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The politics of driving
MV resident hoping for Green Party nomination to Senate

by Jon Wiener

Tian Harter would like a minute of your time. Fifty-three seconds, actually.

If you frequent downtown cafes, chances are you're familiar with Harter's "little speech," a timed manifesto on freeing ourselves from our cars. The 47-year-old Mountain View resident, who claims to be better known as the " 'Mend Your Fuelish Ways' guy," has made it his mission to give the speech to as many people as he possibly can. This spring, he decided that the best way to do that would be a run for the Green Party nomination for U.S. Senate.

"For me, politics is all about the culture wars," Harter said last week during an interview outside Red Rock Cafe. In his speech (viewable online at tian.greens.org he says, "I'm doing what I can, and I'm asking other people to do what they can."

In addition to trying to give his speech at as many events as possible, he is mailing thousands of postcards and passing out stickers, for both cars and bikes.

If Harter's campaign methods are rather simple, his ultimate goal is even simpler: "I think climate change should be a political issue."

But Harter is not your run-of-the-mill candidate. Even in a Green Party race that pits him against a writer and an air pollution control district inspector, the eccentric son of a diplomat stands out as a unique character.

Harter describes himself as a "community volunteer" on the ballot. The reason, he said, is that after cashing out the stock options he earned as a software engineer for AOL, he decided he no longer wanted to pay taxes to the federal government or its military. And the only way to do that legally was to stop working.

"I've been living off my savings ever since George Bush invaded the rest of the world, just because I didn't want to make any money," said Harter.

Instead, Harter has been making as many little speeches as he can, participating actively with the local Green Party and an alphabet soup of community organizations. But all that will pale in comparison to what he'll do over the next six months if he wins Tuesday's primary, he said.

If he loses, the campaign will not have been a total loss. Hundreds, maybe thousands, more people will have heard the little speech, and, as Harter said, "The stake of my objections is being driven deeper in the heart of the beast."

Harter was born in Santiago, Chile, his mother a South African journalist and his father, John Harter, a veteran of the foreign service. His father said Tian never wanted to talk about politics growing up.

"I tried to, but he wasn't that interested," he said.

The political awakening came during a couple of state department conferences organized at Tian's behest in the early 1990s, both on the topic of energy usage. The younger Harter quickly ran for Congress in Sacramento, winning an uncontested Green Party primary and earning 2 percent in the general election.

"He sees all kinds of connections that people don't usually consider," said his father. "Sometimes he's a little hard to follow, but if you stay with him, there's something real and deep there."

"I think people tend to underestimate him a little bit. Most people don't realize that he's really quite brilliant."

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com