|
Patricia Helen LaMarche was the Green Party nominee for Vice President in
2004. During the campaign, she spent two weeks on an unprecedented "Left Out
Tour" that highlighted those left out in America. Unlike any other
presidential or vice presidential candidate, she slept in a dozen homeless
shelters and on the streets in an effort to draw attention to those living
on the edge of society — the homeless, victims of domestic abuse, people
without health insurance, and the working poor. As a result of her efforts,
essential items for homeless shelters were collected, and local media
stories helped to highlight this ongoing issue that is not headline news for
most campaigns.
Early Years
Pat LaMarche was born on November 26, 1960, in Providence, Rhode Island,
the fourth of five children. Her father, Paul LaMarche, was and is a
celebrated doctor, and her mother was at that time a housewife but later
became an auditor employed by the state. When the family moved to Bangor,
Maine, in the 1970s, LaMarche enrolled at John Bapst High School where she
graduated near the top of her class. She pursued her education with four
years at Boston College.
After college, Pat returned to Maine in 1982 and married the following year.
After working as a high school math teacher for a few years, she had two
children, Rebecca in 1985 and John in 1987.
Politics and Work
In the late eighties, she moved into the broadcasting field and was
variously employed at television and radio stations in the Bangor area.
LaMarche has taught Public Relations at Husson College's school of
Communications and headed the Bangor chapter of the Children's Miracle
Network, which she saw go from one of the worst in the nation to the most
successful.
In 1996 LaMarche moved south to Portland, Maine, to take a job as the first
and only female host at the venerated heritage talk radio station, WGAN. She
soon became known for her liberal views and was approached to run for
governor of the state of Maine in 1998 on the Green Independent Party
ticket. Despite a grassroots campaign, the death of her mother midway
through, and raising her two children as a single mother, LaMarche led a
respectable campaign that generated seven percent of the vote from a budget
of just $20,000. She became the first woman in the history of the state of
Maine to gain ballot access for a political party due to her campaign.
Becoming A Citizen of the World
A year after running for governor, LaMarche moved to the Netherlands to
pursue a Master's Degree in European History at the University of Amsterdam.
While there, she and her two children were fortunate enough to visit some
ten other countries, meeting with relatives in Italy and Turkey and spending
half a month in Ireland. LaMarche and her children are confident that their
time in Europe greatly changed and improved them as citizens of our planet.
Additionally, it gave LaMarche a vital taste of life outside the United
States, and placed her in a position from which she is able to make
better-informed decisions regarding what course of action is best for
America and Americans.
In the years since Holland, LaMarche has been employed at a radio station in
Maine's capital under the pseudonym Genny Judge, which she borrowed from her
late mother. Genny Judge is known throughout central Maine as an altruist in
the truest sense of the term. She has found kidneys for dying children,
raised money for poverty-stricken youth, and helped to garner support for
the relief crew after September 11, all the while voicing her concerns for
and opinions of the state of affairs in the community, state, nation, and
world at large. |
