Candidate for
United States Senator

Personal and Political History

Todd Chretien grew up in Maine on a horse farm with his younger brother Joel and his parents Mike and Eileen. In 1988, at the age of 18, he became the youngest elected delegate for Jesse Jackson at the Maine State Democratic Party convention. After a year at Middlebury College, Todd spent eight months in El Salvador and Nicaragua as a human rights worker and English teacher. In 1991, he entered Columbia University and became a leading student activist in the movement against the First Gulf War. Soon after, Todd joined the International Socialist Organization and has been an active member since. While at Columbia, Todd helped lead a successful effort to defend need-blind admissions, and an unsuccessful campaign to prevent Columbia from bulldozing the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated. For his efforts, he was suspended from classes along with the leader of the Black Students Union in 1994.

Todd moved to the East Bay in 1994 and has lived there ever since. In that time he has been active in dozens of organizing coalitions from defending affirmative action to global justice actions against the FTAA, and WTO to the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the lead rank and file organizer in the attempt to unionize the Cesar Chavez Student Center at San Francisco State University for SEUI 790. In 2003, as a member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, he helped stop the execution of Kevin Cooper at San Quentin prison and is currently working to prevent the execution of Stan Tookie Williams. In September of 2005, he organized a national speaking tour for British MP George Galloway.

Todd served as the statewide student organizer for Ralph Nader's presidential and Medea Benjamin's senatorial campaigns in 2000. He also has volunteered for Renee Saucedo and Matt Gonzalez's campaigns in San Francisco and for Aimee Allison's campaign in Oakland. In 2004, Todd served as the Northern California Field Coordinator for the Nader/Camejo ticket. In 2005, Todd helped author and organized Proposition I (the College Not Combat initiative) that passed with 60% of the vote in San Francisco on November 8.

Todd is a frequent contributor to Counterpunch.org, the International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker newspaper. He has appeared on dozens of television and radio shows including MSNBC's "The Situation Room" with Carlson Tucker, Fox News' "The No Spin Zone" with Bill O'Reilly, and "Hannity and Colmes," The Laura Ingram Show, and "Forum" with Michael Krasney on KQED. He lives in Oakland with his wife Jessie Muldoon and his three-year-old daughter Isabela.

He can be reached by email at Todd@Todd4Senate.org