this is the landing page for birzeblog

welcome to my rudimentary website. this is an archive of my work and a place where i will optimistically put more of my stuff in the future. currently though it's a work in progress as i port over my literally hundreds of pages of notes, essays, and miscellaneous posts of interest. it's likely this website will be continually (and rudimentarily) updated; i'm not good at technology, so you may have to keep up with this manually. building a website has unfortunately never really been my thing.

election season 2026

a list of people you should support in 2026 | a list of people you should oppose in 2026

as of March 6, 2025, i've begun compiling these two self-explanatory lists of candidates you should and should not support in 2026, and the reasons you should do that.

latest updates:
[Birze Political Report] The American Solidarity Party in suburban Chicago, Part Two ‖ [Birze Political Report] The American Solidarity Party in suburban Chicago, Part One ‖ the hysteria of 1918-1922 America, as illustrated by Marion, Indiana ‖ introducing my election 2026 lists ‖ January 2025 posts ‖ November 2024 posts ‖ October 2024 posts ‖ September 2024 posts

[Birze Political Report] The American Solidarity Party in suburban Chicago, Part Two

or, The Municipal Message of the American Solidarist

Just a few miles west of Lombard—where we last left off—is the town of Batavia, Illinois. Here the American Solidarity Party finds itself attempting to (re-)elect Dustin Pieper—one of two people they officially recognize as elected representatives for the party—as alderman for the city's 4th ward.

The situation in Batavia, Illinois

We should first examine briefly why the American Solidarity Party is even represented in Batavia, which hardly stands out as a place of religious fervor or church politics. The answer to this is almost entirely because of Pieper himself. Born and raised in Missouri and—by his own admission—someone who only moved to Batavia in 2022 for a job at Fermilab, Pieper nonetheless quickly advanced into city politics on the back of his interest in organizing zoning reform for the city. He seems to have founded, and almost-singlehandedly built, the Batavia chapter of municipal advocacy group Strong Towns. He was also extremely lucky: his ward's incumbent, Tom Connelly, had to resign just two months after the April 2023 municipal elections took place. Pieper took a leap of faith, applied to the position, and successfully won appointment to Connelly's remaining term in the seat. This has left him in the remarkable position of being an appointed member of city council, but effectively having served a full two-year term already.

In that role Pieper has by all indications served quite admirably. He seems both popular and well-regarded in Batavia as a whole, much of which seems to be the result of his competence in navigating municipal issues. Answering a recent candidate questionnaire he attributed this to a "[deep] interest in local policy, planning reform, and in simply diagnosing a lot of troubles in the modern American development pattern."

The 2025 election campaign

This fascination has also put him in a good position for re-election this year. At least in his ward, the main issues of the 2025 campaign are two issues he can speak on extensively: growth and housing affordability. Pieper's campaign accordingly resembles a YIMBY policy laundry list: housing reform, zoning reform, and development. He calls on the city to massively invest in walkable infrastructure and bike infrastructure; he hopes to make it easier for developers within Batavia itself to build housing and create jobs; and he wants to prevent urban sprawl by infilling less dense parts of the city.

On the more aspirational side of things, he wants to lower permitting costs and building review times by providing developers with a catalogue of pre-approved building plans—or perhaps even by adopting a form-based or transect zoning code in the city.¹ The radicalism inherent to some of these proposed reforms have clearly not inhibited his institutional support: Pieper comfortably earned the endorsement of the Daily Herald, the major newspaper of suburban Chicago, earlier this month.

Solidarist urbanism?

As described so far, Pieper probably sounds like the antithesis of conservatism. Housing and zoning reform have for the most part been the pet issues of social liberals in recent years, and opposition to them has largely (although not exclusively) come from the conservative right. But Pieper complicates the oft-assumed notion that liberal-championed political reforms are inherently liberal because they are liberal-championed. A more thorough examination of his platform clarifies that most of it is actually a mirror of the American Solidarity platform. Is this reflective of the party being genuinely center-left on housing and zoning? Not necessarily. Cutting to the heart of this subject, however, requires us to explore the principles of Christian democracy more extensively than we have to this point. Specifically we must examine the concept of sphere sovereignty—a foundational concept that informs Christian democratic politics around the world—and its relation to the American Solidarity platform.

To do this we must necessarily simplify a bit, for sphere sovereignty has been debated and refined heavily since Abraham Kuyper first formulated it in 1880. In brief, however, sphere sovereignty asserts the following two premises: firstly, that all spheres of life are divinely ordained and ordered, and thus derive their existence and legitimacy only from God; and secondly, that each sphere of life has a delegated role in the order of creation, and answers only to a Sovereign authority within them that is granted by God. As summarized by Gordon Spykman in his essay “Sphere Sovereignty in Calvin and the Calvinist Tradition,” Kuyper's belief is essentially that “Each sphere [of life] has its own identity, its own unique task, its own God-given prerogatives. On each, God has conferred its own peculiar right of existence and reason for existence.” From this foundation, Kuyper proposes a model of society in which (1) every sphere of life is co-equal and yet simultaneously distinguished from the rest and (2) each sphere is delegated an absolute, inviolable responsibility within the specific bounds of its social domain. As an example, since this may seem unintuitive: the head of household and the covenant of marriage would be viewed as the absolute basis for the "sphere of the family." It would thus be the duty of the household—not the the duty of business, church, or state—to uphold expected familial norms and fulfill the God-given prerogatives associated with family life.

