Jill Stein is sick of being called an “anti-vaxxer.
Throughout the Green Party candidate’s presidential campaign, she has been hounded by accusations that she’s part of the “anti-vaxxer” movement, people who oppose vaccinating children based on the medically bankrupt theory that they cause autism and other diseases.
But Stein says she’s not a part of the moment, and that that those accusing her of it are akin to those “birthers” who smeared President Barack Obama by claiming he was born in Kenya.
“My belief is that this is the birther issue to try to smear us,” Stein said in an interview with POLITICO.
And indeed, Stein is not an “anti-vaxxer” in the strictest sense. A physician, she says she both favors vaccines and enforced them in her practice. She praises vaccines’ role in eradicating diseases, and she has not linked it to autism.
But if calling her an anti-vaxxer is a charge as bankrupt as birtherism, why won’t it go away?
Stein won’t say: “That's a very good question. I think that's a really important question,” Stein said, leaving it there even after being pressed.
Stein’s campaign was only slightly more forthcoming. “It’s hard to tell exactly where the rumor originated, of course (that’s your job as an investigative reporter), but there is evidence that people were certainly working to propagate the rumor,” said Stein press director Meleiza Figueroa.
Figueroa pointed to a leaked email from Robert Naiman, the director of the liberal group Just Foreign Policy, that began to get attention mild in mid-August in which Naiman encourages his contacts to pass on links in which Stein’s stance on vaccines is criticized. And it’s true, the email is intended to cast doubt that Stein accepts the scientific consensus on vaccines.
It does so, however, by highlighting Stein’s own words. Because while Stein never overtly claims that vaccines are responsible for autism or other diseases, some of the things she says about them similar to statements made by the conspiracy theory’s proponents, especially accusations of medical science being compromised by corporate control.
Here’s what she told the Washington Post in July: "I think there’s no question that vaccines have been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases — smallpox, polio, etc. So vaccines are an invaluable medication," Stein said. "Like any medication, they also should be — what shall we say? -- approved by a regulatory board that people can trust. And I think right now, that is the problem. That people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration, or even the CDC for that matter, where corporate influence and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence."
To a Stein supporter, that sounds like a reasoned skepticism of the power of wealthy medical corporations. But to those horrified by the resurgence of long-dormant diseases thanks to new pockets of parents who won’t vaccinate their children, it’s too close for comfort. (It’s also misleading, as the body that works on vaccine safety — the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee — draws mostly from academia and health, not drug firms.
The vaccination question plaguing Stein’s campaign is so frustrating, in part, because she believes it takes away from a message the country is ready for.
It was a promising election for a third-party candidate running to Hillary Clinton’s left. Bernie Sanders won millions of voters in the Democratic with an uncompromisingly progressive platform that put him to Hillary Clinton’s left, leaving many to wonder if Stein could accomplish a similar feat in the general election. And indeed, Stein praises Sanders.
“I think it's really great that Bernie has really given people a lesson in real time, a wakeup call that you cannot have a revolutionary campaign inside of the counterrevolutionary party,” Stein said. “Bernie may have his own allegiances to the Democratic Party that he made clear at the start. He was going to support Hillary [Clinton] no matter what. He was not going to run independent or support anything outside the Democratic Party. He was very clear about that.”
And she hits Clinton in ways Sanders (who has since endorsed Clinton and is campaigning on her behalf) did during the Democratic primary — particularly over ties to wealthy donors.
“It is my campaign that is the real threat to business-as-usual right now,” she said. “We are the well-kept secret because I'm the only candidate that is not taking money from lobbyists, super PACs or corporate interests.”
But unless Stein overperforms her polling, she appears ready to leave the 2016 race without breaking through. She didn’t qualify for the presidential debates, she’s had a hard time breaking through in the news, and she’s polling nationally at 1.9 percent. Stein argued that her campaign has essentially been suffocated because of media attention on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
“We've essentially had a media blackout or whiteout on our campaign,” Stein said.
It wasn’t for lack of offering policy positions. Her campaign focused on fighting climate change, expanding access to healthcare, and improving wages for working-class Americans.
Stein wanted to move the country to using only renewable energy by 2013, repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement, and completely get rid of health insurance, which her website called “a cancer.”
But most of the attention Stein got in 2016 was over feuding with other third party candidates while also trying to get them to debate her. In the waning weeks of the campaign Stein put in a laser focus on debating Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.
“I've been trying to engage Gary Johnson since the beginning of the campaign. They've been ducking. They've been saying 'oh worry, we're not available.' Fox has offered to host. CNN has offered to host, Democracy Now has offered, C-SPAN offered. And Gary only agreed to do a back-to-back town hall forum,” Stein said in October.
In the end, Johnson did get her third-party debate in late October, but Johnson passed. She shared the stage with independent conservative candidate Evan McMullin.