On August 13, the Peace & Freedom Party of California nominated Gloria LaRiva for president. In PFP’s 48 years of existence, this is the first time it has nominated the presidential nominee of a party with “socialist” or “socialism” in its name. LaRiva is also the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
The vote was: La Riva 56, Monica Moorehead 12, Jill Stein 9, Lynn Kahn 1, abstain 2.
LaRiva is now almost certain to poll at least 50,000 votes in the nation for President. Assuming she does, she will be the first presidential candidate of a party with “socialist” or “socialism” in its name to exceed 50,000 votes nationally since the Socialist Workers Party 1976 campaign, when its nominee, Peter Camejo, polled 91,314 votes. Thanks to Dave Kadlecek for the state convention vote totals.
Since it’s beginning the P&FP has been fighting to avoid being taken over by Marxist-Leninists. I hope this doesn’t mean the Stalinists have taken over the party apparatus. Tragic indeed.
Any information on who the VP nominee will be?
P&FP nominated Dennis Banks (American Indian Movement leader) as La Riva’s runningmate. Banks was La Riva’s runningmate in Colorado and seems to be sort of a stand-in for 30yr old Eugene Puryear in some states.
How will the two parties handle the presidential Elector question?
Congratulations to the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Gloria LaRiva. They worked the hardest for it and from the results it clearly shows. It looks like PSL demolished the field on the first vote.
Honorable mentioned goes to Monica Moorehead. I watched the candidate forum online Friday Night and she did the best with her Presentation and Q&A
William the plan was for Dennis Banks to substitute for Eugene Puryear in states that would not list him.
Richard, Gloria LaRiva should do 50,000 in California alone. Rosanne Barr did almost 70,000 in 2012 and Ralph Nader did 108,000 in 2008. PSL has been building a sizable organization in Southern California. It will be interesting to see if the Ballot Line is changed from Peace and Freedom to Party for Socialism and Liberation. Many people register into P&F not know it is a Socialist Party. The fact is it did not start out as a Socialist Party. It transitioned over in 1974.
Overall this year should be an interesting year for all of the Socialist Candidates. With the economy in the crapper for the last 8 years and the Dominant Parties field candidates with major negatives I would expect the “Scare-the-Hell-out-Them” to be at record numbers. I would not be surprised to see the Socialist Equality Party pull down 100,000 votes running a very limited campaign. That’s small potatoes by any one standards but they only received 1279 last time out. Receiving 100,000 votes would represent a 75 fold improvement.
Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party USA will also be fielding slates
Oh Yeah and Deran……The Ghost of Joe McCarthy lives 😉
“I would not be surprised to see the Socialist Equality Party pull down 100,000 votes running a very limited campaign.”
Socialist Equality doesn’t have any ballot access, and they doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. La Riva is likely to receive 100,000 votes nationwide, not Socialist Equality. Roseanne received 53,824 votes in California as the P&F candidate with much more attention and name-recognition (and a widely-known vp candidate in the state) than La Riva, so I wouldn’t expect La Riva to do much better than her. Despite the “sizable organization” you cite that P&F supposedly has in California, their senate candidate barely scratched 35,000 votes this year with the Green Party’s senate candidate bringing in nearly three times that and the Socialist Workers Party’s (which doesn’t even have ballot access in California) candidate bringing in nearly double the P&F’s amount. The Socialist parties’ candidates like La Riva/Kennedy/Soltysik are likely to be vastly overshadowed by Jill Stein this November. Stein received 85,638 votes in California to Roseanne’s 53,824 in 2012. She’s likely to do even better against smaller name candidates like La Riva.
A minor correction to the vote totals: when I left the meeting room to call Richard with the results, the total for Gloria La Riva was either 56 or 58, with the two counters disagreeing and a general sentiment apparently that the result was so overwhelming it wasn’t worth figuring out which count was correct. When I returned to the room, I learned that while I was gone, it had been determined that there were two abstentions and that the count of 56, not of 58, was correct.