It should perhaps go without saying: Kuyper was not a liberal, either in a classical or contemporary sense.² Both then and now, he was of the right-wing.

Thus in defining sphere sovereignty and in recognizing Kuyper as a right-wing figure, suddenly we find a transformation of the American Solidarity platform. What initially appears center-left now jumps off the page as clearly motivated by right-wing politics. In their assertion that "Society consists of various institutions and communities, like families, governments, and religious groups, whose primary authority over their own affairs should be respected and defended," the party almost wholly adopts Kuyper's vision. Likewise when the party emphasizes its support for "local production, family-owned businesses, and cooperative ownership structures," for "zoning laws which favor small businesses and conservation over large-scale corporate investment," or for "measures that allow local communities to limit the power of outside interests in managing their land," what animates these beliefs is clearly a sense of sphere sovereignty more than anything else. These policies are not *per se* advocated for because they are just, they are advocated for because they return primary authority to the expected spheres of life that Kuyper identifies in his model.

In turn, Pieper's platform and how he describes himself become more obviously solidarist, too—or at least this context make his political axioms more ambiguous. When he argues for "cultivat[ing] an incremental development community in the region," for example, can we discern whether he is motivated by an independently-arrived-at belief that this will serve Batavia well, or by an desire to municipally build sphere sovereignty? This is probably not something that can be definitively settled without a statement from him, and I will not pretend you cannot make an argument for the first position. What I will say is that there is an unusually compelling case for the second position even based on public information.

Certainly Pieper does not hide his current position on the Illinois Solidarity Party's state committee, which is the most obvious point in favor of him being avowedly solidarist. But how he describes himself sometimes is also a dead-ringer for solidarism. In a candidate questionnaire from Patch he calls himself a "strong advocate for localism and a more well-distributed economic system to help better promote small and employee-owned businesses," something you would expect of a committed ASP member and a solidarist who agrees at least in part with Kuyper. To say nothing of things that might otherwise not raise eyebrows, but do so in his case. Pieper often credits his housing and zoning opinions to the work of Strong Towns and its president Charles Marohn—an innocent enough influence, given the visibility of Strong Towns in housing and zoning spaces. But Marohn has also served in an advisory role for the American Solidarity Party since at least 2020.³ Is this influence merely a coincidence, or the reason Pieper takes after Strong Towns at all?

I want to make it plain: I do not think Pieper's politics are as right-wing as other ASP candidates; if he supports abortion abolitionism or is totally opposed to same-sex marriage and gender affirming care, he has not said so in places I can find. I also do not think he is a bad person, at least from this extensive dive into his politics. But I do think his agreement with the American Solidarity platform cannot be characterized as superficial, and hence I would categorize him as standing for a sort of solidarist urbanism. I also think he presents an interesting problem for social liberal housing activists in sounding like one himself but almost certainly not being one on closer inspection. What should the relation to solidarism be from the center-left? I am in no position to adjudicate this, and perhaps the American Solidarity Party will never be large enough to justify answering such a question. At least in Batavia though, it seems likely this relation is something liberal activists will have to mull over for the next few years. While the Kane County Democratic Party is organizing against him (and Batavia as a whole is a modestly Democratic city), nothing suggests to me that Pieper has worse than coin-flip odds of being re-elected.

As a final observation—and though the race is nonpartisan—I think a victory here would obviously be a boon for the American Solidarity Party. This is not merely because any win at the party's current size is substantial, but also because their other elected officials—without downplaying their accomplishments—simply are not very impressive from an outsider's perspective. Peter Sonski was elected as a Republican, not as an American Solidarity Party candidate. George L. Dziuk Jr. represents a small town of barely 1,000 whose municipal races are seldom contested, while Christopher Zehnder represents an even smaller town with even fewer elections of note. Jason Negri is to this point the party's most impressive elected official, but even he has seemingly moved on to conventional Republican politics. None of this is inarguably the case with Pieper, who would unambiguously be serving the party and would be doing so in a place where you might not expect the party to succeed at all. True, one city council seat does not a base of power make. But the party is in no position to influence national politics (it registered just 46,000 known votes in the 2024 presidential election)—for the foreseeable future, all it can aspire to do is run people like Pieper and win with them. If it cannot do even this, what can it do?

Notes

¹: The various forms of zoning are beyond the immediate scope of this article, but these terms may be unfamiliar and deserve a bit of expansion. Form-based zoning is mostly concerned with regulating the shape and size of development rather than the land-usage of development; to quote the Form-Based Codes Institute, form-based codes "[designate] the appropriate form and scale (and therefore, character) of development, rather than only distinctions in land-use types." Transect zoning is a specific variant of form-based zoning that essentially proposes all zoning be consolidated into several "Transects"—usually ranging from a natural zone to an urban core zone—that progressively grow in the intensity of their "natural, built, and social components."

