Bill Mahoney is reporting for Politico New York Syracuse resident Howie Hawkins has officially won the Green Party nomination for president, making him its nominee during a virtual convention July 11. Hawkins, the Green Party’s top vote-getter in his home state thanks to his performance against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the past three gubernatorial campaigns. He will now try to persuade progressives to vote for a real socialist rather than traditional liberal Joe Biden, in November. "We’re getting a lot of [Bernie] Sanders people,” Hawkins said. Hawkins, 67, has been a community organizer, logger, and for 17 years before his 2018 retirement, a Teamster working the red-eye shift, unloading trucks for UPS in central New York. His running mate, Angela Walker of South Carolina, has been a transit operator in Milwaukee. “When’s the last time you had two truck drivers running [on a national ticket]?” former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader said in an interview. Hawkins has run for office 24 times in New York, from local contests to ambitious statewide races. He is sociable, but hardly a back-slapping politician. “Howie is one of the most well-read and well-rounded persons that I know when it comes to political thought and knowledge,” said Frank Cetera, the treasurer of the Onondaga County Greens. “You can’t bring up a topic that he can’t speak to.” Hawkins envisions this race as an opportunity draw attention to his issues. “It’s usually the intellectuals, the professors, and all I can say is they can afford Joe Biden,” he said. “But working class people in this country, [their] life expectancies are in decline, they need some real relief economically, Medicare for all and a job guarantee and so forth. Biden’s for none of that. If you’re a professor, you’ll be all right, but if you’re struggling, particularly now with this coronavirus depression, you need something more than just the status quo.” Read the full story at politico [dot] com.