OAKLAND, Calif. — Margaret Trowe, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of California, was informed March 21 that she will be on the ballot this June. Supporters of the campaign collected well over the 65 signatures of registered voters required and raised close to $5,000 to pay the filing fee.
In addition, they collected another $3,000 needed to get a statement by Trowe into the Voters Guide, which will go out to every registered voter in the state.
“Working people see the war in the Middle East, high prices at the grocery store and all the attacks on our wages and job conditions and are looking for answers,” Trowe told the Militant. “We explain that the only way forward is to organize the power of the working class. To stop the wars and to end the threat of another world war, workers need to take power out of the hands of the war makers.”
Trowe is a hotel worker and member of UNITE HERE. She’s using her campaign to build solidarity with union struggles. Socialist Workers Party campaigners traveled to California’s agricultural Central Valley March 18 to join a rally of the United Farm Workers union protesting a new attack by the bosses and their government on the wages of farmworkers who have H-2A immigrant visas, which allow them to work in the U.S., but with few rights.
Trowe is spreading the word about the fight of Miguel Lopez to return to this country after he was deported to Mexico just hours before a judge issued an order barring his expulsion. “The unions need to support the fight to defend immigrant workers, as they did in the fight to bring Kilmar Ábrego García back from deportation to El Salvador,” Trowe told supporters of Lopez as they rallied March 17.
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UNION CITY, N.J. — The fight to put the Socialist Workers Party candidates on the ballot in New Jersey — Joanne Kuniansky for U.S. Senate and Craig Honts for Congress in District 8 — kicks off March 28. A rally that evening will launch the campaign, featuring the two candidates and Paul Mailhot, the SWP candidate for governor of New York.
The Democratic Party led a move last year to increase petitioning requirements to try to make it more difficult for working-class candidates to run.
SWP campaigners will fan out across the state through April 26 to introduce the party’s program and activities to working people and collect 3,200 signatures for Kuniansky, well above the 2,000 required. They’ll also gather 400 for Honts in his district, above the 250 that’s needed.
“Today there’s more interest among workers in a party that stands up to the assaults we increasingly face on jobs, wages and basic freedoms, and that opposes the U.S. rulers’ wars abroad,” Kuniansky told the Militant. “Workers are excited to find out their choices are not restricted to the bosses’ parties, and there is a party that says the working class can fight to defend our own class interests and take political power into our own hands.”
“The petitioning drive will be an opportunity to extend the party’s reach to cities, small towns and rural areas all across the state,” Honts added. “We’re asking people who like what they hear to introduce the campaign to their co-workers, friends and family — and to join in putting the SWP on the ballot.”
The SWP has been on the ballot in New Jersey since 1948.