“Co-workers were pleased to find out about a coal miner running for office against the big-business parties,” said Brian Taylor after a SWP campaign team visited the 84 Mine, where he works. “Those who stopped to talk to the sales team were particularly interested to read in the Militant about the fight by the Co-Op miners and their example of workers in a small nonunion mine fighting to rebuild the mine workers union.”

Inside the bathhouse, some workers approached Taylor about the Militant. Taylor, a member of the United Mine Workers of America, is the Pittsburgh Socialist Workers campaign manager.

At the McElroy mine, near Moundsville, West Virginia, one miner who stopped to get a Militant had seen a campaign brochure on a previous visit. He asked, “How come a coal miner can support nuclear power?”

He was referring to a central axis of the SWP campaign platform, which champions the right of semicolonial countries to develop the energy resources necessary to expand electrification, and oppose the efforts of Washington and its allies to prevent nations oppressed by imperialism from developing nuclear power and other sources of energy.

A brief discussion took place on how coal miners as workers had to look at this from a standpoint of our class, and that miners should not approach such questions from the point of view of the coal industry.

The socialist campaigners have collected nearly triple the official requirement of 1,041 signatures. They are now focusing on preparation of the petitions to file before the August 1 deadline.

Through the course of the campaign Ressler has made it clear that he will not sign the loyalty oath required by the state of Pennsylvania to appear on the ballot. Describing it as “flagrantly unconstitutional,” he called the oath “a danger to the political rights of the working class and the majority of the people in Pennsylvania.”
 
 
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