Author: Scotty Hendricks / Source: Big Think
- While America seems like a haven for capitalists, socialism has a long and often successful electoral history here.
- Milwaukee had socialist mayors until 1960.
- Today’s resurgence of interest in socialism has nothing on the red tide of 1912.
Socialist candidates are cropping up all over the country.
In Texas, they are being elected to judgeships. Two of them serve in Congress, and another one works in the Senate. Chicago has a Socialist alderman and the city council of Sommerville, Massachusetts is controlled by an alliance of left-wing members.While it may seem like reds are all around us, this isn’t anything new or even all that impressive. After all, there was a time when a Socialist got 6% of the vote for president, and more than 1000 of his comrades held elected office all over the country.
1912: A red dawn?
About 100 years ago, Socialist candidates were doing rather well all over the United States. None were more visible than Eugene Debs, the perennial candidate and labor organizer.
Debs helped to found the American Railway Union and the Industrial Workers of the World. He saw unionization as every bit as important, if not more important, than political work in improving the lives of the working class. His excellent speaking ability and national fame after leading the Pullman Strike made him a natural choice for a presidential candidate. He ended up running five times.
In the 1912 election he got nearly a million votes, which was roughly 6% of all votes cast. This was more than double what he got just four years before and prompted some to foresee a Socialist president in a mere eight years. They would have to settle with about the same number of votes in 1920, though this represented only 3.4% of the vote in that election.
While he ran for president repeatedly and once for Congress, he was only ever elected to be a clerk in Terre Haute and once served in the Indiana General Assembly. Despite this, he has remained an icon of the American left. Bernie Sanders kept a portrait of him in his Burlington office when he was mayor.
Deb’s vice presidential candidate in 1912, Emil Seidel, was the mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which also had a majority of Socialists on the city council and county board. A conservative “sewer” Socialist, his administration focused on an active and effective government rather than the overthrow of capitalism. His administration created a public works department, the city park system, and closed down many casinos and brothels. He hired a young Carl Sandburg to be his secretary.
Milwaukee would have two more Socialist mayors governing for a combined 38 of the first 60 years of the 20th century. It remains the only major American city to elect a socialist to its highest office. That was just one elected official though; in 1912, more than 1000 Socialists were elected to offices all over the country, including aldermanic, mayoral, legislative, and administrative offices.
This would be the high-water mark for the Socialist Party, however. Later attempts to reach the heights of the 1910s fell short. An attempt to create a coalition party with progressives and populists did well in 1924 and then collapsed. Norman Thomas worked as hard as he could to nab just 2.2…
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