On October 17, the Socialist Party, meeting in Milwaukee, nominated Mimi Soltysik for President and Angela Walker for Vice-President. Thanks to Matt Erard for this news.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
On October 17, the Socialist Party, meeting in Milwaukee, nominated Mimi Soltysik for President and Angela Walker for Vice-President. Thanks to Matt Erard for this news.
Good luck!
So we’ll see this party on 3 or 4 state ballots?
Remains to be seen. I’ll predict five: Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
Anyone have an idea at all why they went from 8 states in 2008 to 3 states in 2012?
QW- over at IPR that was addressed. Funds for ballot access petition drives. Pure and simple.
Correct. In 2008 they paid petitioners, in 2012 they went the all volunteer route. Hopefully they learned their lesson.
Louisiana is just a $500 fee OR a petition (http://www.sos.la.gov/ElectionsAndVoting/PublishedDocuments/PresidentialQualifyingInformationForIndependentCandidates.pdf).
They should try to get on there as well.
I believe there’s also a residency requirement for electors in Louisiana, that makes it a bit more difficult than Colorado.
The Socialist Party may have the best platform of all the various socialist groups, but if they can only get on the ballot in 3-5 states it seems like a pointless exercise.
They’d be better off running for state or local offices where they can get on the ballot and building their membership to a point where they can get on the ballot in 30 to 40 states like the Greens.
They tried that strategy once before, it damn near killed them.
Ask Mimi Soltysik why there are no other Mimi’s in the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA). By that I mean no other former National Chairs, former presidential candidates, or former candidates for national office. Also why did the membership plummet by over 50% during his tenure as national chair of the party? The reason is simple, the only job is the sophomoric leadership party has undertaken of the over the last two decades has been disciplining and expelling its own membership, . Ask him why the most prominent member of the party, David McReynolds , the first gay man to run for the Presidency, was disciplined and pushed out of the party. Members of the New York City local played a major role in the first days of Occupy Wall Street and were among the first arrested. Why has all put one of those activists left the party?
The SPUSA leadership is authoritarian in the tradition of Stalin and not democratic socialists in the tradition of Eugene Debs. Unlike other Maoist / Leninist / Stalinist parties, they lie about it. If you want to vote for an authoritarian party, all means do it. But vote for one whose “policing” class is open about their lack of democracy.
Like the chancellor UC Davis, Linda Katehi, the sophomoric leadership of SPUSA has a new job, to constantly scrub the internet to remove evidence of its toxic internal culture and thuggery. I have never made a physical threat against anyone in my life, and the Stalinists character assassins know I am not doing that or ever done that. All I am doing is promising them full time unpaid employment in their dank Montclair NJ basements for the rest of their lives.