Pat LaMarche

Patricia Helen LaMarche (born 26 November 1960) is an American political figure and activist with the Green Party; she was the party's vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, with David Cobb as its presidential candidate, and is one of seven co-chairs of the party's national committee, the Green Party of the United States, elected to that position on July 24, 2005.

LaMarche was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the fourth of five children. Her maternal grandparents were immigrants from Southern Ireland. Her father, Paul Henri LaMarche, is a doctor, and her mother, Genevieve Judge, was at that time a housewife but later became an auditor employed by the state of Maine. When the family moved to Bangor, Maine, in the 1970s, LaMarche enrolled at John Bapst Memorial High School where she graduated near the top of her class. She pursued her education with four years at Boston College.

LaMarche returned to Maine in 1982, and the following year, she married Michael Russell. After working as a high school math teacher in Bath for a few years, she had two children: Rebecca in 1985 and John in 1987. Patricia and Michael divorced in 1990. In the late eighties, she moved into the broadcasting field and was employed at various 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. Through her work there, she became known for her eloquence and her liberality. She 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, and having to raise her two children as a single mother, LaMarche led a respectable campaign that generated seven percent of the vote from a meager budget of approximately $20,000. Her campaign allowed her to become the first woman in the history of the state of Maine to gain ballot access for a political party.

Until the beginning of her vice-presidential campaign, LaMarche was employed by a country music radio station in Maine under the pseudonym of Genny Judge; however, this ended with her candidacy.

On September 5, 2004, LaMarche announced that she would be visiting and staying overnight in homeless and domestic violence shelters throughout the United States "to draw attention to those living on the edge of society." The campaign dubbed this LaMarche's "Left-Out Tour." Left Out in America, LaMarche's book which chronicles her tour through American homeless shelters, was released on October 5, 2006, by upalaPress.

On December 8, 2005, LaMarche announced her candidacy on the Maine Green Independent Party ticket for the 2006 gubernatorial race in Maine against incumbent Democrat John Baldacci. Her positions garnered the endorsement, among others, of Chris Miller, progressive former Democratic candidate for governor who lost in the primaries. LaMarche was one of three Maine Candidates who took advantage of Maine's Clean Election Act, a taxpayer-funded campaign system which rewards candidates with public funds if they meet the required 2,500 $5 contributions. In November 2006, LaMarche received 51,992 votes (9.56%) in the Maine race for governor.

The LaMarche for Governor website was judged to be such a ground breaking success that On October 2, the LaMarche for Governor campaign was contacted by the Library of Congress and told that its www.pat2006.com website was being permanently archived in the LOC's official 2006 Election archive. Along with having the site archived it also won a number of awards including The Golden Dot Award as Best Local Campaign Website of the 2006 campaign at the annual Politics Online conference held in Washington, D.C., on March 15, 2007, A Pollie Award from the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) in the gubernatorial websites category , and An Honorable Mention from AAPC for mobile technology used in the LaMarche campaign

Since 2007, LaMarche has authored a weekly syndicated column which can be read on line in the Bangor Daily News.