² He was, at least philosophically, someone who we might term an opponent of liberal democracy. He rejected popular sovereignty in all forms and characterized the French Revolution as an event which "threw out the majesty of the Lord in order to construct an artificial authority based on individual free will" and in so doing "left nothing but the monotonous, self-seeking individual asserting his own self-sufficiency." (quotes via The Problem of Poverty (1991), trans., ed. James Skillen)

³ Something he has received pushback on from more liberal YIMBYs and zoning reform advocates, incidentally. See "Strong Towns' Guide to the Election Year" for Marohn's characterization of that criticism and his broader relation to the American Solidarity Party.

[Birze Political Report] The American Solidarity Party in suburban Chicago, Part One

or, The Curious Case of the Village of Lombard Slate

this is the first in a series on my website that i'm going to call Birze Political Report. the idea here, in short, is to cover the many interesting third-party candidates that run around the country—and the circumstances in which they are running—when i find them. why? mostly because i find the American third-party political space quite fascinating, and at least right now it is a very under-covered area of politics. if that's not your thing, though, you'll be able to pick out all blogs with this subject because they'll be marked like this one is. without further ado.

This is a fairly long post, so my introduction will be brief. A few weeks ago and for reasons I cannot quite remember, I noticed that the otherwise very minor American Solidarity Party was running a slate of 6 candidates for municipal offices this year. For most people, this is not worth even a second of thought.

For me, however, this was quite intriguing—and actually the event that inspired me to begin this series in the first place. Typically only the Greens and Libertarians have the membership to run slates of this sort, or the organization to make them politically effective—but here is the American Solidarity Party finding four people for the same office, and six in the same general area! There must be a story to pursue here, if only someone were willing to do so.

That someone is me, to the extent that I can. I want to know: who are these people? Why are they running, and is there some reason for their success in recruiting in these races? If elected, what do these people actually want? What I hope to do here—both with this post but also with this series generally—is actually investigate what third parties are up to, what they stand for, and what it might mean for them to govern you if they're given the chance. Along the way, I hope to inform people of things they perhaps did not know. There is certainly a lot I did not before going down today's rabbit hole.

In any case.

What is the American Solidarity Party?

My series of questions has to begin with examining the American Solidarity Party itself. From one perspective, defining what the party stands for and how they distinguish themselves ideologically is a pretty simple thing to do: the party is Christian democratic. If you have seen, say, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Germany campaign before, you can perhaps infer from them alone what much of the American Solidarity platform is. Certainly, the ASP does not hide the origins of its party ideology. It writes of its own founding in 2011 that "a small group, inspired by examples in Europe and Latin America, came together to start a party inspired by the principles of Christian democracy."

But this is not very satisfactory for answering what it practically means to be a Christian democrat in an American context. This is the other perspective, and in attempting to flesh it out it becomes much less clear what actually separates the ASP from other parties.

On the one hand, the ASP effectively inherits a blank canvas for itself. The Christian democratic tendency in the United States is barely 15 years old. There is a lengthy history of fusion between Christian religion and politics in the United States, but no Christian democratic movement of size seems to have existed before the American Solidarity Party. Moreover, the party is quite out of place from the contemporary synthesis of religion and politics in the United States. The predominant religious political movement is a firmly-established evangelical Protestantism—and in many cases outright Christian nationalism—that disagrees with fundamental principles of Christian democracy. Where Christian democrats (perhaps begrudgingly) recognize the need for civil liberties, many American evangelical Protestants explicitly oppose all forms of pluralism and demand the church subordinate the state. The ASP itself seems quite conscious of this dynamic, noting its disagreement with some conservative Christians and their "negative attitudes toward women, racial minorities, immigrants or non-Christians" in a recent blog post.

And yet—in spite of these seemingly incompatible political and theological differences—the actual platform of the ASP seems almost completely amenable to the priorities of evangelical Protestantism. This is the other and more sinister hand of the ASP. To be sure, the party does explicitly name pluralism and social justice as things it supports; its support for labor unions and defense of civil liberties, including "the free exercise of religion, freedom of speech and assembly, a fair justice system, and equal protection under the law" are also noteworthy areas of divergence from usual theocratic faire. But simultaneously, much of the American Solidarity platform outflanks even the far-right of the Republican Party. It demands that life begin at conception and explicitly opposes in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments; it calls surgical or hormonal treatments that "circumvent the natural, healthy development and function of the body" malpractice; it calls marriage the "exclusive union of one man and one woman for life;" and it vigorously defends private schooling and homeschooling among other things. These are the political issues that evangelical Protestants and Christian nationalists actually tend to care about when running for office (one such illustration can be found in the efforts of the Remnant Alliance of Texas), and the ASP sounds exactly like them. Perhaps it is no surprise then that the ASP seems hesitant to completely distance itself from Christian nationalism. In the same blog post where it acknowledges disagreements with some conservative Christians, the party nevertheless downplays Christian nationalist ideology by arguing the term is, more than anything, "being used as a label to attack all opponents of abortion and child gender transition, as well as those who express concern about the devaluation of the traditional family." Taken as a whole this suggests the party and its membership is distinctly on the right, or even far-right, of American politics.

There are likely party members who would contest this characterization (indeed, the party has previously argued against the left-right dichotomy on its blog and sometimes identifies itself as a syncretic party). But it is noteworthy how consistently the party emphasizes its absolutist position on abortion or its total opposition to gender-affirming care, particularly in light of how unpopular these positions are. Objectively less polarizing and more agreeable policies in their platform—their support for organized labor or their advocacy for cooperative economics to name just two—simply do not get the same billing. This would also seem rather at odds with their tagline of "common good, common ground and common sense" policymaking.

