Commentary
As the Democratic Party moves ever further to the left, it has become normal to see communists and socialists running for office on the party’s ballot line.
Usually, Marxists run for county commissions, school boards, state legislatures, and Congress. Now they are starting to run even for the U.S. Senate in 2020.
Sema Hernandez is standing in the U.S. Senate Texas Democratic primary to hopefully take on incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in 2020.
Hernandez, a health care worker, is an activist with the Poor People’s Campaign. She is also a member of both Houston Democratic Socialists of America and the Houston branch of the Communist Party USA.
Hernandez stood in the Democratic primary in 2018 against Beto O’Rourke and earned a respectable 250,000 votes—probably the best in recent times for a Communist Party comrade in Texas.
It’s still
technically illegal to stand for public office as a communist in Texas—but it’s apparently OK for a communist to stand for office as long as they call themselves a Democrat.
Yana Ludwig is the only Democrat so far declared in the primary to stand for an open U.S. Senate seat in overwhelmingly Republican Wyoming.
Both she and her husband, Matt Stannard, the former debate coach at the University of Wyoming, are active in SE Wyoming Democratic Socialists of America.
A Laramie resident, Ludwig has been active in the “gay” and “feminist” movements since the early 1990s, according to her
campaign website. She has participated in numerous women’s marches, “peace” protests, and many “ecological activist actions,” including the People’s Climate March in New York City in 2014.
Ludwig has also been the director of numerous nonprofits, including Project Grow Community Gardens, Recycling Jackson, and the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture.
It’s hard work being a socialist in Wyoming and almost impossible to win statewide office as a Democrat—let alone as an open Marxist.
Betsy Sweet is standing in the Maine Democratic Senate primary in the hope of challenging left-wing Republican incumbent Susan Collins in 2020.
Sweet
said that “a women’s right to choose, health care for all, and climate change” are the main reasons why she decided to challenge Collins.
Sweet lost the Democratic primary for governor in 2018, even though she had the endorsement and active support of the Southern Maine Democratic Socialists of America.
Sweet is a former director of the Maine Women’s Lobby and the Maine Commission for Women.
In the early 1980s, she represented the far-left Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom on the Communist Party USA-controlled
U.S. Peace Council—an affiliate of the Soviet-controlled World Peace Council.
Paula Jean Swearengin is standing in the West Virginia Democratic Senate primary to hopefully challenge incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito in 2020.
In the 2018 primary, she unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
Swearengin was
formerly active with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the Keepers of the Mountain Foundation. She has addressed the United Nations and spoken at rallies and colleges across the country on environmental issues.
An early Bernie Sanders supporter, Swearengin attended the DSA-run Chicago People’s Summit in 2017. She was also the subject of a documentary alongside DSA and Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DSA Nevada congressional candidate
Amy Vilela, and DSA and Communist Party USA-affiliated Missouri congressional candidate
Cori Bush.
Swearengin was also supported in 2018 by far-left Justice Democrats and DSA-influenced
Brand New Congress.
Cristina Tzintzun is, like Hernandez, standing in the U.S. Senate Texas Democratic primary to hopefully take on Cornyn in 2020. Of all the candidates profiled in this article, she is by far the one most likely to succeed.
Tzintzun founded and ran the Austin-based Workers Defense Project, a leftist immigrants’ rights group in the orbit of the Maoist-leaning pro-China group Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).
In 2013–14, Tzintzun spent a year studying with the FRSO-affiliated
Rockwood Leadership Institute, an Oakland, California-based school for “community organizers.”
Tzintzun has worked closely with DSA activists in Austin, Texas, including Alice Embree, the Fetonte family, and the late Glenn Scott.
As the founder of Jolt Texas, Tzintzun organized the enrollment of thousands of new Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters across the state.
Bond is the co-author of “Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything.”
Malitz, a DSA affiliate, will serve as a senior adviser on the Tzintzun senate campaign. Goldman, lately a leader of the Communist Party USA-infiltrated
Texas Organizing Project, will serve as Tzintzun’s campaign chair.
The other Democrats in primary, and probably Cornyn, are in for a tough race.
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
