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine.

Stein said that "As a medical doctor and a public health advocate, marijuana, cannabis is a substance which is dangerous because it's illegal. It's not illegal because it's dangerous,".

On September 8, 2012, Jill Stein campaigned in Oregon, where neither Romney nor Obama campaigned in person, and spoke at a popular pro-marijuana, pro-hemp festival, Hempstalk 2012.

Stein voiced support for Oregon's Measure 80, on the November ballot, that would legalize marijuana use for adults, regulate and tax it, and lift restrictions on using industrial hemp in clothing and other products.

Stein stated, "Poor people are being thrown into prison for the recreational use of a substance that is not dangerous, and that is a crime."

Throughout September 2012 Stein made further appearances in various parts of the country.

Stein made appearances during the "Poverty Tour 2.0" which was headed by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West.

Poverty Tour was designed to bring to light the plight of those suffering from poverty in the United States.