John Eder (born January 18, 1969) is an American activist and politician from Maine. Eder, a Democrat, lives in Biddeford. He is a former member of the Maine Green Independent Party, the Maine affiliate of the national Green Party. He served in the Maine House of Representatives as the legislature's first member of the Green Party for two terms and was elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2004. Until his defeat in 2006 Eder was one of only a handful of independent or third party state legislators in the country and was the highest-ranking elected Green official in the United States. Eder ran for Mayor of Portland, Maine in 2011. In 2014, Eder won a race for an at-large seat on the Portland Board of Education. In 2018, Eder unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for a seat in the Maine House of Representatives. He claimed that "Democratic values" moved him to join the party. Eder had previously broken from Green Party tradition and supported Democrats while maintaining his Green voter registration, including future Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling. 2002 election to Maine House of Representatives Eder, then a Green Independent, won election with 65% of the vote, defeating a Democrat. Since legislators not enrolled with a political party typically caucus with one of the two major parties, it was assumed by Maine political observers that Eder would be forced to do the same. However, he was able to secure recognition of himself as a one-member Green Party caucus in the House. He negotiated to have a dedicated staff person assigned to him, something individual legislators in the Maine House, who serve on a part-time basis, do not have. With this Eder established the first ever Green Party Minority legislative office in any state. In his first session Eder introduced legislation to give tax incentives for the purchase of alternative fuel vehicles, a bill to create a single-payer health care system in Maine and another to limit corporate power. He passed legislation protecting schoolchildren from cancer-causing chemicals. This was the first legislation sponsored by a Green to be passed through a state legislature and signed into law in the United States. Redistricting and service in the House Following redistricting passed in 2003, Eder won re-election in 2004. In September 2005 during the break between legislative sessions Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Two weeks later Eder deployed with the Red Cross to drive