Grace Carlson Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main Page

Grace Carlson

Our Party’s Election Campaign in Minnesota

The Trotskyist Candidate for U.S. Senator Tells Why She Polled
More Votes Than Browder and Thomas Together

(21 December 1940)

From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 51, 21 December 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

A large number of letters have come in to Minnesota, from comrades and friends throughout the country, inquiring about the secret of our success in the recent election campaign. (The Socialist Worker Party, listed on the ballot as the “Trotskyist Anti-war Party,” received 8,761 votes – more than the combined totals of the Socialist and Communist Parties.) This secret is not hard to find. The Bolshevik character of the Minnesota Party determined the success of the campaign. Trained and disciplined ranks, led by workers with years of devotion and sacrifice for the revolutionary movement in their records, carried through the campaign in an efficient, organized manner.

There is no doubt that my candidacy at the time had “news value.” In Minnesota, where so many hundreds of Farmer-Laborites and liberals have been fired in the past two years by the reactionary Stassen machine, when a state employee voluntarily resigns from a job, she makes news. There is something of the “‘man bites dog” element in such a story. The campaign for signatures opened less than two weeks after my resignation from the State Department of Education, and we were thus able to “cash in” on the publicity attendant upon the resignation.
 

Whole Party Took Part

The first big task, the gathering of the signatures necessary to place our Party on the ballot, was done by Sunday morning mobilizations of St. Paul and Minneapolis comrades for house-to-house canvassing. A big majority of the Twin City membership took part in the mobilizations; those unable to do so gathered signatures in other ways. With less than a month allowed by Minnesota law for the work of placing a minority party candidate on the ballot, we filed 2,600 signatures in the Secretary of State’s office on October 5 – 600 more than the law required.

All of the comrades deserve credit for their efforts in this part of the campaign, the of the older comrades illustrates how seriously this work was regarded. This was a woman comrade who had recently gone through a serious surgical operation. Because of her frail health and age she would certainly have been excused from the work of house-to-house canvassing. She refused to be excused, however, and brought over 40 signatures in to headquarters. This is the type of Bolshevik courage which, conquering pain and fear, carried the Marxist program to Minnesota workers. A comrade in the Carpenters Union gathered a large number of signatures from workers on the job. (Even in Bill Hutcheson’s union, workers will support a militant, working-class program, brought to them by one of their own proven militants.) A waitress gathered signatures from her customers as did a butcher in a retail meat market.
 

Literature Distribution

The distribution of the 5,000 campaign leaflets and the 10,000 copies of the special Minnesota Edition of the Appeal was carried out in the same enthusiastic way. C. Johnson, the Campaign Manager, was in charge of this phase of the work. The piles of literature melted like snow as the comrades, under his direction, carried the Trotskyist election literature into working-class wards of the two cities. Bundles of Appeals were also sent to Duluth, St. Cloud and other centers for distribution. Here again, great ingenuity was shown.

Two comrades engaged in travelling work always carried a pile of leaflets with them and released a few dozen in every small town along their route. They reported that most of these leaflets were picked up and read, since residents of small Minnesota towns are not flooded with campaign leaflets, advertisements, etc. as are city people.

One of the young comrades on the University of Minnesota campus pressed our campaign literature on everyone who wore a Thomas-Krueger button. He even persuaded some of these S.P. sympathizers of the errors of their ways and made Trotskyists out of them before the end of the campaign.
 

Radio Broadcasts

The three fifteen-minute radio speeches, given on consecutive Monday nights, were publicized by paid advertisements in the capitalist as well as the labor and Negro press. Moreover 2,000 postcards were sent out, advertising the speeches. In addition, each piece of campaign literature carried a stamped message giving the time and radio station over which the speeches could be heard. We also obtained some free publicity from the press in the inclusion of our candidate’s name on the “campaign clock” which listed the political radio speeches of each day.

I have the clipping from the October 28 issue of the St. Paul Dispatch before me and see the following line-up of political speeches for that day:

Many comrades arranged radio parties at their homes so that friends might hear and discuss these speeches. One comrade, working on a night shift in a factory, brought a radio to the lunch room so that the workers could hear one of the speeches during their lunch period. He reported that this speech which consisted in the main of long quotations from the Manifesto of the Fourth International was very well received.

The diligent work of the Forum, Finance, Education and Social committees of the Twin City branches in their own respective fields bore fruit for the Party in numerous successful election rallies, meetings and socials, attended by new as well as old sympathizers of the Party.
 

Trotskyist Activity Known

Although large masses of workers in outlying parts of the state as well as farmers in rural areas did not hear the speeches or receive the literature, nevertheless an impressive vote was recorded for the Party in these areas.

The explanation of this phenomena is that these workers and farmers wanted to express their support of a Trotskyist program. Because of the activities of the Trotskyist leadership of the progressive Minneapolis labor movement during the past few years, the word “Trotskyist” stands for militant working-class action to thousands of Minnesota workers who have never read any Trotskyist literature.
 

Tribute to Trotsky

The recent tragic death of Leon Trotsky at the hands of Stalin’s G.P.U. agent dramatized the program of the Fourth International for other thousands of’ workers and farmers in Minnesota and throughout the United States. I am very sure that many hundreds of votes were cast for me as the Trotskyist candidate in order to do honor to the murdered hero who symbolizes for the oppressed the revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system of exploitation.

In this election campaign, the first in this country in which the name “Trotskyist” appeared on a ballot, the ranks of the Minnesota Party and the masses to which the Party appealed for support responded enthusiastically. To have been the instrument through which support for the program of the Fourth International was recorded is a source of great personal satisfaction for me.

 
Top of page

Grace Carlson Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers’ Index  |   ETOL Main Page

Last updated: 14 November 2020