The slate for Village of Lombard Library Board

This brings us to the local slate of 4 candidates the party is running for the Helen Plum Public Library District's Board of Trustees (also known as the Village of Lombard Library Board). This slate consists of four party members: Dustin Himmerich, Dan Hollenbach, Sam Kuhlman, and Daniel O'Connell.

The positions of the national party, not to mince words, do not cast a favorable light on these candidates. But we should be careful not to jump to conclusions even when they seem quite obvious. Just because the party seems distinctly right-wing or even far-right at the national level does not mean this necessarily follows at the local level. Parties are not politically homogeneous, for one. For another, American political parties are uniquely weak in their ability to select or deselect candidates. Michael Kinnuckan argues compellingly in my view that, in an American context, political parties are little more than "a vague and nebulous constellation of wealthy donors, prominent politicians and political brand identifications whose power consists in their ability to coordinate to influence primary voters." This dynamic is particularly common in local races, where parties are less likely to recruit candidates proactively and frequently have no control over who runs at all. Is there any reason to believe the American Solidarity slate is a case of this, or dissents significantly from the national party in priorities?

In this case, no. Even being charitable, the party still leads with its most conservative policies at the local level, and is largely indistinguishable in tone from evangelical Protestants and Christian nationalists.

The 2023 Lombard campaign

One of the reasons this can be asserted so confidently is the 2023 "slate" the party ran for Helen Plum Public Library District—that year, Daniel O'Connell ran for the Board of Trustees alongside fellow party member Angel Diaz. Their primary reason for running is not ambiguous: opposition to the supposed "political agenda" of the board in allowing LGBTQ+ and "pornographic" materials in the library, and offense toward the Board of Trustees for voting to affirm the American Library Association Library Bill of Rights and Freedom to Read statements. O'Connell seems to have been the more explicit of the two in running on these; he is quoted in the Dupage Policy Journal as saying "Libraries should be a place to that provide an opportunity for people to become educated and informed, not a place that imposes a political agenda especially on kids." In line with the philosophy of the ASP, O'Connell also asserted that parents have and should have absolute authority to dictate what books are appropriate for their children. Diaz, in a candidate questionnaire for The Lombardian, took a slightly different line which opposed supposedly obscene or pornographic materials in the library for their lack of "value". He added that, in his view, "Having pornographic and obscene images within reach of children is contrary to the library’s vision."

(For the record: the "obscene" and "pornographic" materials seem to have been, among a few others, the books Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe; Flamer by Mike Curato; and All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson. In other words, books that are only obscene and pornographic if you think LGBTQ+ people existing are those things.)

Neither O'Connell nor Diaz ultimately won a place on the Board of Trustees—with three seats available, they came a somewhat distant 4th and 6th out of 7 candidates—but both registered respectably enough to win singular precincts. O'Connell's performance in particular allows for some estimation of what the American Solidarity Party constituency might look like. As you might expect that constituency seems pretty similar to the Republican base and evangelical politics as a whole. It skews overwhelmingly white—to the order of 80% white, where Lombard is only 69% white—and appreciably more conservative, to the order of 10 percentage points. It also has substantially worse educational attainment than Lombard as a whole (55.4% attaining only some college or no college, versus 43.5% for Lombard as a whole). In areas of the city with greater racial diversity or higher educational attainment, vote share cratered for both O'Connell and Diaz. If the intent of running on "common good, common ground and common sense" is to win over both Democrats and Republicans, then it seems these candidacies were failures—overwhelmingly, their voters look to be associated with the political right, not the center or left.

The 2025 Lombard campaign

Evidently, though, O'Connell and Diaz performed well enough for the party to take another shot at things this year—this time with a full slate of four candidates for the four seats, and with unambiguous American Solidarity Party branding. As the party writes on a since-removed donation page, their candidates "affirm and support the mission and principles of the American Solidarity Party."

What this page also makes clear is how right-wing that mission and those principles seem to be. Compared against the 2023 run of O'Connell and Diaz, this page is much more explicitly steeped in the language of spiritual warfare and Christian nationalism. "The only way to correct the regrettable course that our current culture is taking," the party writes, "is by turning back to the foundations upon which western society is built." It adds that the party's four candidates believe in "properly ordering their home and family" and hope that through "local involvement in the public process they can bring positive change to their community and the broader culture." A reaffirmation of this can be found on O'Connell's candidate page this year, where he asserts that "the foundation of a good society is well structured families" and says he seeks to demonstrate solidarist principles on the Board of Trustees. Sam Kuhlman concurs on the second point, saying he would like to see Lombard "grow in justice through the principles of the ASP." Dustin Himmerich is less explicit in confirming his agreement with this donation page; he instead opts for rhetoric that mirrors O'Connell and Diaz from 2023. According to his candidate page, he wants to "ensure [the Helen Plum Public Library District] remains a family-friendly center for learning, growth, and the pursuit of truth"—certainly a hard to disagree with statement, if not for the context it was said in.

