Greens’ Jill Stein makes her presidential case in Oakland

Jonathan Dupin, center, takes a selfie as Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein signs her autograph with the help of David Cobb after a rally in Humanist Hall Oct. 6, 2016 in Oakland, Calif. Jonathan Dupin, center, takes a selfie as Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein signs her autograph with the help of David Cobb after a rally in Humanist Hall Oct. 6, 2016 in Oakland, Calif. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Greens’ Jill Stein makes her presidential case in Oakland 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Jill Stein, who is very much running for president, came to Oakland on Thursday to fervently advance the notion that voting for her was not the equivalent of tossing one’s precious franchise into the trash.

“There is no future in politics as usual,” Stein told a crowd of precisely 107 supporters that partly filled Humanist Hall, a small auditorium across from a used car lot in downtown Oakland. “It’s time to put people, planet and peace over profit.”

Her nine dozen (minus one) supporters needed no convincing. They screamed and stomped at every word.

“Jill, not Hill! Jill, not Hill!” they cried as the Massachusetts physician and Green Party candidate took the stage. Many of her supporters even bought $1 raffle tickets for a chance to win a toy bulldozer autographed by Stein, whose campaign picked up some wisps of steam last month after authorities in North Dakota issued an arrest warrant for her. Stein had happily spray-painted a protest message on a bulldozer during a rally against the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, and the video of her aerosol artistry went for what passes for viral among the Greens.

“I’m a mother on fire,” she said. “We are not a footnote. We are not trivial window dressing. I’m not going to go quietly.”

Not going quietly has become something of a trademark. Stein got in another dustup on Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in New York, the site of the first presidential debate, when she showed up complaining that she had not been invited to participate and was escorted from campus by police.

National polls put Stein at 2 percent and fellow would-be president Libertarian Gary Johnson at 7 percent. Stein said one of her best points was that she was not the lesser of two evils. She said the major-party candidates have been “throwing Americans under the bus” but that she would like to be invited to debate with them anyway on Sunday in St. Louis.

“The majority of Donald Trump supporters are against Hillary Clinton, and the majority of Hillary Clinton supporters are against Donald Trump,” she said. “They’ve set a new all-time record for the most disliked and untrusted candidates in our history. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Her supporters laughed and nodded.

“Invest your vote. Don’t throw it away on politics as usual,” she said. “This nonsense of lesser and greater evil is a propaganda campaign. The lesser evil and the greater evil are on a race to the bottom. It’s time to reject the lesser evil and fight for the greater good.”

Stein, a Harvard-educated internist, is running her second presidential race with the Greens. She has run twice for governor of Massachusetts, finishing out of the money. Between campaigns, she is a guitar-strumming songwriter of peace and protest tunes. (In one of them, she rhymed “rainbow” with “time’s gonna change-o” and “rearrange-o” in a YouTube video that, so far, has not gotten as many hits as the bulldozer one.)

She did not sing at her Oakland appearance. But a rapper did precede her to the stage, while organizers tried to drum up interest in the raffle tickets. Larry Belfetz-Howell of Moraga dug into his pocket, came up with $8 and clutched his tickets as if the prize were a Powerball jackpot.

“She’s honest and she’s trustworthy,” he said. “I hope I win, so I can donate the bulldozer back to the campaign and they can raffle it again.”

Stein, who has not held a major elected office, has said that she did not believe her lack of experience would be a handicap because serving as president “is not rocket science.”

Few of her supporters said they would feel bad if a vote for Stein siphoned support from another candidate. But supporter Peter Dragovich, who was in charge of distributing Stein buttons, said voting for Stein in a non-battleground state such as California was a different proposition from voting for Stein in, say, Florida.

“In a swing state, maybe you think about suspending your conscience and voting strategically,” Dragovich said. “In a deep-blue state like California, it probably doesn’t matter. But it does become a consideration in other states.”

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com