At a hearing earlier that day, the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission (SEEC) approved the exemption, which it has denied the SWP since 1997. The campaign was represented at the hearing by Seattle political rights attorney James Lobsenz.

In his talk to the evening celebration, Chris Hoeppner, the Socialist Workers Party mayoral candidate, noted the significance of the victory. Hoeppner is a meat packer and longtime trade unionist and socialist campaigner. Identifying contributors in Seattle or elsewhere, he said, would provide an “enemies list” to bosses, cops, government agencies, and others seeking to victimize supporters of socialist candidates.

Among the most recent evidence submitted to the SEEC were affidavits reporting two incidents targeting the party’s campaign headquarters in Los Angeles.

The day before the hearing, the storefront of the Los Angeles office was vandalized, scattering glass some 30 feet. In May a U.S. postal inspector there reported intercepting hate mail sent to the office. A U.S. attorney said in June that envelopes sent by the same person to others in the area contained a hypodermic needle and syringe.  
 
State sets August 11 hearing
With the Seattle victory in hand, the Socialist Workers campaign is now seeking an exemption from the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), which has set a special hearing for August 11.

Unlike in most parts of the country, the SWP and other smaller parties in Seattle and Washington State must apply for local and state exemptions each time they run candidates. Without both releases the campaign committee can accept donations of no more than $25, limiting the socialists’ ability to print brochures and fund other activities to present a working-class alternative to candidates of the employers’ parties.

Since the 1970s “campaign finance reform” has been vigorously pushed on federal, state, and local levels by liberal Democrats such as those dominating Seattle city politics, including the SEEC. Liberal backers of such laws, who claim to speak for “clean government,” in fact strengthen the capitalists’ monopoly over sizeable electoral campaigns.

Speaking along with the SWP mayoral candidate at the July 14 celebration was this reporter, who had attended the SEEC hearing, as well as campaign supporter Betsy Farley, who chaired. Participants expressed determination to keep organizing the most active socialist campaign the SWP has run in Seattle in years. Hoeppner and backers of the party’s effort had been on the streets campaigning that very afternoon as the commission hearing was taking place.

The Seattle Times, one of two main dailies, ran an article the day of the hearing reporting the SWP exemption request, along with a follow-up the next day explaining the outcome.  
 
Bolsters federal exemption fight
The Seattle victory bolsters the SWP’s fight to maintain its 26-year-long exemption from turning over names to the U.S. government. It helps all socialists, independent working-class candidates, union militants, and every participant in social protest activity to defend their ability to organize and act.

In 2003 the Federal Election Commission was convinced to extend the SWP exemption through 2008. The party has been represented before the FEC by its general counsel Michael Krinsky, a well-known constitutional rights attorney and senior partner in the law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman. The New York firm has fought and won landmark civil liberties cases going back to the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the late 1940s, arguing several before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Socialist Workers Party’s 2002 FEC request, prepared by Krinsky, took note of the SEEC's 1997 rejection of an SWP exemption, the sole denial in many years. The letter pointed out that the dozens of incidents of harassment since 1997, attested in sworn affidavits to the FEC, “only reinforce the continuing need” for exemption and show that “the Commissioners in Seattle had too sanguine a view in denying” the SWP request.

“Now, even the Seattle board has had to recognize the need for protection in face of compelling evidence of continuing harassment and threats,” Krinsky told the Militant. “It would be nice to think that respect for free speech is so universal there is no longer need to preserve the confidentiality of contributors' identities, but, regrettably, the facts are otherwise.

“We will cite the Seattle decision in seeking exemptions from other disclosure requirements,” Krinsky said.  
 
SWP letter to SEEC
The June letter to the SEEC from attorney James Lobsenz on behalf of the SWP pointed out that disclosure exemptions have been upheld by several U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, and Brown v. Socialist Workers 1974 Campaign Committee (Ohio) in 1982.

The SWP petition also cited federal court rulings in 2003 and 2004 by U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik reversing the SEEC’s denial of an exemption to a Freedom Socialist Party candidate. Lasnik ruled the city’s disclosure statute unconstitutional as applied by the Seattle commission.