The interesting exception is Hollenbach. I think it is reasonable to conclude he also supports the party platform, but unlike the other candidates this cannot be definitively concluded from public material. He is, presumably because he filed after the other three, not named on the party donation page for the ASP slate. His page on the American Solidarity Party website also focuses on his life and work as an HVAC construction worker first and is content to relegate his campaign to a single sentence. In short there is nothing else to go in ters of his ideology. There is also some basis to assume he is, in some way, a replacement for Angel Diaz. In April 2024, Diaz appeared with O'Connell, Himmerich, and Kuhlman at an event for congressional candidate Mike Vick; that event also identifies him as the fourth ASP slate member for Board of Trustees, something he obviously no longer is. What happened here? Only locals and party members probably know; there is nothing hinting at a public-facing answer from what I could see.

As for the actual campaign itself? It is hard to parse from a distance, but the ASP slate is clearly on the defensive rather than the offensive. Their campaign was an uphill battle to begin with—Lombard is a city Kamala Harris won by 17 points in 2024 and Biden by 22 in 2020—and it seems that local groups are actively mobilizing to keep the ASP out of office. Both the Addison Township and York Township branches of the Democratic Party have called on Democrats to not vote for any of the four—a particular development in the former's case, as they seemingly did not weigh in on the 2023 slate at all. A guide being circulated by self-described "library workers and library advocates" calls the ASP "closely aligned with Christian nationalist values" and recommends voting against all four as well. Anecdotally, residents of Lombard seem largely unimpressed by the ASP, and the slate's Facebook page seems to have gone private in the time between its candidates announcing their run and today.

The party also seems particularly concerned that its opponents have effectively characterized it as the party of book banning and Christian nationalism. In an extremely defensive post, it decries this "false narrative" and argues that it simply wants to implement "responsiveness to community requests to protect children." It also attempts to inject other positions the slate is running on into the conversation, specifically their desire to "create and foster relationships with community organizations," "increase community engagement by taking library services out into public spaces," and "include more services aimed specifically to helping the poor and traditionally underserved by libraries."

Is this a winning message—and are those issues, surely secondary despite what the party insists, a winning platform? Almost certainly no, for reasons previously mentioned. But it will be interesting to see how far the party can take its branding with priorities on social issues that are nearly indistinguishable from those of evangelical Protestants and Christian nationalists.

But this is only one part of the slate. Tomorrow, we’ll cover the other major candidate of the American Solidarity Party in suburban Chicago: Dustin Pieper of Batavia, Illinois.

A brief note about Richard Petraitis

I would have liked to add something substantial about the sixth candidate the American Solidarity Party is running, a mister Richard Petraitis for the Woodridge Library Board. Unfortunately there is nothing to talk about with him. He is a very basic candidate, the ASP page for him gets the seat he’s running for wrong for some reason, and there is no real local coverage to flesh out an understanding here. The extent of what I can tell you is what appears to be correct from the ASP page, which is as follows:

Richard and his wife have been residents of the Village of Woodridge, IL since 1996, almost spanning the length of their twenty-nine (29) year marriage. They are proud to have raised two beautiful kids, a son, and a daughter..
He is proud to be a member of his local The Knights of Columbus Council. Richard is also a big believer in localism and looks forward to seeing the continuation of programs that are family / community centered at our local public library.

I believe you can apply everything I have already written about the Lombard slate to him, in any case. Not surprisingly he has drawn the opposition of the Downers Grove Township Democratic Organization, who recommends voting for literally everyone else on the ballot but him. I don’t think he’ll win, given that Democrats seem to routinely draw 60% or greater of the vote in Woodridge.

the hysteria of 1918-1922 America, as illustrated by Marion, Indiana

today's reading is Socialism in the Heartland: The Midwestern Experience, 1900-1925 and i'll have a few things to say and chronicle from this book; however, here's a quick and interesting one that stands out: the incredible amount of hysteria that swept even quite homogeneous portions of the United States during and after World War I.

writing about the situation in Marion, Indiana, Errol Wayne Stevens highlights the unusual amount of worry about socialist revolution in the city—he notes the Chronicle's fear in particular, saying:

The Chronicle noted editorially that the Bolsheviks had been a small minority and had been able to seize power primarily because of the disorganization of Russia’s ruling elite. In order to avoid a similar situation in Marion, the Chronicle suggested that a vigilance committee of patriotic citizens should organize and equip a force of at least five hundred men to stand by in case of a possible insurrection: “We do not wish to pose as alarmists. We do feel, however, that we are living in a critical situation, and that there is a need of immediate action of a broad and comprehensive character to insure us against calamity. Under present conditions indifference and inaction are both cowardly and treasonable. We must get busy, and get busy at once.

what makes this fascinating is the nature of Marion in the first place. economically, Marion's importance had waned substantially by the outbreak of World War I. originally a beneficiary of the Indiana gas boom, the waning of this boom left the city mired in a devastating and localized recession throughout the late 1900s and 1910s. factories abandoned the city in substantial numbers, and the city population dropped by several thousand despite a large-scale annexation in 1902 that added nearly 3,000 residents. in terms of demographics, Marion was never a place strongly dependant on immigrant labor. indeed there was a near total absence of non-white or even foreign-born residents, particularly in comparison to other industrial Midwest cities. Stevens observes that in 1910, the census found "84 percent of the city’s residents had been born in the United States and that only 3 percent were of foreign birth. Slightly less than 8 percent of the population were second-generation Americans." the city was—in short—much closer to ethnically homogeneous than culturally diverse.

