25,000 votes for socialism in "teabagger" ohio

[Hannah Bell]

Socialist Dan La Botz Surpasses 25,000 Votes in Ohio

The Socialist Party’s Dan La Botz has surpassed the 25,000-vote mark in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race. With all but fourteen of Ohio’s 9,910 precincts reporting, the former history and Latin American studies professor and ex-journalist is unofficially garnering 25,311 votes.

La Botz is the first member of the Socialist Party to actively campaign for the U.S. Senate in Ohio since 1940 when Socialists in that state waged a forlorn write-in campaign for the party’s presidential candidate Norman Thomas. Ohio Socialists also conducted a write-in campaign that year for the party’s statewide ticket headed by gubernatorial candidate Paul Jones, a longtime pacifist who had been removed as the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Utah more than two decades earlier due to his opposition to World War I.

The 65-year-old La Botz, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate on the Socialist Party ticket in 2012, campaigned vigorously against corporate domination of American politics in his uphill struggle against Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Lee Fisher.

Working people make the country run and working people should run the country, declared the good-natured La Botz throughout the campaign.

In a message to his supporters posted yesterday on Facebook, La Botz said that he was humbled and encouraged by the outcome. “We got 25,000 votes for socialism in Ohio,” he wrote.

http://www.uncoveredpolitics.com/2010/11/socialist-dan-la-botz-surpasses-25000-votes-in-ohio/

[southmost]

1. I have always wondered how Vermont voted for a socialist senator

Is he listed as an independent on the ballot or democrat or socialist ?

for example, Ron Paul claims he is a libertarian, but he makes sure he is a republican on the ballot,

[dsc]

9. He won his house race as a Socialist

in a three way race. After that, he caucused with the Dems and never had a Dem challenger. He switched to independent before he ran for Senate but I don't know when. Since Vermont is a one Congressional district state it wasn't an issue of not being able to be voted in state wide as a socialist.

[Howler]

11. He was listed as a socialist on the ballot.

He was running against the Dem Fisher and the repuk Portman for senator.
i was very interested in the numbers for this candidate.
I wonder what the numbers will be after the absentee ballots are counted.
When are the absentee ballots counted?

[Scuba]

2. Or as Shane Johnson so elequently put it.....

"If folks like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh make their careers off of using the word socialism as a slur, how bad could it be?" asks 35-year-old Shane Johnson of Corryville, a union electrician who helped revive Cincinnati's International Socialist Organization chapter this year, which has about a dozen members.

[Hannah Bell]

3. good point. if limbaugh badmouths it, i'm for it. that vile bit of slime never had a decent

impulse in his life.

i pity his wife. the thought of being naked with that disgusting corrupt flesh is grotesque.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[jpgray]

6. So which countries are currently socialist, in your view?

Just for fun. :)

[Hannah Bell]

7. he's dead. he was too ignorant to live.

[David__77]

8. I think socialists should campaign within the Democratic Party.

I know that some already do. I want a socialist society, certainly. But the Democratic Party is my home, and third party efforts are complete nonsense. The existing Democratic factions don't even bother to run candidates in so many races. In South Dakota, there wasn't even a Democratic candidate for US senate! A socialist could have run as a Democrat...

[xchrom]

10. little bit by little bit -- thats very encouraging

consindering it's ohio.

[Starry Messenger]

12. k&r

I saw this too. People aren't playing around anymore.

[socialist_n_TN]

13. Encouraging. And that's good messaging............

by that Cincinnati unionist. If Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't like it, there's got to be something there. Yeah, I LIKE that.

In fact, I think that in the South where I am, a socialist message (even if it's not CALLED socialist) is the ONLY way to split off enough of the average working class to EVENTUALLY make a difference. But it's got to be STRICTLY economically based. Just ignore the ruling classes wedge issues and POUND the economic ones. It'll still take a generation or more, but it's the only way, IMO.