New Left Electoral Politics

NEW LEFT ELECTORAL POLITICS. In the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, New Left radicals across the United States moved to take political control of their local communities and, in doing so, radically changed and democratized them. They won office as city councilors, mayors, county commissioners, state representatives, state senators, and even US Senator. Initially, some of their electoral activity found expression in radical third parties, such as the California Peace and Freedom Party, the Michigan Human Rights Party, the Vermont Liberty Union (out of which emerged democratic-socialist Senator Bernie Sanders) and the Vermont Progressive Party, or the People’s Party. Ultimately, however, in Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Madison, and elsewhere, most of the Electoral New Left, such as SDS president Tom Hayden who was elected to office in California, found a home in the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Many of these radical third parties became loosely allied under the national umbrella of the People’s Party. The California Peace and Freedom Party, itself organized by civil rights and antiwar activists in 1967, issued the call for the establishment of a national third party, the People’s Party, in 1971. Thirty-five parties from twenty-five states and the District of Columbia answered the call. The most prominent, besides the Peace and Freedom Party, were the Michigan Human Rights Party, the DC Statehood Party, and the Vermont Liberty Union. That founding convention nominated Dr Benjamin Spock for president in 1972 and Julius Hobson, a Black educator active in the DC Statehood Party, for vice president. The allied parties pledged to put the Spock-Hobson ticket on the ballot back in their home states. Ten affiliated parties did so. In 1976 the People’s Party nominated Margaret Wright, a Black educational activist from Los Angeles, as its presidential candidate, and Dr. Spock as its vice-presidential candidate.

The Electoral New Left was more successful in electing candidates to local office. Berkeley, California, was one such place. Throughout the 1960s, Berkeley was controlled by business-allied Republicans, which made it a hotbed of conflict with local Leftists for the entire decade. The transformation of Berkeley’s municipal politics began in 1967 when Yippie co-founder Jerry Rubin ran for mayor against the Republican incumbent. Rubin lost, but Ron Dellums won election to the city council as the council’s lone Leftist voice. The local Left eventually sent him to the US House of Representatives as the representative for the East Bay area. Meanwhile, over the years, the local movement transformed Berkeley into a stronghold of Leftist office holders.

A similar transformation took place in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is the capital and largest city in Vermont. For most of its existence, Vermont was a solidly Republican state, but Chamber of Commerce-oriented Democrats controlled Burlington. In 1971 Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders moved to the city and became active in the Liberty Union, the state’s People’s Party-affiliated third party. In 1972 the Liberty Union ran him as its candidate for the US Senate, for which Sanders received about 2 percent of the vote. The Liberty Union ran him again for the Senate in 1974, as well as twice for governor. He never received more than 6 percent of the vote in these campaigns. Meanwhile, Sanders chaired the Liberty Union from 1975-1976.

In 1981, Sanders decided to challenge the incumbent Democratic mayor of Burlington as an independent socialist. In a three-way race, Sanders won election to the mayor’s office over the Republican candidate and the Democratic incumbent by ten votes. He thereafter won re-election several times, bringing ideological allies along with him to the city council. Sanders and his allies eventually transformed the politics of Burlington and, by the time he left the mayor’s office in 1989, a similar Left Progressive replaced him. Meanwhile, his allies on the council formed the Progressive Party as a third party and began electing candidates to both houses of the Vermont state legislature. In 1990 Sanders won election to Vermont’s sole US House of Representatives seat as an independent socialist. In 1996 Sanders moved up to the US Senate. In 2016 and 2020 Sanders ran strong campaigns for the presidential nomination in the Democratic Party’s primaries, but he remained an independent socialist and held on to his Senate seat.

New Leftists also transformed the politics of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In the 1950s, as in Berkeley, Republicans held every elected position in the city, dominating City Hall and the city council. By 2006, the Republican Party had disappeared from Ann Arbor. The mayor and the entire city council were all Left Democrats. The transformation began in 1972 when the Human Rights Party, a socialist third party, elected two members to the city council. In 1974 the Human Rights Party elected a third candidate to the city council, Kathy Kozachenko, the first person in US history to run for any office as an openly gay person. That same year, the Human Rights Party elected two of its candidates to the city council in Ypsilanti.

New Left politicians also transformed the politics of Santa Cruz, California, beginning in 1979 when SDS veteran Mike Rotkin and Bruce Van Allen, both members of the New American Movement, won election to the city council. Meanwhile, other New Left veterans were winning office in places like Urbana, Illinois; Madison, Wisconsin; Boston, Massachusetts; and Los Angeles, where Tom Hayden won office to both the State Assembly and, later, the State Senate.

The New American Movement, to which Mike Rotkin and Bruce Van Allen belonged, merged with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in 1982 to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). DSA went on to elect many members to local office, such as Jeff Epton to the Ann Arbor City Council in 1983. Reinvigorated by the 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, DSA has since elected many of its members or endorsed candidates to local, state, and even congressional office around the country. Sander’s own electoral offspring, Our Revolution, also helped to secure many offices across the governmental spectrum. At the Congressional level, the election to Congress of four women of color, all democratic socialists, marked a significant development in 2018. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Olhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, collectively known as “The Squad,” caucused as the Left wing of the Democratic Party, supporting such measures as Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal. Such office holders are an enduring legacy of New Left electoral politics of the 1960s and 1970s.

Davin, Eric Leif. Radicals in Power: The New Left Experience in Office. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012.