Labor Party launches petition drive to gain ballot access
By LEE HENDREN, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times and Democrat Staff Writer
Monday January 23, 2006

Two Orangeburg residents say the two major parties are doing too little to ensure that everyone has access to decent jobs, health care, education and housing.

Donna Dewitt and Dr. Willie Legette co-chair the committee organizing a South Carolina affiliate of the Labor Party, which would field the nine-year-old party’s first-ever candidate.

“We have a candidate that is seriously looking at running for office,” Dewitt said. She identified him only as a retiree in the Charleston area who is eyeing a S.C. House seat.

“We will be a party that will nominate by convention,” Dewitt said. The convention could be held as early as March.

But the first step is to gain ballot access in South Carolina by collecting 10,000 valid signatures from registered voters in the state.

Voters who sign the petition are saying the Labor Party should have the opportunity to have its candidates’ names printed on the ballot. It does not commit the signer to voting for the Labor candidate.

“We are spending all of our time with this petition drive,” Legette said. “We want to make sure we have a party before we get into a campaign.”

Party officials hope to reach their goal by Jan. 31, but some folks have been wary of signing the petition.

“It’s not that people don’t want (the LP) or don’t think it’s needed,” said Legette, an associate professor of political science and history at South Carolina State University.

“The concern is always, ’Can it happen?’ If we have enough people to do the footwork, it’s going to happen,” he said. “Things are getting worse, and people are prepared to move.”

“We all know about the high unemployment rates, low wages and lack of access to health care in South Carolina — all the things the Labor Party sees as priorities,” he said.

“I think a lot of people are at the point of losing faith in the Democratic Party and in the two-party system, period,” Legette said.

“A large percentage of Democrats ... would be willing to change party allegiance if there’s a real alternative that speaks more directly to the needs and interests of working-class people,” Legette said. “There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

The Labor Party is “unapologetic about bold policies that citizens deserve for no other reasons than they are citizens,” Legette said.

The party stands for fair wages for all, universal health care and free higher education tuition for all.

“We’ve got to quit talking about it and start doing something about it,” said Dewitt, who is president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO and a former chair of the Orangeburg County Democratic Party.

The presence of a state Labor Party affiliate will mean “international leaders coming in to talk about what’s happening at places like the (Giant) cement plant in Harleyville,” where about 90 employees were laid off, Dewitt said.

The United Steelworkers union has said it will file suit in federal court, alleging the company failed to report the identity and quantity of certain hazardous materials used and stored on the plant property and filed insufficient reports on routine releases of at least 12 toxic chemicals.

Dewitt has been national co-chair of the Labor Party since last year. She co-chaired the party’s most recent convention.

The party has drawn much of its support from organized labor. So why is it preparing to launch its first-ever campaign in the state that ranks 49th in union membership?

“We’re not just a trade union party,” said Dr. Adolph Reed, a party organizer, political scientist, author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The response we’re getting from folks down here is really great,” Reed said. “I suspected it would be. In South Carolina, neither (major) party really addresses the set of basic human concerns — jobs, health, education, housing — in a systematic way.”

“Working people in South Carolina are suffering and need a party that’s speaking for them,” Reed said.

They already do; it’s the Democrats, retorted J. Danny Covington, chairman of the Orangeburg County Democratic Party.

“The question I would ask him is, ’Do you think you’re going to get any more done?’ Certainly, on the state level, you couldn’t get anybody pushing harder than (Rep.) Harry Ott and the Orangeburg County delegation,” Covington said.

“With the margins the way they are, we don’t need a party taking numbers off us,” Covington said. “Even if they take 1 percent off us, it’s not good.”

Reed acknowledged that the LP would likely gain support at the expense of the Democrats and liberal “third” parties. “To be honest, we’re probably not going to draw a lot of Republicans.”

Still, “we don’t want to be the stereotypical third party and play a spoiler role,” Reed said. “We only want to contest where we think we can win.”

Reed and Dewitt said the party would attract a certain number of people who have not been politically active.

“David Beasley was elected with 17 percent of the registered voters in the state,” Dewitt said. “Fewer and fewer people care about voting. We have got to give people somebody to vote for.”

“We want to be very careful” to field candidates only where they present a clear alternative to major party candidates, Dewitt said. “More than likely, it would never be Orangeburg County,” where Democrats usually win by lopsided margins.

Dewitt and Legette formerly supported the United Citizens Party, which endorsed selected major party candidates in some races as well as its own candidates in other races.

That’s allowed under South Carolina’s provision for “fusion” voting; all of the votes cast for a candidate, regardless of party banner, are added together. State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter once ran for re-election as the UCP and Democratic candidate.

However, the LP endorses only LP members who are running solely as LP candidates. Reed said the LP “had a spirited debate about (fusion) at our convention in 1998” but “decided no, principally because we don’t want to dilute our message.”

For more information on the LP, visit www.thelaborparty.org or call Dewitt at her office, 803-798-8300.