in the absence of usual sources of anti-socialist hysteria, Marion's case can probably be attributed to the presence of a localized and successful Socialist party which had been very oppositional to the patriotic line on World War I. beginning in 1900—and particularly after 1913—Marion became of the major centers of the Socialist Party of Indiana. Marion's local of the party took a particularly strongly anti-war line which, in 1914, charged that "our fellow citizens who uphold the capitalist party are guilty of murder in that they stand for the system making wholesale murder inevitable." in 1917 with the United States' entry looming, the local continued hold strongly anti-war positions—it sent a delegate to the Socialist Party of America's emergency national convention with instructions to categorically "vote against American entry into the European conflict."

despite this position, the party had been fairly successful in 1917: it elected two city councilors and, although losing to Republican Elkannah Hulley, 30.5% of the vote for mayor. but it seems this success was the impetus for the Chronicle's turn to redbaiting in 1918 and an ominous sign of developments to come. the following year in 1919, Marion was struck by a lengthy and intense labor dispute which reflected many of the anxieties of the period. workers at the Rutenber Motor Company went on strike in August that year for "collective bargaining, [a] forty-eight-hour week, and an increase in wages averaging about 20 percent"; manufacturers subsequently attempted to crush the unions responsible for this organizing and a protracted period of unrest followed. strikebreakers were brought in and repeatedly assaulted. on one such occasion Mayor Hulley used the opportunity to denounce the strike at Rutenber, saying of the workers that "Everyone of you are I.W.W.’s, anarchists and everyone of you ought to be in the penitentiary. You are undesirable citizens." (ironically, this seems to have galvanized the IWW presence in Marion substantially; they had previously been nonexistent in the region.) later still, Hulley sanctified strikebreakers openly carrying firearms and—on several other occasions—allowed special police from the Illinois Glass Company (where a different strike was taking place) to operate in Marion, where they reportedly shot at least one Rutenber striker.

it is unclear from Stevens' account how the strike at Rutenber ended; however, in October 1919 feelings in the community apparently remained so intense that when a police officer assaulted a woman with a billy club, the community nearly lynched him and later burned him in effigy. the Chronicle charged that the incident was caused by IWW members and other radicals. (the paper later admitted only one person in the entire city had any involvement in the union.) antipathy toward socialism continued after this wave of labor unrest, however—in large part it defined the 1921 municipal elections, where both parties took aim at the growing Socialist vote. Republican Party members charged that socialists were morally degenerate and atheistic, and would separate from this scare business away and leave Marion permanently economically deprived. the Democratic Party, meanwhile, ran a vehemently anti-socialist and anti-communist campaign. their candidate for mayor, J. M. Wallace, decried socialists as treasonous for their position on World War I and argued that the recently-established Soviet Union was causing "starvation, sorrow, and suffering exist there as never before."

the extent to which this redbaiting campaign was effective is debatable, although support for direct impact is minimal; the Socialist for mayor, Harry Oatis, took a modestly improved 31% of the vote even though he came third in the election. the Socialist Party retained two city councilors after the municipal elections of 1921. within months of the elections, however, the party became effectively moribund. the primary causes were economic rebound and general dysfunction in the Socialist Party of Indiana; but, undoubtedly, vehement opposition from the major parties eventually took its toll on the party. the redbaiting and worries of Bolshevism also served as fertile ground for the Ku Klux Klan, which apparently recruited hundreds of members in Marion as the party disappeared from the scene. when, in November 1922, an estimated one-thousand Klan members paraded in Marion, it de facto marked a bookend for socialist political strength in the city.

introducing my election 2026 lists

it's been a little bit since i wrote an official blog post here, but i have been at work on the website as some of you have likely noticed. today the a list of people you should support in 2026 and a list of people you should oppose in 2026 pages are officially live and hooked up to my website. these lists will be revised regularly, and presumably they'll be on the main page until late 2026. for your convenience (especially if you're an RSS reader), here are the first revisions of both lists:

initial revision of the support list

why does this exist?

let me be up front: i am a socialist and not a partisan Democrat, and i support the Democratic Party for exclusively tactical reasons. my default position is that the Democratic Party is a terrible, ineffectual institution in the best of times.

unfortunately, as of writing, it has somehow sunk even lower than this and is currently failing to meet even the bare minimum that should be expected of an opposition party. in ideal circumstances this would lead to its replacement with a political faction willing to actually do something—but we live in a country with a deeply entrenched two-party political system, and alternative political groups are simply not in a position for this to happen right now. as such at least some change will have to come from within the Democratic Party itself.

i am therefore offering this handy guide of Democratic Party candidates who seem more oriented to this moment, and making the party even slightly more willing to do what needs to be done in these times. spread this around, give the candidates named here some appreciation, and feel free to submit any new candidates you happen to find (at any level of government) via email. corrections are also appreciated.

