SOMERVILLE – Green Party member Diane Moxley of Garwood used to be a Democrat.

She even worked as a paid staffer in 1996 when Larry Lerner ran against the late U.S. Rep. Bob Franks (R-7).

But that was before she lost faith, and before the party lost its progressive priorities and made fatal corporate compromises, by her reckoning.

Now the mother and attorney – who did 14 years full-time with Essex Legal Services, who grew up in Roselle, where her father sold the old family home for $127,000 in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 – wants to represent the interests of real people in the 7th Congressional District.

She has a little over $5,000 for the campaign.

But “because our platform doesn’t take any corporate money, and is a campaign of individual donors, we are able to enact a plan that will really work for the people,” Moxley told InsiderNJ on the actual platform of the Somerville Train Station, the line she used to get to work in Brick City, to represent the working poor in court.

The Green Party candidate for Congress wants free public higher education or trade schools; student debt forgiveness; a real living wage higher than $15; and improved Medicare for all.

“It’s important for it to be expanded and improved and to eliminate the insurance industry component to give money directly to healthcare providers – HR-676 is the model for our platform,” she said.

She wants a Green New Deal, which is part of the Greens’ national platform plan for renewable energy.

She wants a total ban on fracking.

The major party candidates – U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-7) and Democrat Tom Malinowski – are too corporatized, she says and thus, compromised.

“I believe Leonard Lance and Tom Malinowski will hit $8 million in spending, and what does it amount to except money wasted on negative mailers,” Moxley said.

But what about the Iran Nuclear Deal?

Malinowski, a former assistant secretary of state – backed it when he served in the Obama Administration.

“I would vote in the way most progressive Democrats have,” admitted the Green, when asked about her own views. “But we need to have more diplomacy. I favor more diplomacy than even Malinowski has in his campaign. I’m concerned that there is not more emphasis on scaling back our massive military budget.”

Ultimately, Moxley wants to be a people’s representative for those people abandoned by government.

“My work connected me to real people who suffer every day problems and extreme hardship,” she said.

The Obama years – complete with an administration packed with former Goldman Sachs brass – simply brought an influx of newly eligible clients, she says.

“A missed opportunity,” according to Moxley.

Her record is a trail of helping victims of domestic violence and advocating on parent-child welfare matters.

“I know they’re not alone,” she said.

She’s never run for office. Asked why she didn’t take a crack at a council seat first, she said she does best on federal issues. She sees no way back to the Democratic Party, infested as it is in her view with political insiders and corporatists.

“They’re not a progressive party,” Moxley said. “The amount of corporate money the neoliberals think they need to win elections has simply compromised them.”

If she doesn’t win this year she said she will continue to be active as – what else – an activist.

“I want to work in New Jersey to get the money out of politics,” she said.

But she’s convinced she can make a grassroots mark in a week and a day.

She walked nine miles yesterday on the campaign trail, she said, as she combines coordinated campaign forces with U.S. Senate candidate Madelyn Hoffman.

On Monday morning, the two women and Green ally Javier Vilca walked from the train station to the mural downtown of the late local hero Paul Robeson, a personal inspiration to Hoffman, who’s all in with Moxley.

It’s just another leg on an ongoing pilgrimage, say the Greens.

If Moxley doesn’t win, she plans to be back.

“I look at this as a two-election campaign,” she said, with an eye to 2020. “We’re building.”

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