Communist Party members run for office, strengthening communities and building coalitions

While Donald Trump and his billionaire backers were working overtime to scare voters into steering clear of “Mamdani the Commie,” actual Communists were busy building coalitions and winning elections in cities and towns across the country these past few months.

Several members of the Communist Party USA, working as part of broad campaigns rooted in their communities, won elected office in a number of locales on Tuesday and came close to victory in some others.

Whether they were running for city council, school committee, or parks board, a common thread among all the candidates was empowering the people in their neighborhoods, towns, and districts to shape their own futures.

“Working families are being stretched to the breaking point,” Daniel Carson, new city councillor in Bangor, Maine, said. “They’re juggling rising housing costs, low wages, and the daily struggle to make ends meet.”

It’s a theme that repeated in campaign after campaign. Voters were interested in how candidates would take the lead on the issues that mattered to them and their kids; they weren’t obsessed with political labels.

Government that works for people

Carson, who is a former bank worker and labor organizer, made affordability the central focus of his run for council. He said government has to be made to “work for people, not against them.”

Bridging the world of finance and grassroots organizing, he will bring both an expertise in economics as well as a personal familiarity with working-class needs to Bangor City Hall when he takes office later this year.

Bringing his experience as an analyst to the job, Carson said he will advocate for a housing bond that will fund the construction of city-owned public housing under project labor agreements—an initiative that he says will “guarantee investment in housing for working-class residents” while also supporting workers’ rights.

“My campaign understands that collective bargaining is an essential feature of a truly democratic society,” he said. That clear-cut position helped win him strong backing from a range of unions, including the United Auto Workers Region 9A, the American Postal Workers Union Local 536, and the Eastern Maine Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

Public sector workers in AFSCME Local 926 were particularly impressed by Carson’s commitment to improving public services for citizens by respecting what city employees bring to the table. “Efficiency isn’t about cutting services,” he declared during the campaign. “It’s about fairness. Treat employees right, reduce turnover, build expertise.”

Carson was already a known name in the labor movement across the state, but it took dedication and hard work during the campaign to introduce himself to the broader community in Bangor. He told them point-blank that they were the reason he was running:

“Our working class deserves a city councilor who not only understands these challenges but is ready to bring people together to find solutions.”

Once voters had a look at Carson’s platform and got the chance to meet him, they liked what they saw.

Housing for all

Unaffordable housing also figured prominently in Hannah Shvets’ successful run for city alderperson in Ithaca, N.Y. “People need to have a chance for their wages to catch up with their rents,” Shvets told voters ahead of the polls. In a city where the majority of residents are tenants, it was a message that resonated.

Shvets says she doesn’t think of herself as a politician. But disappointed that rent stabilization measures hadn’t been passed by the city, she was prompted to step forward and put her name in the ring for the Democratic nomination for Common Council in Ward 5, where she lives.

Up against a landlord and former factory CEO heavily financed by real estate interests, Shvets prevailed in the primary in July and then beat the same opponent in the general election on Tuesday. A grassroots campaign through and through, her average contribution was $15.64. Her opponent, by contrast, averaged $362 per donor, powered by big-dollar contributions from the Realtors Association of New York and big property owners in Ithaca.

A third-year student at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Shvets works at the Tompkins County Workers Center, staffing the Workers Rights Hotline. Being in that role has given her direct insight into the challenges that working people are facing in Ithaca.

“We have a government that does not care about working people anymore—a government that only protects billionaires,” Shvets told attendees at a rally recently. “That’s why I’m running for council. We need a city and a country that cares about average people.”

In addition to keeping rents affordable, she says other ways local government can show it cares about working-class people is to pass a city-specific minimum wage of $25, reform zoning to increase housing supply, keep landlords in line with health and safety standards, fund public transit, and preserve Ithaca’s sanctuary status.

It’s a pro-people platform that won Shvets the backing of the Ithaca Tenants Union, Ithaca Teachers Association, the New York Working Families Party, Planned Parenthood, Workers United, United Electrical workers (UE) Local 300, UAW Region 9, the Painters union District 4, Ithaca DSA, and many more groups.

“Showing up, caring, and working with your neighbors,” Shvets told her supporters, “we can make a difference on our local level.”