The SWP submitted affidavits to the SEEC recounting some 85 incidents of violence and harassment since 1996, including the Los Angeles attacks and six others from the past two years. Other affidavits recounted cop harassment, break-ins, vandalism, death threats, physical assaults, and firings or refusals to hire SWP candidates or campaigners. The petition called attention to the Sept. 11, 2004, firebombing of the SWP campaign office in Hazelton, Pennsylvania.  
 
Government harassment
Drawing on earlier submissions to the FEC, the letter to the SEEC reported findings from the 15-year battle won by the SWP in 1986 in the lawsuit, Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General. That fight put a spotlight on a sustained program of spying and disruption by the FBI and other cop agencies going back to Washington's preparations to drag working people into the slaughter of World War II in the late 1930s.

Over those decades the FBI used some 1,300 informers against the SWP, organized wiretaps, and carried out more than 200 burglaries of party offices. This record can be found in FBI on Trial: The Victory in the Socialist Workers Party Suit against Government Spying, published by Pathfinder.

Pointing to extensive evidence from recent years, the letter to the SEEC concluded that “officials at all levels of government continue to harass and threaten” SWP members and supporters.

Ten incidents submitted to the SEEC took place in Seattle. These include two 1998 threats to shoot supporters of the SWP campaign for U.S. Congress.

While calling attention to these local incidents, Lobsenz told the SEEC that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that harassment in one city or state constitutes grounds to grant an exemption in others. Internet access to public records today, he said, makes this standard all the more compelling.

The SWP petition also pointed out that incidents submitted to the SEEC by the Freedom Socialist Party earlier this year “are relevant to the issue of whether there is a reasonable probability that SWP candidates and supporters will be harassed.” In the wake of the recent federal court rulings, the SEEC granted the FSP an exemption in April.  
 
Contentious hearing
The seven SEEC members voted unanimously to grant the SWP exemption. During the more than hour-long hearing, however, rancorous comments and questions by most commission members seemed to make clear they had done so grudgingly—not from belief an exemption was needed in liberal Seattle, but to avoid another federal court reversal.

Wayne Barnett, SEEC executive director, who is not a voting member, recommended granting the exemption. The SWP, Barnett said, clearly meets the test established by the federal courts. Others begged to differ.

“Transparency” in elections is “a value worth defending,” insisted commissioner Paul Dayton. What if “a candidate's voice” is “influenced by money from a foreign state?” He disputed the SWP’s contention that harassment of other socialist groups bore on its petition for exemption.

SEEC member Robert Mahon complained that federal courts had “set the bar so low” that granting the exemption seemed almost “automatic.”

Gregg Hirakawa asked in apparent frustration: “Could anyone ever run as a socialist and not meet the courts’ current test? How long must we grant these exemptions?”

Michelle Radosevich sympathized but cautioned her colleagues that the SEEC had received “guidance from Judge Lasnik it would be foolish to ignore.”

Mahon repeatedly objected that protections perhaps reasonable for the SWP did not seem pertinent, since Seattle’s mayoral race is “nonpartisan.”

Lobsenz pulled out the party’s campaign brochure and held it up for the commissioners, reading the headlines to them: “Support the Socialist Workers 2005 Campaign! Chris Hoeppner for Mayor of Seattle.” The brochure, he added, features the party’s 2005 platform: “What the Socialist Workers Party stands and fights for.”

Funds continue to be urgently needed for legal costs as the SWP prepares for the August 11 Washington State Public Disclosure Commission and responds to other violations of election rights. Checks should be made out to the Socialist Workers Party. Those wishing to make tax-deductible donations can write checks to the Political Rights Defense Fund, earmarked “2005 SWP electoral rights fight.” Address envelopes to the SWP headquarters, 5418 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118-2439.
 
 
Related articles:
Pittsburgh: Socialists score victory for political rights
County accepts petition for ballot status with ‘anti-subversive’ pledge crossed out
13,000 sign in 9 days to put socialists on New York ballot
SWP announces slate in Seattle city elections  
 
 
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