The Socialist Equality Party didn’t even get on the ballot in Colorado this year.
S&L didn’t break 10000 last time. No way they get even close to 30000 tiis year. Stalinists like them have very little appeal outisde of the miniscule Marxist-Leninist milieu in the US. And that is an outight lie abpt the Peace and Freedom Party not starting out as a socialist party, Look at the 68 and 72 Presidential campaign platforms and material.
It’s interestig that the Stalinists are quickly spinning their story. The tragedy is that the Peace and Freedom Party probably will not survbive this take over by a small Stalinist sectlette. But honestly, the P&FP hasn’t dome much beyond fight off Leninist take over attempts for the last couple decades.
Thanks Dave we appreciate your attention to accuracy. Can you confirm the fact there was only one vote ?
Bernie Sanders has been really bad for socialist parties.
Jeremy maybe Socialist Equality decided they didn’t have the resources to mount a credible campaign in Colorado and decided the detrimental effect of proforma campaign out weighed any benefit. SEP’s efforts this year appear to be focused in the Midwest and Rust Belt States. That seems a solid strategy to me. A smart campaign run properly should be able to garner 100,000 Votes even running as a Write-in Candidate in a handful of States. When people get angry enough to hit the Activation Point the “Scare-the-Hell-out-of-Them” Vote will explode. The organization best positions itself to exploit this opening will get a big jump on the other players.
Can someone give me the Cliff Notes version of what the difference is between these various socialist third parties?
Clay how can Sanders be bad for Socialists ? Sanders is a Capitalist that masquerades as a Socialist who showed his colors when he went running home to the Democrat Party. Truth be known Sanders pledged his allegiance to the Democrats (a Capitalist Party) at the very outset of the proceedings. 129 Million People voted in 2012 that leaves 60% who chose to remain disengaged. One third of that total would be sufficient to put any party in the thick of the fight assuming no one leaves the Dominant Parties. While a great deal could transpire over the next few months right now it looks like the Republican Party is set to meltdown. The Money is already in the process of jumping ship and the Old Line Business Republicans are having a difficult time containing their anger for Trump.
Michigan Voter
Let me first start by saying you are asking for what is damn near close to impossible to explain in any concise form in a brief manner. Nearly all of the Socialist “Parties” today are not Political Parties in the strictest sense of the word. They are organizations. Only a couple of states have Socialist Parties that are ballot qualified. Richard would know that stuff off the top of his head. As I recall the last Socialist Party to get qualified in any State was 4 or 5 years ago in Delaware. I haven’t followed it so it is highly likely they fell off. Groups like Peace and Freedom Party in California are Socialist Parties that work as an Umbrella Group allowing other groups to run on their ticket. Workers World has the longest Association with them. PSL relations with P&FP. PF&P has run Capitalist Candidates like Ralph Nader in 2008 and Rosanne Barr in 2012. Gloria LaRiva is with PSL now.
Again it is best if you take this as a challenge to educate yourself. It doesn’t take much time and effort to look up the Wikipedia Pages on these groups. And I’m not say that Wikipedia is the last word much less an absolute authority on such topics. Anyone can edit a Wikipedia Page and several 3 Letter US Government organizations have been caught doing so. But at least it will give you some information and if you read them with a healthy sense of distrust you can glean solid information.
