Militant/Marty Ressler

Jay Ressler (center), Socialist Workers Party candidate for Pittsburgh mayor, at July 20 press conference after filing petitions for ballot status with board of elections.

Mark Wolosik, division manager with the county board of elections, confirmed this in a phone interview with the Militant. “We have accepted [Ressler’s] paperwork for filing,” he said. Asked if this meant other candidates for office in the county could also attain ballot status without signing the loyalty oath, Wolosik said, “I’d have to double-check that with my law department, but I would think they could, if we did it in this case.”

“This is a major victory over an attempt to bring back legislation that’s a danger to the political rights of every working person, unionist, and defender of free speech,” said Ressler. “We’ve struck a blow today in defense of workers fighting to defend union rights as well as those advocating changes in government.”

Ressler, 57, is a coal miner at the Madison Mine in Cambria County, east of Pittsburgh. The socialist candidate gave the board of elections a letter from constitutional rights attorney Eric Lieberman, of the New York law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, who is representing the SWP in this case. The loyalty oath requirement “is clearly unconstitutional under the [1974] decision of the United States Supreme Court in Communist Party of Indiana v. Whitcomb,” the letter said. “In 1975, the State Attorney General issued a formal opinion stating that, on the basis of the Whitcomb case, the loyalty oath for State employees, which is identical to the Candidate’s Affidavit, is unconstitutional and should not be enforced.” Lieberman explained that Larry Boyle, counsel for the Pennsylvania Bureau of Elections Commissions had acknowledged these facts and advised that Ressler should cross out the “loyalty provision” in his affidavit.

Brian McDonald, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State in Harrisburg, told the Militant that after being contacted by the SWP’s attorney, state officials discussed the loyalty oath matter with Allegheny County officials. Because the seat Ressler is running for is a local one, and not statewide, McDonald said, “Ultimately, it’s the county’s call, not ours. It would be our call if he was running for a state office.” McDonald declined to say whether a candidate for state office who refused to sign the loyalty oath would be eligible for ballot status. “The code states what it states,” he said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

At a press conference today outside the local election board offices, the Socialist Workers Party also announced the nomination of two additional candidates in the November elections: Cynthia Jaquith, 58, a meat packer who is running for Pittsburgh city council; and Ryan Scott, 22, a coal miner running for county council. Scott, a member of the Young Socialists, is a part of organizing activities in Pittsburgh to send a delegation of young people to the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in August in Caracas, Venezuela.

Ressler gave the press a statement signed by nine coal miners at Consol Energy’s 84 mine, who protested the “anti-subversive” pledge as “designed to intimidate and deter union fighters, activists for social justice, and others from participating in politics.” The miners are members of United Mine Workers of America Local 1197. One of them is Brian Taylor, the 2005 SWP campaign director in Pittsburgh.

“I am proud of you and I understand why you didn’t sign the loyalty oath,” Jamie Hebb told Ressler after hearing the news. Hebb is a former coworker of Ressler at High Quality, a UMWA-organized coal mine, who now works in a mine in Maryland.

After reviewing the SWP petitions for over an hour, board of elections workers said they stopped counting at 1,776 signatures, well above the required 1,041. Ballot petitions may be challenged until August 11, they added.

After filing, Ressler was interviewed by reporters from WDUQ, the local National Public Radio affiliate; the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, one of Pittsburgh’s two dailies; WAMO Radio, a station oriented to the Black community; and WQV Radio. The WDUQ reporter asked Ressler if his opponents in the mayor’s race might use his refusal to sign the loyalty oath against him. “Well, they may,” Ressler replied, “but then they’ll be going up against strong opposition by working people to thought-control measures of this kind.”

The same reporter asked whether it was worth running a socialist campaign “when the Democrats pretty much have the election sewn up already.” Ressler said it was. “Working people face an unrelenting offensive by the employers,” he said. “Driven by the need to reverse declining profit rates, the bosses are intensifying speedup, lengthening work hours, throwing job safety to the wind, cutting pensions and health-care coverage, probing to undermine Social Security, and seeking to break down solidarity among working people.

“The SWP supports workers’ struggles to organize trade unions and mobilize union power to defend working people from assaults by the employers and their twin parties of capitalism—the Democrats and Republicans. We call for a labor party based on the unions that fights in the interests of working people.

“There are no ‘Pittsburgh solutions’ to the deepening economic and social crises,” Ressler continued. “The wars Washington and its allies are fighting abroad—from Iraq to Afghanistan to others they are preparing against Iran and north Korea—are an extension of assaults at home against the living standards and job conditions of workers and farmers. We call for Washington to withdraw all its troops from these countries—now!”

Among those who joined the SWP candidate in filing was Devin Gorney, 17, a restaurant worker. “The loyalty oath was proven unconstitutional 30 years ago,” Gorney said. “It was bad enough when it was first introduced and it’s disgraceful that they’ve brought it back again. I hope the SWP campaign will bring some attention to this and we get a lot of support.”

Gorney was part of a group of young people in Pittsburgh who traveled to New York the weekend of July 16-17 to help campaign for the SWP slate in New York, headed by mayoral candidate Martín Koppel. In Pittsburgh the week before, Maura DeLuca, who recently joined the Young Socialists, and Chris Sang, a University of Pittsburgh student, participated in a campaign team for Ressler at a street festival in East Liberty, a largely Black working-class district, where the SWP campaign office is located.

Joel Britton and Cindy Jaquith contributed to this article
 
 
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