Peace and Freedom Presidential Nomination

By Dave Kadlecek

I have not yet decided which candidate I will support for President. All four of those under serious serious consideration have acceptable though imperfect politics. Given that, my main criteria in deciding who to support will be which candidate, if nominated, I believe would do the most to help build the Peace and Freedom Party.

The Candidates

There are four candidates under serious serious consideration: Stewart Alexander, Rocky Anderson, Stephen Durham and Peta Lindsay.

Stewart Alexander is the candidate of the Socialist Party USA, running on a ticket with Alex Mendoza. Alexander, who lives in Riverside County, was the Socialist Party's Vice-Presidential candidate in 2008 and the Peace and Freedom candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 2006.

Rocky Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, and an early public opponent of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the candidate of the Justice Party, a national party that he played a lead role in forming last year (and which is also seeking ballot status in California).

Stephen Durham is the candidate of the Freedom Socialist Party, running on a ticket with Christina López. Durham, who grew up in California, is now based in New York, and López, who grew up in Arizona, is now based in Seattle.

Peta Lindsay, a graduate student at USC, is the candidate of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, running on a ticket with Yari Osorio. The Secretary of State refused to put Peta Lindsay's name on the presidential primary ballot, probably because she is too young to hold the office of President if elected. It is likely that the Secretary of State would also refuse to put her name on the November ballot if we nominated her in August.

All four of these Presidential candidates have acceptable though imperfect politics. All four will be running for President throughout the country whether or not they are the Peace and Freedom Party nominee in California.

My Criteria

Given that all are acceptable politically, my main criterion in deciding who to support will be which candidate, if nominated, I believe would do the most to help build the Peace and Freedom Party. Except possibly to break a tie, I won't be considering which candidate has political positions closest to my own.

I see three ways in which these national presidential campaigns can help build the Peace and Freedom Party: improving the general political climate, building recognition of the party directly through their own Presidential campaigns, and providing material support to the party organization and its local candidates.

The implementation of Proposition 14, the "top two primary", means that most of the Peace and Freedom Party candidates running in June will not make it to the November general election, even if they receive the most votes of any P&F candidate for the office they seek. Additionally, Proposition 14's implementation also made it much more difficult for P&F candidates even to run in June (by changing the applicable rules on signatures in lieu of filing fee), so we have many fewer candidates running. In Santa Clara County, there are no local P&F candidates except for Central Committees, and the party's endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, Marsha Feinland of Berkeley, is unlikely to appear on the general election ballot. Similarly, in the rest of the Bay Area, the only local P&F candidates on the November ballot will be Gene Ruyle in the 15th Assembly District and probably Mary McIlroy in the 9th State Senate District (both are write-in candidates for seats in northern Alameda and western Contra Costa counties where only one candidate qualified to appear on the June ballot). I'll look at how the presidential candidates could help their campaigns, but also at how the presidential candidates can help build the Peace and Freedom Party's organization in areas where the party has no local candidates on the ballot. In addition to our own county, these include San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin, the southern parts of Alameda, the eastern parts of Contra Costa counties within the Bay Area, and the north Coast, the Central Valley and most of Southern California.

I will be evaluating how well the prospective Presidential candidates can help build Peace and Freedom based both on the commitments they make in seeking our party's nomination and on their ongoing campaign activities.