Dear friends,
We are excited to announce that Kshama Sawant is now on the ballot!
Since we launched Kshama’s independent socialist campaign last summer, we have talked to tens of thousands of working people in Congressional District 9 and won support from donors in all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico.
That support has translated into over 800 working people signing up to volunteer and $525,000 raised from over 4,500 donors, with a median donation of just $25. Working people around the country recognize the historic importance of this campaign. That’s why across Congressional District 9, and all the way from Hawaii to New York City, our supporters have organized in-person or Zoom house party fundraisers to help elect Kshama to Congress.
Strongest Ever Left/Progressive Challenge to Warmonger Adam Smith
We are proud to report that we have MORE THAN SEVEN TIMES as many donors as Adam Smith, whose campaign is being bankrolled by the ultra rich, the war industry, and the Zionist lobby. And our total so far in the primary election cycle is already more than twice the amount that any left or progressive challenger to Adam Smith has ever raised in their entire campaign.
Our campaign organized a highly successful contingent at Seattle’s May Day protest on Friday where we spoke about the need to FUND HEALTHCARE, NOT WAR! Kshama’s opponent, Adam Smith, has carried out the war-mongering, pro-billionaire agenda of the Democratic Party throughout his 29 years in Congress, and voted to fund every imperialist war, all the way from the war on Iraq to the genocide in Gaza. He voted to create ICE and repeatedly voted to fund it. He voted to break the railroad workers’ strike. In stark contrast, Kshama is fighting for free healthcare for all paid for by taxing the rich and for a permanent end to all military aid to Israel. Kshama is also fighting to shut down ICE and the detention centers and stop the deportations. Our campaign is calling for a $25/hour national minimum wage and national rent control.
Our campaign is canvassing working people virtually every day, and on Saturday, we held our May Volunteer Day at simultaneous locations all over Congressional District 9.
We are also proud to report that our campaign gathered over 4,300 signatures to get Kshama on the ballot. This is two and a half times the 1,740 signatures required for Congressional District 9, showing the huge support for Kshama and our campaign as well as the dedication of our volunteers, who gathered most of those signatures in the cold and rain of this winter and early spring.
Attacks By the Democratic and Republican Parties
At the same time that we have been gathering signatures from working people excited about our socialist campaign, we have grown increasingly concerned as we have watched the despicable attempts by the Democrats who run California to keep Green Party candidate Butch Ware off the ballot in the governor’s race. They have done so using blatantly dishonest and undemocratic means.
This attack is taking place because millions of working people are furious at Trump and at both parties of the billionaires. They are angry at the Democrats and Republicans because of the decades of attacks on working people, the imperialist wars, and the cost-of-living crisis. The Democratic Party has its lowest approval ratings in 35 years, which is even more stunning for a party that is not in the White House. And this is despite the deep unpopularity of Donald Trump and anger at the war on Iran and his vicious attacks on working people.
Butch Ware’s campaign is battling against undemocratic attacks by the Democratic Party in the courts, and has our full solidarity in that fight.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have a long track record of these kinds of attacks on ballot access and the basic democratic rights of working people. The Democrats, in particular, have a history of trying to keep third party and independent candidates off the ballot and out of televised debates. Because the Democrats are so deeply unpopular at present, they are even more fearful of challenges from the left. They are especially afraid of Kshama’s unparalleled track record of overcoming obstacles to win working-class victories as a revolutionary socialist, and they absolutely do not want her in Congress.
We cannot rule out potential attempts to block our campaign in Washington state.
We were also quite concerned by the contradictory responses we got from the Secretary of State’s office regarding the filing process when using signatures to get on the ballot, with completely opposite answers to the same question being given by different people in the office.
We know that under capitalism, the state and its institutions are not on our side. Not only are they not neutral bodies, but when they see a real threat to the billionaires and multimillionaires, they are prepared to take the most blatant measures against working-class candidates. We saw this with the failed Right-Wing Recall attempt against Kshama Sawant in 2021, which was supported by the State Supreme Court despite the fact that all the charges were factually untrue.
Our campaign has also been concerned about the deeply irresponsible gathering of ballot petition signatures by a Super PAC calling itself “Movement for Kshama”, despite the fact that Super PACs are not legally allowed to coordinate with election campaigns or make in-kind contributions to them. We published a statement explaining the serious dangers posed by the irresponsible and reckless approach by this Super PAC.
Relying on signatures to get on the ballot unfortunately puts a lot of additional power in the hands of the capitalist state. This is true not only in terms of how the state chooses to count (or not to count) signatures, but there could also be challenges to our petition format or other similar undemocratic measures, like those used against Butch Ware’s campaign.
For all these reasons, our campaign decided to not rely on any ideas of neutrality or democracy by the capitalist state. Since we cannot assume they will honor the democratic wishes of those over 4,300 people who signed to put Kshama Sawant on the ballot, we chose to pay the filing fee.
As of this morning, Kshama Sawant is on the ballot, in our fight to elect her as the first ever revolutionary socialist in the U.S. Congress.
We have previously gathered signatures to get on the ballot in every single one of Kshama’s election campaigns. We have done so because as a working-class, socialist campaign we see the signature gathering process as an invaluable opportunity to talk to many thousands of people about our socialist politics and antiwar, working-class political program. This is highly unusual — the vast majority of campaigns don’t gather signatures at all because they are not looking to talk to working people. In fact, not one federal candidate from Washington state had done so in this decade.
In each of our past campaigns we submitted our signatures to get on the ballot. However, in the context of these potential undemocratic attacks, we have a responsibility, not only to all those who signed our petition, but to the entire working class, to do everything we can to ensure that Kshama’s revolutionary socialist campaign appears on the ballot.
For the month of May, we are launching a fundraising drive for $75,000, to build on the momentum from officially getting on the ballot so we can go all-out to defeat warmonger Adam Smith. Raising $75,000 in May would bring our campaign to $600,000 overall. Please donate now, and help us spread the word!
We will be holding a second Volunteer Day in May later this month — stay tuned for details! In the meantime, we have volunteer opportunities almost every single day, so please go to our website to sign up to get involved.
If you haven’t yet done so, please RSVP now for our Fund Healthcare Not War May Town Hall meeting happening this Saturday, May 9th, at 2pm PT at Casa Latina in the Central District, with a livestream to watch from anywhere.
On May 20, we will be holding a Labor for Kshama event to build this campaign and to further the struggle to re-build a fighting labor movement. Please join us!
In Solidarity,
Justin Bare
Campaign Manager
Kshama for Congress