It’s tough living in big fish states like California. While Iowans and New Hampshire residents get people like Edwards and Huckabee begging to eat at their kitchen tables, the rest of the country is left eating the scraps vis-a-vis Chris Matthews media mouthpieces.

Tired of feeling like a second class-citizen, I went searching for a forum where candidates would give my vote the respect and attention it truly deserves.

Fortunately, last weekend the Green Party decided to hold a presidential debate right next door in San Francisco. Even more fortunate was the debate’s sub-title: “The Only Presidential Debate that Matters.”

While the rest of the United States has been blabbering on about the heated Clinton-Obama race, the Green Party has secretly been building its own electoral drama sure to knock established candidates out of the water. Or at least off the front pages.

Sure, Republicans and Democrats alike have been busy spewing out the word ‘change’ and showing off the most eclectic group of candidates to date. But c’mon, the Green Party invented the word ‘change.’ And as for their nominees? Well let’s just say they make a former evangelical minister, an ex-first lady and a half-Kenyan look pedestrian.

Of the six Green Party members who have declared their presidential candidacy, five were at the debate. Cynthia McKinney, the nation’s first black congresswoman, rounded out a troop of four other candidates who are a bit, shall we say, lesser-known: Kent Mesplay, an eighth grade teacher; Jared Ball, a hip-hop scholar; Kat Swift, a 34-year-old activist who looks old enough to be my younger sister; and the filmmaker Jesse Johnson whose resume highlights include a pirate stint in the movie “Hook,” a turn as a West Virginia country line dance instructor and time spent designing floral arrangements for CBS Morning News.

And you thought Dennis Kucinich was unelectable.

In spite of such obstacles as experience, support for the candidates remained high Sunday afternoon at the Herbst Theatre in downtown San Francisco. Crunchy college kids handed out flyers on the sidewalk, chipper folk music played on loudspeakers and Green staff members passed out index cards for audience members to write down their questions for the candidates.

I could almost see the cornfields in the background.

The debate started with moderated questions from both journalists and the audience. McKinney, who had a male escort lead her across the stage to the debate table, quickly stood out from the rest of the pack with her bright red shawl, diamond jewelry and ability to deliver a decent speech without reading from note cards.

All five candidates, however, were equally enthusiastic about their anti-war and pro-marijuana legalization views, agreeing with each other to the point of nausea.

While early into the event the candidates called repeatedly for more real debates, by the end, at least one candidate had conceded that this particular debate could better be characterized as a “discussion.”

Or a pep rally. Mesplay began his opening remarks by invoking a repeated “Yes, we can!” from the audience. And when McKinney name-dropped “organic farming,” the California audience almost peed its pants.

Things looked like they might go awry when Johnson — to emphasize one of his points — pulled a book out of his pocket and raised it up to the audience ardently. There was an awkward pause as the audience wondered what the hell a Bible was doing on the stage of a Green presidential debate.

“It’s the Constitution,” Johnson declared.

The audience laughed nervously in relief.

By the end of the afternoon, all the candidates were so damn polite that they effectively agreed to hand over the nomination to McKinney. Even three hecklers, who disrupted the debate with political outbursts, were lauded by the moderator for truly keeping the event “public.”

My only consolation for the debate’s monotony came from the woman in front of me, whose loud harrumphs on issues such as the deficit and the loss of three million jobs punctuated the time she spent playing on her iPhone. Unfortunately, the woman left too soon to hear one of the candidates support new socialist government programs, which would sacrifice superfluous luxuries like cell phones to bridge the socioeconomic divide.

While the irony may have been lost on her, my appreciation of it was enough for the both of us.

Bring on Hillary’s tears and Obama’s childhood cocaine use. As long as there’s a writers’ strike, who doesn’t love an electoral media charade?