California

• California's 12th congressional district: Progressive consultant Saikat Chakrabarti
  This year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's former chief of staff (and co-founder of both Brand New Congress and the Justice Democrats) Saikat Chakrabarti is taking up the unenviable task of primarying long-time San Francisco incumbent Nancy Pelosi. Chakrabarti faces long odds, but is blistering of the Democratic Party and Pelosi in much needed ways, saying that:

  I'm running for Congress because our Democratic party leaders in DC are unfit to lead in the world as it is today. They don't have the strength to stop Trump and MAGA — and they don't have the vision or the voice to convince voters they can fix our biggest problems.

  Although he does not currently have a policy page up, in the mean time you might look to New Consensus—Chakrabarti's think tank which develops progressive policy—and its Mission for America as a guide for what he believes in.

Colorado

• Senator of Colorado: Attorney and professor Karen Breslin
  A one-time candidate for Congress (in Colorado's 4th congressional district) and unsuccessful District Attorney candidate in 2024, Breslin is currently the first candidate committed to primarying moderate Democrat John Hickenlooper. This time around she is motivated to run by the Trump administration's "threat to our system of government;" thus Breslin appears to be one of the first radical liberal candidacies. In policy, Breslin is essentially a progressive; while she is vague on specifics, she pledges to "fight the concentration of wealth in the hands of large corporations and the super-rich." Notably she also calls for "ending the genocide in Gaza" and calls out Hickenlooper's radical centrist shtick, saying:

  Hickenlooper calls himself an “extreme moderate” and believes moderate political positions are the way to improve conditions in this country, blaming the extremes of both parties for the conditions we find ourselves in. But there is nothing “moderate” about continuing to allow wealth inequality to expand, as somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of Americans financially struggle, living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Georgia

• Georgia's 5th congressional district: Software engineer Andres Castro
  In Georgia's 5th congressional district, political newcomer Andres Castro is seeking to primary incumbent Nikema Williams. Because Williams is already loosely progressive, Castro will have to run a very strong campaign to seriously challenge her; however, all indications are that he deserves your vote. You may bristle at his usage of AI, but he explicitly speaks working class rhetoric and gives his mission as "fight[ing] for economic justice, Medicare for All, and civil rights, ensuring that working families have a real voice in Washington." This strikes me as a very good vision to have in this moment. As he puts it:

  The Democratic Party has abandoned its working-class roots, succumbing to corporate influence at the expense of everyday Americans. I’m running for Congress in Georgia’s 5th District because I refuse to stand by while our party prioritizes profit over people. We need leadership that fights for economic justice, civil rights, and bold, transformative change—not incrementalism that keeps us struggling.

initial revision of the oppose list

why does this exist?

the Democratic Party is a terrible, ineffectual institution in the best of times, and as of writing it has somehow sunk even lower than this, failing to meet even the bare minimum that should be expected of an opposition party. while a mere changing of the guard will not fix this deep rot, the least you can do is withhold your votes from any openly feckless, spineless Democratic representatives who are immediately accountable to you as a voter.

i am therefore offering this handy guide of Democratic Party candidates who are just like that and, accordingly, do not deserve your votes in a primary for any reason. you should vote for literally any credible alternative to these people in a primary; if any candidates on this list have primary challengers, those will be noted. if they advance through your local primary, you should then strongly consider protest voting or sitting out entirely. spread this around, shame the people on this list relentlessly, and feel free to submit any new candidates you happen to find (at any level of government) who deserve scorn via email. corrections are also appreciated.

California

1. California's 6th congressional district: Ami Bera
   Bera is an otherwise anonymous representative who opted to be one of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green. This was an unwise decision in a district that can almost assuredly elect a better and more oppositional Democrat, and people should work toward doing that in this district.


2. California's 21st congressional district: Jim Costa
   Costa is a Blue Dog who has a long history of terrible positions and indefensible votes, even in the context of his competitive district. Among other lowlights, he voted to build the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015, helped Paul Ryan arm Saudi Arabia in opposition to the party whip, and was one of the "unbreakable nine" that threatened to derail the Biden administration's $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package in 2021. More recently Costa has supported the Laken Riley Act and was one of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green.

Colorado

1. Senator of Colorado: John Hickenlooper (Vote for KAREN BRESLIN instead)
   Despite Colorado being comfortably outside of the swing state column than—and perhaps because he fancies himself as an "extreme moderate" and fiscal conservative—incumbent Senator John Hickenlooper voted with Trump the most out of any non-swing state Senator. Needless to say: this kind of moderation is not what the moment calls for, and even supposing it somehow was Colorado could still do better than Hickenlooper's tired bipartisan shtick. Luckily, Hickenlooper has a primary challenger from the left that you can give the time of day to: Karen Breslin, who seems perfectly reasonable and explicitly calls out what is happening under this Trump administration as not normal and a threat to our country. Vote Karen Breslin in the 2026 primary.

Connecticut

1. Connecticut's 4th congressional district: Jim Himes
   Despite representing a safe Democratic district where Kamala Harris took 61% of the vote in 2024, Himes was one of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green. As with Bera's district, CT-04 can undoubtedly do better than someone who unnecessarily folds like a lawn chair on a vote of this nature.

