On November 3, Richie Floyd, a former middle school science teacher, was elected to the city council of St. Petersburg with 51 percent of the vote. Floyd, as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is now not only the only openly socialist elected official in Florida, but also the first to be elected in the state in nearly 100 years.
Floyd, like many young socialists, became more active in politics after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanderss 2016 run for President. Originally from the Florida Panhandle, Floyd moved to St. Petersburg in 2018, where he became involved in local organizing with the local DSA chapter, in labor politics, and with various progressive coalitions locally and statewide.
His work as an activist for raising Floridas minimum wage to $15which passed in 2020sometimes brought him to city hall, where he learned the importance of local politics in grassroots organizing, informing his decision to run for office. He also met his own city council member, Amy Foster, who later became one of his first major endorsements.
Floyd defined his campaign on simple, popular issues: housing, jobs, and the environment.
Floyd defined his campaign on simple, popular issues: housing, jobs, and the environment. His policy goals include expanded public housing and tenant protections, increased jobs training programs and wages, and rigorous environmental protections (an important issue for a city surrounded by rising ocean waters).
While he didnt hide it, Floyd didnt win his election by labeling himself a socialist. Instead, Floyd won his election by running on the values of democratic socialism.
It was never vote for me because Im the Democratic Socialist, he says. It was here are the issues, heres what we want to accomplish, and these are the values we have.
Be a good co-worker, and be a good neighbor, is Floyds starting point for organizing and winning as a socialist. Its a straightforward philosophy, but one that seems to be working in communities across the country.
Cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Seattle, and New York City have had a groundswell of progressive politics in recent years that has projected democratic socialist candidates into city council and other local elected offices. Floyds victory puts St. Petersburg on a growing list of cities with openly socialist elected officials.
Socialisms resurgence into U.S. politics hasnt yet translated into majorities on city councils or winning the mayorship of major cities. But that doesnt mean that cant happenin fact, theres a robust historical precedent for it.
It can feel hard to imagine today, but there was a time when socialists held significant positions in local governments across the United States. One of the countrys most famed and successful experiments in socialist politics happened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
For nearly fifty years, socialists commanded Milwaukees city council and held the highest elected city positions. In 1910, after years of corrupt governance by both the Democratic and Republican parties in Milwaukee, voters elected socialist Emil Seidel as mayor and awarded socialists a majority on the city council.
Dubbed the Sewer Socialists in jest due to their interest in public works, Milwaukees socialists came to adopt the term with pride. The Sewer Socialists shaped Milwaukees politics for decades by cracking down on corruption in local government and providing real, tangible benefits for working people.
Yes, we wanted sewers in the workers homes, wrote Seidel, reflecting at age ninety on his time as mayor and the Sewer Socialist movement he helped champion, but we wanted much . . . so very much more than sewers.
We wanted our workers to have pure air; we wanted them to have sunshine; we wanted planned homes; we wanted living wages; we wanted recreation for young and old; we wanted vocational education; we wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness.
The Sewer Socialists made practical, tangible changes that improved peoples lives that enabled them to win election after election. They did, as their name suggests, improve the citys sewage system. They also passed worker protections, raised wages, and created public parks and beaches for people to enjoy. During the Sewer Socialists tenure, TIME magazine called Milwaukee one of the best run cities in the U.S.
Milwaukees socialist history provides a model for not just electoral victories, but also for good governance: Run campaigns on working-class issues, govern with honesty, and provide for the people.
Todays elected democratic socialists seem to have taken this message to heart.
The higher-profile Democratic Socialist candidates whove made it Congress have typically come from diverse, working class, urban areas, like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in the Bronx and Queens, Ilhan Omar in Minneapolis, and Rashida Tliab in Detroit. This is also true for socialists elected to city councils in larger, more progressive cities.
But, increasingly, socialists are winning in less expected places. Floyds story is a testament to that, but so are other elections like the case of Anita Prizio in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and Danny Nowell in Carrboro, South Carolina.
Floyd contends that socialists are successful when they are visible and fight for the issues that working class people care about: If you dont stand for working people, what the hell do you stand for?, he told me.
His victory supports this, as does the history of socialism in the United States. And it is a message that Democrats and other progressives across Florida and around the country would be wise to heed as the 2022 elections approach.
Floyds victory did happen in a blue city, but its a blue city in Florida, a state that increasingly befuddles Democrats.
For years now, the states Democrats have been losing ground to Republicans. Theyve lost the governorship, the state legislature, and U.S. Congressional seats. Last month, Republicans even overtook Democrats in voter registration.
The first thing you have to understand is that Florida is a Southern state. The Democratic legacy here is of the Dixiecrats and Jim Crow, Floyd says. The Democratic leadership in this state, until about twenty-five years ago, had a large contingent of conservatives.
Floyd presents an alternative model to progresive changeone that skirts past the Democratic Party as the vehicle for left politics and charts a new path.
Working class politics is good here, Floyd tells The Progressive. Theres a political base that just isnt tapped into, but it exists and you can see that in issue campaigns.
Floyds own turnout attests to this. In precincts with a larger proportion of Republicans than others, Floyd garnered a higher vote share than the Democratic candidate for mayor.
Our coalition was not a traditional Democratic coalition, he says. The people that knew us the best and voted for us were more conservative and right-leaning than you would think. We may have lost Democratic voters, but we picked up some conservative ones. We tried to set the example that socialists can win in cities that arent deep blue.
The issues that Floyd ran on are the ones that win campaigns and make real change, but theyre also not typically endorsed by either major party.
The concerns that unite most contemporary U.S. socialists are popular, and growing more popular: Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and a $15 minimum wage all enjoy support from strong majorities of the country. Other major pieces of the DSAs political programreproductive justice, anti-militarism, public housing and rent protections, and criminal justice reformare also immensely popular.
And where socialists dont succeed, they build power for working class people.
This isnt to say socialist candidates will win every election. There are a number of barriers socialists face in getting elected: raising funds in an anti-democratic campaign finance system, resistance from the establishment in the Democratic Party, and red-baiting from both major parties and the mainstream media.
But these barriers, with good organizing and good politics, can be overcome.
Todays socialists offer an alternative to the broken status quo, and the electoral victories they do achieve suggest that voters arent so predictable and monolithic as to always be considered firmly in the grasp of one party or the other.
And where socialists dont succeed, they build power for working class people. In Buffalo, following Democratic Socialist India Waltons failed mayoral run, Starbucks employees successfully organized to become the companys first unionized caf.
In many ways, todays municipal left electoral movement can be a test for socialisms viability more broadly. If socialism can make peoples streets better, their water safer, and their parks cleaner, then perhaps it can do something positive at the federal level, too.
See more here:
The Return of the 'Sewer Socialists' - Progressive.org - Progressive.org