Mapping out Left Groups here is not possible. It is just too complex. The number of splits is mind boggling. Socialist Groups can be lumped into to categories Multi-Tendency Groups which combine Marxist Economic Analysis with Identity Politics and those which are strict Socialists focusing on economics from a Class Perspective and Anti-Imperialism. Nearly all Socialist Groups these days are Multi-Tendency including the Marxist-Lennist that give our friend Deran the Cha-Chas. Included in that group is
Socialist Party USA
Workers World Party
Party for Socialism and Liberation (which split from WWP 10 years ago)
Freedom Socialist
International Socialist Organization
Democrat Socialist of America
BTW ISO and DSA can be considered minimal Socialist. They are sects that believes the Democrat Party (Capitalist) can be turned into a Socialist Party. This idea had a great deal of currency in the 1940s through the 1970s but faded after that. The idea came to a formal end in 1992 when Clinton brought in the last sector of Big Business into the Democrat Party in the form of the DLC (Democrat Leadership Council) and booted out the last remnants of Citizen Activism out of the Democrat Party. Some elements of citizen groups hang on to the Democrat Party like a facade from a Hollywood Movie set but are totally ineffective at instituting any type of policy change that benefits the general welfare of the citizenry.
In the second Group of Strict Socialist are two
The Socialist Workers Party
The Socialist Equality Party (which split from the SWP)
The SWP can be considered among the oldest if not the oldest Socialist Party in the US. But they are battered and tattered from numerous splits. They were also subjected to numerous infiltration and neutralization attempts by the FBI during the height of the Cointelpro Era.
SEP split from SWP in 1966 but did not formal reenter Electoral Politics until 2008. They take a strict economic line and decry the Identity Politics that has pervaded the Popular Left over the last 35 Years.
Again this is only a thumb nail sketch and far from comprehensive.
BTW I deliberately left out Socialist Alternative from my synopsis. Those clods are the epitome of an opportunistic charlatan. There isn’t a lick of Class Analysis in anything they have written that I have read.
Thank you Bob for your effort. I read every word and have a better understanding now.
“SEP split from SWP in 1966 but did not formal reenter Electoral Politics until 2008”
SEP ran some candidates as the Workers League Party before the mid-90s, IIRC. Then they changed from WL to SEP around 96.
Socialist Action also nominated a Presidential candidate this year, and that candidate has qualified for 0 ballots last I recall. SA came from the SWP too and has only really ran one candidate in a partisan election but several in nonpartisan municipal elections.
No way Jerry White and the SEP get 100K. They will be lucky if they get 1K. They got 1200 in 2012 by being on 3 state ballots. They missed all 3. Write-ins alone will not get anyone in Jerry White’s position to 100K.
BH right you are about SEP. Back in those days they were sticking their toe in the water. The economy was going great guns so people were not receptive to their message. They went into a period of retrenchment. SEP’s news website is by far the best out there. wsws.org They publish some of the deepest and arguably best political-economic analysis out there. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking Socialist Analysis. For a while in the Late 90s and early 2000s SEP was dabbling with the all to prevalent idea of trying to siphon off Democrats from the Party Structure. They seemed to have abandoned that tactic.
I forgot about Socialist Action. They only have operations in a few states and from what I have seen everything revolves around Jeff Mackler.
There was an SWP Faction, an off shoot of Solidarity, that was involved in the early days of the Green Party. They were national in scope but heavily centered on the West Coast when the California Green Party gained Ballot Status in 1992. The Stoner Contingent drove most of those adherents out of the Green Party in the early 2000s. It’s amusing to watch those guys kiss Howie Hawkins feet as everyone scrambles to prove and reaffirm their Socialist Credentials now that the Masses have turned off to Capitalism. Twenty years ago they were plunging knives into Hawkins back. My my how the worm has turned
Congratulations to the PSL and PFP. The PSL ticket was definitely the best option for the PFP this year, because they will be on the ballot in more states than any other left-wing third party besides the Greens.
In 2008 Jerry White ran as a write-in candidate. He received 54 votes. Not seeking ballot access tells me, and most voters, that you’re not serious.
This is sad news, and a backward step, for the Peace and Freedom Party. P&F is the largest, mass socialist party in the U.S. with more than 70,000 registered members in California. But after years of running its own candidates, the P&F leadership dropped the ball and allowed itself to be taken over by a small sect. Apparently, PSL militants don’t have the ability to put their party on the ballot, but must pack P&F’s state committee in order to get its candidate before the voters.