Florida

1. Florida's 23rd congressional district: Jared Moskowitz
   Moskowitz, planly, kind of sucks and has not demonstrated himself to be a reliable voice on issues that Democrats should own. In fact, he frequently takes quite bad positions that Democrats should not own and are under no obligiation to. From his supporting vote on a Republican resolution to end the national COVID-19 emergency to his vote for a Republican-written Israel aid bill that cut funding from the IRS, to his denunciation of the International Criminal Court for investigating potential Israeli war crimes, Moskowitz has often shown outright reactionary judgement and a gross level of contrarianism in the press. This has continued with his support of the Laken Riley Act and being one of 10 Democrats to support the censure of Al Green, to say nothing of his cringeworthy entertaining of the illegal and Elon Musk-run "Department of Government Efficiency." The bar of expectations is honestly so low here that nearly any other Democrat would be an improvement in this seat over him.

Hawai'i

1. Hawai'i's 1st congressional district: Ed Case
   One of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green, Case is a Blue Dog with an established track record of being an impediment to Democratic priorities and having politics that are rather out of step with how his district votes otherwise. He was noted as one of the "unbreakable nine" that threatened to derail the Biden administration's $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package in 2021.

New York

1. New York's 3rd congressional district: Tom Suozzi
   Tom Suozzi has exactly one piece of goodwill going for him, and it is that he flipped this seat from a Republican. But between his disgusting attacks on trans people, his characterization of the Democratic Party as engaging in a “general attack on traditional values,” his support for the Laken Riley Act, and him being one of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green, he simply does not deserve your vote in any primary. Absent recanting these positions and apologizing he probably does not deserve your vote in a general election either, and you should sincerely consider protest voting if he is the nominee here in 2026.


2. New York's 4th congressional district: Laura Gillen
   Despite only being in office for two months and representing a district both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won, Laura Gillen has already staked out several bad positions and taken several terrible votes despite not needing to do so. She campaigned against congestion pricing despite not representing any part of New York City, voted for the Laken Riley Act, and was one of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green.


3. New York's 8th congressional district: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
   There is almost nothing positive to say about how Hakeem Jeffries is doing as House Minority Leader so far, even if you are a Democratic partisan, and accordingly there is no reason to support him in either the primary or general election for his district. His tenure thus far has been characterized by clamping down on protests against Donald Trump within the Democratic caucus, opposition to "distract[ions]" from party messaging that has been widely mocked, and a generally embarrassing amount of complaining about more confrontational tactics against the ongoing Republican effort to destroy the government. In blunt terms, it seems obvious Jeffries will not meet this moment and has no interest in doing so—and if this is the case, he should obviously not be rewarded by his constituents for this total abdication of responsibility. Vote for anyone else or, alternatively, stay home. It is not likely to matter in this completely one-sided district.

Pennsylvania

1. Pennsylvania's 6th congressional district: Chrissy Houlahan
   Houlahan was one of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green; after criticism for the vote, she justified her support for censuring Green with the horrible argument that “[...]I believe we need to recognize that we have rules in the House of Representatives and we have standards of decorum that we all presumably agree to, and we all need to agree to those standards so we can get the work for the people done and so we can not be a banana republic” despite explicitly acknowledging that “[Green's statement] wasn’t provocative or offensive. It was the truth.”

The "thin ice" list

People on this list do not warrant total opposition in my view, but have indicated political weakness and should be challenged to the greatest extent possible in the future if they continue to show weakness.

1. California's 39th congressional district: Mark Takano
   Although not explicitly condemnatory, Takano distanced himself from Representative Al Green on March 5, 2025, saying “There was one person that chose to, you know, be vocal, but the rest of us were looking for a, you know, let's say, a place where we could voice our dissent.” This rhetoric is particularly curious given that Takano himself walked out during the Joint Session.


2. Ohio's 9th congressional district: Marcy Kaptur
   Kaptur has taken some very cringeworthy votes to begin this congressional cycle, being one of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green and having supported the Laken Riley Act. However, she represents a district that has voted for Trump all three times at the presidential level and, without her on the ballot, likely would have elected a very conservative Republican. One of her previous opponents was far-right activist J.R. Majewski, and in 2024 she narrowly defeated a Republican who wanted to prosecute women for seeking abortions. With that being said, she is likely to wash out of Congress sooner or later (she is 78, and only very narrowly won in 2024); you should pressure her to show a spine in her remaining years in office.


3. Senator of Virginia: Mark Warner
   Although his record is not sufficiently abysmal to make the main list yet, you should definitely consider running against and withholding support for Mark Warner. He has taken a number of terrible votes for someone representing the state of Virginia, most notably his inexplicable support for the Laken Riley Act. Rhetorically, Warner has also been pathetic. On March 4, 2025, he stated that "I may disagree with the president, but I respect the office of the president. I'm probably not gonna be jumping up applauding a lot, but I owe him his due as president. The president has made great, great progress on border crossings. That's something we ought to celebrate." Don't be surprised to eventually see him make the main list if he keeps this up.


4. Washington's 3rd congressional district: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez
   One of 10 Democrats to censure Al Green, but Guesenkamp Perez gets some slack in recognition of her district repeatedly voting for Trump and her defeating fascist-sympathizer and far-right politician Joe Kent twice. She is thus far preferable—even with bad votes such as her censure vote—to any alternative this district would produce in her absence. However, it would also be preferable to have no Democrats—even those in Trump-supporting districts—voting for illegitimate censures like Green's.