SOCIALIST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE REPORTS RECORD FUNDRAISING
Thursday, 17 April 2008

Spring Hill, Florida: Brian Moore, Socialist Party USA presidential nominee, today filed, via surface mail, the campaign's first financial report, postmarked on time, with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), for the period ending March 31, 2008.

Receipts totaled $9,516.20, and total disbursements totaled $6,356.95. The campaign has a balance of, cash on hand at close of the reporting period, of $3,159.25.

62 contributions from 42 people comprised the total amount of receipts received by the Socialist candidate. The 42 contributors come from 12 states, with Florida, Illinois and the state of Washington leading the way.

Moore hopes to raise a minimum of $5,000 from each of 20 states in order to gain matching funds from the federal government once that is achieved.

The Moore/Alexander '08 ticket hopes to gain ballot access in 20 states for the November, 2008 election. They have qualified in the state of Vermont under the Liberty Union Party. The ticket hopes to qualify in other states under both the Socialist Party name and through Independent or other minor party status.

Moore said the campaign has "already collected enough signatures in New Jersey to gain ballot access" and expects to complete submitting its qualification papers and necessary number of electors in the states of Florida, Colorado, Louisiana and Tennessee by the end of April. Some additional states the campaign has targeted, expecting to collect the necessary signatures for ballot access, are Rhode Island, Delaware, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Utah, Iowa and Washington.

The campaign is also taking a hard look at Kansas and Nebraska for possible attempts to gain ballot access. Expected states to qualify in, New Mexico and Hawaii, had their deadlines pass April 1 and April 4th without success. Moore said Hawaii only required 663 signatures but the expense of one or two petitioners to travel that far and be housed for three or four days would have cost the campaign about $4,000 or $5,000, which would have bankrupted the campaign.

Moore has a lawsuit pending against the state of Ohio to overturn the state's prohibition of not allowing unregistered Ohio residents or out-of-state petitioners to collect the necessary signatures. A decision from the courts is expected in the next two to four weeks. However, even it the Socialists win a legal victory, Ohio requires 5,000 minimum signatures, meaning the campaign will have to collect 7,000 signatures to hedge against errors or illegible signatures.

Presidential ballot access is difficult for third party candidates, especially in states like Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Maryland, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and California, where the signature requirements are from 22,000 up to 158,000 registered voters. Candidates and their campaigns usually have to collect 30% more than the minimum just to avoid the petitions being thrown out due to incorrect addresses, illegible information and incomplete signatures or circulator data.

Ironically, the three states that the two final Democratic candidates and expected Republican nominee come from have some of the more difficult signature requirements (Arizona (McCain) - 21,500; Illinois (Obama) 25,000; and New York (Clinton) 15,000.

Compounding the difficulty, said Moore, is that the Democratic Party has "aggressively challenged minor party signatures, filed lawsuits against Independent candidates or minor parties over any small irregularities, and made every effort to exclude additional parties from participating for fear of splitting its own Democratic vote." Moore calls the democratic party "hooligans, spoilers and undemocratic despots!" The socialist candidate likes to remind Democrats that Bill Clinton would never have been president if it wasn't for third party candidate Ross Perot.

The Socialist Party is also making an aggressive effort to register officially as "Write-In" candidates in most of the states where they don't expect to gain ballot access.

The Socialist Party, in its heyday, under the leadership of Eugene V. Debs, gained over 900,000 votes in 1912 and 1920, for 9% and 6% of the vote. Following 1920, the party took a deep plunge in popularity because of the unfair labeling by the "Red Scare," and the Espionage and Sedition Acts applied in the 1920's in response to the Socialists' antiwar efforts during WWI. Then McCarthyism and the Stalin Era in the late 40's and 50's, and the Cold War further unfairly damaged the party and gave it a nasty image. Its membership declined over the 20th century from over 100,000 members to about 3,000 members presently nationwide.

The Socialist Party gained approximately 10,000 votes in the 2004 presidential election. Moore, an anti-Iraq war activist also, said part of his campaign is to reinstill Americans' appreciation of the rich heritage of the Socialist Party and what it has done positively for this country. The Socialists were some of the "first advocates of woman's suffrage, child labor laws, social security, the 40-hour work week, collective bargaining, unemployment insurance and Medicare," Moore stated.

---END---