The following is a list of mayors who have declared themselves to be socialists or have been a member of a socialist party in the United States.
In 1911, one author estimated that there were twenty-eight such mayors [1] and in 1913 another author estimated thirty-four. [2] In 1967, however, James Weinstein's table of "Cities and Towns Electing Socialist Mayors or Other Major Municipal Officers, 1911–1920" counted 74 such municipalities in 1911 and 32 in 1913, with smaller peaks in 1915 (22) and 1917 (18): [3] : 116–118
Year | No. | Year | No. | Year | No. | Year | No. | Year | No. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1911 | 74 | 1913 | 32 | 1915 | 22 | 1917 | 18 | 1919 | 5 |
1912 | 8 | 1914 | 5 | 1916 | 6 | 1918 | 2 | 1920 | 2 |
Total | 82 | Total | 37 | Total | 28 | Total | 20 | Total | 7 |
In 1911, the SPA won election to about 1,141 local offices in total. [4]
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.
Emil Seidel was an American politician. Seidel was the mayor of Milwaukee from 1910 to 1912. The first Socialist mayor of a major city in the United States, Seidel became the vice presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America in the 1912 presidential election.
Frank Paul Zeidler was an American socialist politician and mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serving three terms from April 20, 1948, to April 18, 1960. Zeidler, a member of the Socialist Party of America, is the most recent Socialist Party candidate to be elected mayor of a large American city.
Daniel Webster Hoan was an American politician who served as the 32nd Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1916 to 1940. A lawyer who had served as Milwaukee City Attorney from 1910 to 1916, Hoan was a prominent figure in Socialist politics and Milwaukee's second Socialist mayor. His 24-year administration remains the longest continuous Socialist administration in United States history. A panel of 69 scholars in 1993 ranked him among the ten best mayors in American history.
Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side. Together with Eugene V. Debs and Congressman Victor L. Berger, Hillquit was one of the leading public faces of American socialism during the first two decades of the 20th century.
The history of the socialist movement in the United States spans a variety of tendencies, including anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, social democrats, Marxists, Marxist–Leninists, Trotskyists and utopian socialists. It began with utopian communities in the early 19th century such as the Shakers, the activist visionary Josiah Warren and intentional communities inspired by Charles Fourier. Labor activists, usually Jewish, German, or Finnish immigrants, founded the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1877. The Socialist Party of America was established in 1901. By that time, anarchism also rose to prominence around the country. Socialists of different tendencies were involved in early American labor organizations and struggles. These reached a high point in the Haymarket massacre in Chicago, which founded the International Workers' Day as the main labour holiday around the world, Labor Day and making the eight-hour day a worldwide objective by workers organizations and socialist parties worldwide.
Allan Louis Benson was an American newspaper editor and author who was the Socialist Party of America nominee for President of the United States in 1916. Known for his outspoken anti-war views, Benson and his running mate George Ross Kirkpatrick received 590,524 votes, 3.2% of the total vote in the election.
Sewer socialism refers to the American socialist movement that centered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from around 1892 to 1960. The moniker was coined by Morris Hillquit at the 1932 Milwaukee convention of the Socialist Party of America as a commentary on the Milwaukee socialists and their perpetual boasting about the excellent public sewer system in the city.
James J. Oneal, a founding member of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), was a prominent socialist journalist, historian, and party activist who played a decisive role in the bitter party splits of 1919–21 and 1934–36.
Labor Party was the name or partial name of a number of United States political parties which were organized during the 1870s and 1880s.
Frederic Faries Heath was an American socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897 and the Socialist Party of America in 1901. He was an elected official in Wisconsin for nearly half a century.
The Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin (SDPW) was established in 1897 as the Wisconsin state affiliate of the Chicago faction of the Social Democratic Party of America. When that organization merged in 1901 to form a political party known as the Socialist Party of America, the Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin became the state affiliate of that organization, retaining its original name. For most of its 75 years, the Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin was the state affiliate of the Socialist Party of America, established in 1901. The party was one of the largest state organizations which together comprised the Socialist Party of America.
Thomas John "Tommy" Morgan, Jr. was an English-born American labor leader and socialist political activist. Morgan is best remembered as one of the pioneer English-speaking Socialists in the city of Chicago and a frequent candidate for public office of the Socialist Party of America. Morgan was also one of the founders and leading figures of the United Labor Party, an Illinois political party which elected 7 of its members to the Illinois State Assembly and another to the Illinois State Senate in the election of 1886. He was married to Elizabeth Chambers Morgan.
John Calvin Chase (1870–1937) was an American trade union activist and politician.
The Socialist Labor Party (SLP) is a political party in the United States. It was established in 1876, and was the first socialist party formed in the country.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a big tent, democratic socialist political organization in the United States. After the Socialist Party of America (SPA) transformed into Social Democrats, USA, Michael Harrington formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC). The DSOC later merged with the New American Movement (NAM) to form the DSA. The organization is headquartered in New York City and has about 80,000 members. It leads organizing and protest campaigns, and has members in the House of Representatives, state legislatures, and other local offices.
Oscar Ameringer was a German-American Socialist editor, author, and organizer from the late 1890s until his death in 1943. Ameringer made a name for himself in the Socialist Party of Oklahoma as the editor of its newspaper and a prominent organizer for the party. His most famous work, The Life and Deeds of Uncle Sam, was a widely read satire of American history that sold over half a million copies and was translated into 15 languages. His wit as a speaker and writer and his reputation as being one of the grand old men of left-wing politics in the United States led to him being described as the "Mark Twain of American Socialism".
The Socialist Party of Missouri was the Missouri state section of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), an organization originally established in 1901 as a federation of semi-autonomous state organizations. The Missouri organization was the direct lineal descendant of the Social Democratic Party of Missouri, which emerged in 1898.
Ny Tid, initially known as Svenska Socialisten was a Scandinavian newspaper published in the United States between 1905 and July 1936. Initially issued from Rockford, Illinois, it later shifted to Chicago and New York City. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish languages were used in the newspaper. The circulation of the newspaper varied between 2,000-5,000 copies.
Table 2: "Cities and Towns Electing Socialist Mayors or Other Major Municipal Officers, 1911–1920"
For Strimling, though, the loss turned out to be liberating, allowing him to push for radical policy reforms from the grassroots up rather than the City Council down. No longer constrained by the dysfunctional city government, the ex-mayor threw in his lot with members of the local DSA branch and took his ideas about housing reform directly to the people.
But he was quick to portray his movement as an inclusive socialist one.
Only a handful of members, including self-described democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), criticized Goldman's payments and questioned whether the company also received additional government assistance through the Federal Reserve.
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