James Harris (Socialist Workers Party politician)

Harris was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Cleveland State University, where he was a founding member of the Black Student Union.^[9] He became a member of the Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and later served on its national staff in Washington, D.C.^[3] He was later an organizer in the Young Socialist Alliance and ran for the school board in Cleveland as a Socialist Workers Party Candidate.^[3][10][11] Harris was endorsed by mayoral candidate Sydney Stapleton, but was defeated in the general election.^[11] A supporter of the Cuban revolution, Harris participated in the second Venceremos Brigade to Cuba in 1969 along with hundreds of other youth from the United States.^[1] Brigade members cut sugar cane for a couple of months in order to maximize the country's sugar production.^[1]

In 1977 Harris moved from Atlanta to New York City in order to join the staff of the National Student Coalition Against Racism, which supported school desegregation.^[12] He later became a national chairperson of the coalition.^[3][12] In 1988 Harris was the Socialist Workers Party candidate in New York for the United States Senate.^[13] Harris finished seventh with 11,239 votes.^[14] Harris lived and worked in Detroit in the early 1990s and was a member of the United Auto Workers.^[3] He also helped found the Peoria, Illinois branch of the Socialist Workers Party.^[3]

The Socialist Workers Party nominated Harris as their presidential candidate in the 1996 presidential election,^[15][16] Laura Garza was his running mate.^[3] He supported abortion rights, proposed raising the minimum wage to $12, and was broadly noninterventionist.^[16] The ticket drew 8,476 votes (0.01% of the national popular vote) and spent a total of $180,000.^[16][17]

Harris once again ran for president in 2000 with Margaret Trowe as his running mate.^[18] In the state of Florida, Harris was initially rewarded 9,888 votes in Volusia County despite winning a total of just above 500 statewide.^[19] After requesting a recount he was found to have only received 8 votes, a "computer disk glitch" was described as the cause.^[19]

In 2004 and 2008, Harris was a stand-in candidate for Róger Calero in states where Calero could not qualify for the ballot due to being born in Nicaragua.^[6][7] He was on the ballot in roughly a quarter of states both times and received 7,411 and 2,424 votes in both campaigns.^[8] Harris was then the SWP candidate in the 2009 Los Angeles mayoral election, receiving 2,057 votes (0.89%).^[20] Carlos Alvarez, the other far-left candidate (from the Party for Socialism and Liberation) received 1.11%.^[21]

In 2012 Harris ran for President with Maura DeLuca as his running mate.^[8][22] The ticket received 4,115 votes, the lowest total in the party's history, with one of the party's house candidates performing better than the ticket.^[23] He was on the ballot in Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington and was a declared write-in candidate in the state of New York.^[24]

On the 60th anniversary of the Korean War's ceasefire, Harris joined the Socialist Workers Party delegation to Pyongyang.^[25] He endorsed Rachele Fruit for president in 2024.^[26]