The local is the national

Investing in schools was a central plank in the platform of Luke Rotello, the co-chair of the Western Massachusetts Club of the CPUSA, who ran for city council in Northampton, Mass.

The 24-year-old barista, who’s previously worked in biochemistry labs and retail, captured 43% of the vote. Though he came up short on Election Day, Rotello certainly raised his profile in the eyes of voters and is already preparing for a future run.

Connecting several of Northampton’s problems with the shift to the right under MAGA, Rotello said he wanted to see the city be a “bulwark against the most damaging of Trump’s policies.” His campaign was all about connecting the dots between the local and the national.

“With federal support for public schools on the line,” for instance, he argued, “it is more important than ever to dedicate our city’s revenues to our most urgent popular needs.” Empowering school committees and city council to act as a check on budgets and ensuring schools get the money they need, his campaign said, was a start.

The same participatory focus also defined his approach to matters like capital planning; he advocates giving the community a bigger voice on how their money is spent when it comes to infrastructure projects.

Even global issues like war and peace are directly felt in Northampton, Rotello reminded voters. L3Harris Technologies, a company that develops components for the world’s deadliest nuclear weapons, operates a facility near downtown.

With such a “war profiteer operating in city limits,” Rotello said the council could do more to “live up to our progressive values” by phasing L3Harris out of the local economy, with a “just transition” for the employees who work there.

He drew on those same progressive values when campaigning for Northampton to become a sanctuary for immigrants facing ICE deportation raids and others being targeted by the Trump administration, including the queer and trans community.

“Our city’s traditions of abolitionism and civil rights struggle show us that there has always been another way,” Rotello told a voter town hall. “To our neighbors who have sought refuge from Republican governments that have sought to deny rights to bodily autonomy, to suffrage, to live, and to love freely,” he said, “know that you are welcome here.”

Parks for the people

Running for commissioner of Minneapolis Parks Board District 5, Colton Baldus was also talking about creating a welcoming environment—literally. “Our parks rank among the best in the country,” his campaign website proclaimed, and keeping them in that position means making them “welcoming, inclusive, and vibrant spaces that connect people with nature and each other.”

Baldus didn’t quite make it over the finish line in his race, but he’s expanded his reputation as a fighter for the residents of his city and as an advocate who’s determined to keep Minneapolis livable. In his day-to-day activist work, Baldus is a tenant and community organizer, focused on the neighborhoods of Elliot Park.

When families were displaced by a fire last year, he went to work to secure aid to help them make it through the tragedy and find new homes. Pushing back against neglectful landlords, leading sustainability initiatives like neighborhood and park cleanups, and staffing food distribution efforts for those facing hunger are just a few of the other avenues where residents have come to know him.

It’s through a lot of that work that Baldus said he came to see the transformative power of parks in a neighborhood. “Nearly every project I’ve worked on has relied on our parks, whether as gathering spaces, distribution sites, or places of recreation,” he said. “Parks provide a space for addressing environmental concerns, combating climate change, and bringing joy and stability to residents.”

Partnering with those who make parks function is key to preserving and protecting them, he argued during the campaign. “Organized labor built our parks, runs their programs, and keeps them clean and accessible.” That’s why he pledged to work with park worker unions to ensure year-round staffing, safe working conditions no matter the weather, and fair negotiations.

He also got into the nitty-gritty of making public recreational spaces better: increased transit access to parks, better stormwater management systems, energy-efficient upgrades, and water quality improvements.

Communists, co-workers, neighbors

While red-baiting of the MAGA variety dogged some of these CPUSA members who ran for office, anti-communist attacks largely fell flat. Voters were more impressed with the track record and commitment of these activists than they were by any divisive and distracting scare tactics.

Each of the candidates was known by voters as a neighbor, a co-worker, a teacher, or fellow organizer. Member of the Communist Party was just another of the many aspects that defined them.

Joelle Fishman, chair of the CPUSA’s Political Action Commission and herself a candidate for public office in the past, said these campaigns were strong “because they emerge from and are part of local labor-community coalitions” and were “grounded in the collective work…of taking on the boss and organizing door-to-door.”

She said the party was proud of its members who stepped forward to run, highlighting how they “are in the mix coming out of mass struggles for dignity and respect” for working people.

Hannah Shvets, Ithaca’s newest alderperson, put it most succinctly: “I’m part of this community, and I’m fighting for it.”

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