Some 2007 Election Results

Since someone mentioned the Labor Party in a comment, I thought I'd try to write something about that organisation, their electoral ambitions in South Carolina, and socialist perspectives on them. That's still in the works, but in the meantime I thought I'd share some socialist electoral results from the November 6 election.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was most interested in Matt Geary's campaign for At-Large Boston City Council, since it seemed like one of the most well-rounded socialist campaigns this cycle (odd numbered years always being a bit low on socialist participation). Out of nine candidates running for four at-large seats in an officially non-partisan election, Matt came in 7th with 3,025 votes (about 2.4%). Not a bad run for Socialist Alternative's first candidate.

The Socialist Workers Party has a tradition of standing the most candidates for elections (which makes this the only real time you see or hear from them, except when they're selling books at demonstrations), and they seem to have held up this tradition this year as well. SWP election results I've found are as follows: in Des Moines Iowa, mayoral candidate Diana Newberry came in second out of two with around 20% of the vote (don't know about the count.) In Houston Texas, mayoral candidate Amanda Ullman came in second out of three with around 7.% of the vote (again, don't have the vote count.) In Massachusetts, William Estrada ran for At Large Boston City Council (same race as Matt Geary) and came in 8th out of nine with 2,432 votes (1.94%.) In New Jersey, 29th District State Senate candidate Sara Lobman came in 6th out of 6 with 95 votes (0.5%), and 29th District State Assembly candidate came in 8th out of 10 (with the top two vote-getters being elected) with 233 votes (0.8%.) Except for the New Jersey races, all of these elections were officially non-partisan.

Finally, a race that I did not know about when I made my previous 2007 elections post. Silver Persinger ran for 9th District Virginia State Senate as an independent, though he joined the Socialist Party USA earlier this year. He came in 2nd out of 2 with 3,787 votes (18.3%.)

Now that that's over with, on to 2008, right? Probably, and since it's a presidential election year, I expect several socialist parties to run candidates on some level. So far, the Socialist Party has nominated its presidential ticket, Brian Moore and Stewart Alexander, and two SP-USA members have declared intent to run for congress in their districts. Hopefully these people will be joined by others who are interested in providing a radical, socialist alternative at the polls.