Howard County isn't Des Moines or Nashua. White House hopefuls aren't in the habit of popping in on us. The last presidential campaign to swing through was that of Bush the Elder, represented by veep-to-be Dan Quayle in a 1988 speech in a Columbia parking lot.

Last week, however, we got a visit from a real, live presidential candidate.

Don't feel clueless if this is news to you. The politician in question is going for the Green Party nod, and it wasn't Ralph Nader.

David Cobb, 41, is the party's general counsel and last year ran for the job of Texas attorney general. Now on a 20-state tour, Cobb, who says he is the only Green actively running at this point, spoke Nov. 21 at Phelps Luck Elementary School in Long Reach.

Nader and the Greens in 2000 joined forces to raise each other's profiles and, in the eyes of some, let Bush the Younger slip into the White House with a razor-thin margin in Florida.

Cobb, who ran the Nader campaign in Texas, isn't apologizing. But if you think Green and other third-party candidates are election spoilers, Cobb is happy to direct you to a solution: instant runoffs.

Under the instant runoff system, a voter doesn't simply pick the one candidate he'd like to win, but ranks all candidates in order of preference. If the candidate with the most first-place votes doesn't have the majority, election officials would bring the second-choice votes into account. Theoretically, at least, this would have led to a different outcome in Florida as, presumably, most Nader voters would have made Al Gore their second choice.

Cobb adds that this method will lead to more civil public discourse, as candidates will have much more incentive to build their own images than to tear down those of their opponents.

Nader has not yet made clear his intentions regarding the '04 race, but Cobb says he's out to win the Green Party nomination whether Nader wants it or not.

Nader did much to raise awareness of the Greens' issues, Cobb says, but he isn't committed to building the party. With corporate interests keeping a stranglehold on both of the major parties, that's got to be top priority, he insists.

"The Democratic Party is where progressive politics goes to die," Cobb says.

Since priority No. 2 is removing Bush from office, however, Cobb is prepared to limit his campaigning to states that aren't critical to the electoral college count, provided the Democratic Party's nominee is not Joseph Lieberman or Wesley Clark, whose policies are too far removed from the Greens' and too indistinguishable from the Republicans'. On the other hand, if the Democrats were to nominate Al Sharpton or Dennis Kucinich, whose views are in line with the Greens', Cobb would drop his campaign.

In any case, he insists, "The Greens aren't going away. We're getting larger, stronger and better organized with every election cycle."

Computer network engineer Steve Kramer, 37, of Long Reach is the coordinator for the Howard County Green Party and arranged for Cobb's visit here. He says the county has 300 registered Greens, up from 200 just a year ago, with a core of 20 to 25 steady activists who meet twice a month. He expects the party to field a full slate of candidates here in the 2006 elections for county executive, the County Council and state legislative posts.

The Green candidate for comptroller last year, Beth Hufnagel of Elkridge, came from the Howard chapter.

Local issues of particular interest to the local Greens include the omnipresent growth controversy and Columbia governance. The party, he says, favors incoporating the planned city, but would support a special tax status as a stepping stone toward that goal.