Vol. 73/No. 46      November 30, 2009

BY TRACY NEIMAN  
Tom Baumann, Hunter undergrad and president of the College’s Young Socialists club, has taken politics beyond the campus.

Over the past months, Baumann successfully secured the Socialist Workers Party nomination to run for Manhattan Borough President, collecting over 2,000 signatures from Hunter College students and staff to ensure his place on the ballot. On Nov. 3, this past Election Day, his campaign culminated in 3,789 votes, representing 1.7 percent of the electorate, with over 80 percent of the vote going to incumbent Scott Stringer. Baumann placed third in the race behind Republican David Casavis.

“My campaign was a victory and I celebrate it,” Baumann said. “Tens of thousands took campaign literature, hundreds bought copies of our campaign newspaper, and scores were interested enough to purchase subscriptions to our press.” In addition, Baumann stressed that his final vote count represents a small but significant following, and is a “good base to work from.”

The election is over, but the campaign is not. “The fact remains,” Baumann emphasized, “that the only way to solve the economic crisis is for the working class to take political power.”

He stressed, “I will continue fighting along working people to advance their struggles.”

Though the election is over, Baumann still plans to address the platforms he ran on over the past months. “The main issue we address is the fact that we live under the dictatorship of capital,” Baumann said. “My campaign placed immediate demands on the capitalist class to protect working people from the devastation in store for us.

Baumann cites government-guaranteed universal healthcare, guaranteed employment compensation, free education, and abortion rights, as being at the core of his continued campaign.

In addition, now that the election is over, he will be turning his focus to instituting a Cuban student academic exchange in the Spring 2010 semester, in which two Cuban students will be invited to tour the United States and speak at universities across the country. “It will be an opportunity for students to hear firsthand from their peers in Cuba—a country that the U.S. government will not let you travel to,” Baumann said. Interested students may contact Baumann at tom.baumann@gmail.com.

This project reflects the heart of Baumann’s ongoing campaign, which cites the Cuban Revolution as an example on which to base our own working class revolution. Education and healthcare, Baumann emphasized, are both free for all living in Cuba. “There is not much wealth,” he said, “but there is no class that lives off the exploitation of others.”

He stressed, “There has never been a greater need for a revolutionary party to join these issues and explain how only with a socialist revolution in the United States could working people use state power to reorganize society from top to bottom, to meet the needs of the vast majority.

“The campaign has put me in contact with workers and young people who want to organize along these lines,” he said.

“The campaign has made me a more effective candidate and if asked, I would happily accept the nomination to run again.”  
 
 
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