Socialists file for governor, 3rd congressional district, ag secretary

Candidates from the Socialist Workers Party are filing the paperwork today to put their names on the November ballot for the Iowa governor’s race and for the third district congressional seat currently held by Congressman Leonard Boswell (D-Des Moines).  Read the news release belowl

Socialists to challenge Culver and Branstad, Boswell and Zaun

David Rosenfeld, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor,  and Rebecca Williamson, SWP candidate for U.S. Representative, to file nominating petitions

“Workers must fight to defend ourselves in the
face of the economic depression,” Rosenfeld says

avid Rosenfeld will hold a press conference on Thursday, July 29, at 11 a.m., on the west steps of the state capitol in Des Moines after filing petitions to join the race for governor. Rosenfeld and Helen Meyers, SWP candidate for Lt. Governor, will present more than 2,000 signatures to the state elections office. They will also file petitions for Rebecca Williamson, SWP candidate for U.S. Representative in the 3rd Congressional District.

Margaret Trowe, the SWP candidate for Secretary of Agriculture, will accompany the other candidates.

“Workers must fight to defend ourselves in the face of the economic depression. My campaign proposes concrete measures to protect workers and farmers from the ravages the deepest capitalist crisis since the 1930s,” Rosenfeld said.
“My supporters and I have spoken with thousands of people across Iowa as we gathered signatures. We get a good response to our call for workers to organize unions and strengthen those that exist in order to raise wages, and to say no to speedup and dangerous working conditions. Workers need to break with the parties that represent the dictatorship of capital—the Republicans and Democrats. We need a labor party based on a fighting union movement that will demand millions of jobs producing housing, schools, and levees, and the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.”

Rosenfeld, 47, is a tire factory worker. He ran for Des Moines city council in 2009.

Williamson, 28, is an assembly worker in Ankeny.

Bios are below.

David Rosenfeld, 47, is a tire factory worker, and a member of the United Steel Workers local 310. Rosenfeld is an active opponent of Washington’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He has participated in marches demanding legalization of all immigrants. He has joined dairy farmers in protesting conditions leading to farm foreclosures. In 2009, he ran for Des Moines city council.

Helen Meyers, 65, an industrial worker and unionist, is a longtime defender of a woman’s right to abortion. She participated in an immigrant rights rally in Des Moines last May 1.

Margaret Trowe for secretary of agriculture. Trowe, 62, is a longtime unionist who has worked in the meatpacking, apparel, and rubber industries. She is a defender of the Cuban Revolution, and participated in a tour by small farmers from Illinois, Wisconsin, Vermont, and Georgia to Cuba in 2000.

Rebecca Williamson for U.S. Representative, 3rd Congressional District. Williamson, 28, is an assembly worker in Ankeny. She has been part of union organizing efforts in Chicago, IL and St. Paul, MN. A women’s rights activist, she helped defend Dr. Leroy Carhart’s Bellevue, Nebraska abortion clinic from rightist harassment last year. Williamson is fluent in Spanish.