This has happened at the worse time since third parties have a real chance to make a breakthrough this year in view of the disdain a majority of voters have for Trump and Clinton. Peace and Freedom leaders, and the egotism of so-called leaders of tiny left sects and cults, are doing a disservice to the greater need of shattering the two-party monopoly in this country. While many ultra-leftists don’t like Jill Stein, helping her win millions of votes could begin a restructuring of the American political scene. Such an opening of the political space could benefit working class families much more than seizing a temporary victory by taking over P&F by dubious means.
Jeremy, additionally, many states require write-ins to register for their votes to be counted. Jerry White shows no sign of even attempting to do that, so I’m guessing he will get around 54 votes this time too.
Jim, am I to understand that you dislike the “radical” element of PSL? As noted above, P&F nominated Roseanne in 2012. She was certainly a “mass” candidate but I did not see her as having a comprehensive political agenda.
The top Donkey folks have been nonstop socialist/communist since 1932. It shows.
Undeclared wars, national bankruptcy, insane annual deficits, dying cities and older suburbs, etc. etc.
Jeremy Siple : “Not seeking ballot access tells me, and most voters, that you’re not serious.”
No Jeremy what it tells them is the Party doesn’t have the money to conduct a petition campaign in that state.
Jim Smith :”While many ultra-leftists don’t like Jill Stein, helping her win millions of votes could begin a restructuring of the American political scene.”
Any in California that wants to vote for Jill Stein can, including Peace and Freedom Party Members. All they do is move their pencil to the Green Party Line and fill in the blank next to Jill Stein’s name.
With the way things go for had they won the P&F line and qualified for Federal Funds by 100,000 votes some Democrat somewhere would challenge the results and keep the matter tied up in court for years based upon the 70,000 votes P&F threw into the pot.
Typical Daffy Greens. Do they ever think about this stuff before they go into action ? It must be too many of the little cigarettes.
“No Jeremy what it tells them is the Party doesn’t have the money to conduct a petition campaign in that state.”
No petition necessary in Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, or Mississippi.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/04/loui-a04.html
The most illuminating part of that link was in the comment section:
“Campaigners might have fulfilled the requirements for ballot access, but the candidates do not. Unfortunately the VP candidate does not meet the age requirement, which will provide the election board the opportunity of excluding the party from being on the ballot. Why was this not taken into consideration?
I realise the purpose of the campaign is not to actually achieve the White House and change things from within, but to raise socialist class consciousness among the working class and to build the party. However, there are plenty of other very astute and qualified members of the party whose age would not provide the automatic exclusion. Previous years’ elections campaigns have proven very valuable in pointing up the incredibly undemocratic process involved in maintaining the capitalists’ grip on power. When the candidates are inevitably disqualified, there is not, as in previous years, a legal leg to stand on to launch a fight. Why is this?”
Cal :”However, there are plenty of other very astute and qualified members of the party whose age would not provide the automatic exclusion”
There are ? ? ? At our monthly County Central Committee Meeting I am the Baby of the group at 59. Our average is is 68 and holding steady because one member dies off every year which pulls a bunch of years out of the pot. In my section of the county where PSL has been active there are a few active members in their 20s but they aren’t interested in traveling to the other side of the county for a meeting.
This type of demographic distribution is all to common among Socialist Groups. There is a Huuuuge hole in the 30 to 40 age range.
With this nomination Gloria gets the Hat Trick in P&F. President and Vice President of the US as well as Governor and US Senate for California.
If you can find them Cal point them out to me…..We need them bad.
Richard, as you predicted, Gloria is well over 50,000 and will end up closer to 70,000 once all the votes are counted nationwide. In fact, she received over 60,000 in California alone (which I believe is the second highest for any PFP presidential candidate in history, after Nader).
You’re right that it’s the highest of any socialist or communist presidential candidate since the SWP in 1976. The CPUSA never crossed 60,000 after 1936. Pretty impressive!