LaRouche Ballot Drive Is On Target

Already qualified for the primary ballot in one-third of his campaign's 36 target states, Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche is now considered one of the "major" Democratic candidates, though the Democratic Party would still prefer not to admit this ironic truth. On Dec. 17, when LaRouche was certified for the Feb. 10 Virginia primary ballot by the state Democratic Party, wire services reported: "Dems certify nine candidates for February primary." In fact, the Democratic Party had no choice but to certify LaRouche along with Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, Kucinich, Gephardt, Clark, Dean, and Sharpton (Carol Moseley Braun did not qualify), because LaRouche surpassed the state's requirements by submitting 22,000 signatures, gathered from voters in every Congressional district in Virginia.

In Texas, where LaRouche youth movement members submitted LaRouche's filing documents and fee to the Texas Democratic Party on Dec. 18, a party official showed them a letter from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) stating that the national Party intended to attempt to exclude delegates won by LaRouche in the primaries, but said pointedly: "We are happy to have LaRouche on the ballot." Similarly in other states, the Democratic Party has reluctantly admitted that LaRouche has a political machine which must be reckoned with. The DNC letter notified state Democratic parties that they should not attempt to exclude LaRouche from the ballot in any state-run primaries.

LaRouche's drive for ballot status in at least 36 states is intersecting a fight within Democratic Party circles over how to respond to LaRouche. He is already on the ballot in 12 states (California, Missouri, New Hampshire, Delaware, Tennessee, Vermont, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Arizona, Virginia, Rhode Island, Texas) and in Washington, D.C. Volunteers are petitioning in Wisconsin, New York, Oregon, Indiana, and Ohio to place LaRouche on the ballot, and he will be qualified for the ballot in 20 states by mid-January. He has qualified so far in every state where he has applied to be on the ballot, including California where the Secretary of State placed him on the ballot as a "nationally recognized" candidate.

Meanwhile, LaRouche's youth movement is shaping the political environment in the nation's capital—with its Jan. 13 primary—and in early primary states, with their innovative and creative style of campaigning, which includes taking the campaign directly to the streets—especially in the poorer areas of the District—and inviting people young and old to join the campaign to Dump Cheney and bring in LaRouche. To this end, LaRouche has announced a multi-pronged offensive to further ramp up the "hot phase" of his campaign. On New Year's Day, the campaign will launch an intensified buildup for a prime-time TV broadcast in Washington, D.C., just prior to the District's Jan. 13 Democratic Party primary election. In New Hampshire, where the primary is Jan. 27, expansion will also center on a major TV broadcast by LaRouche, coupled with three weeks of intensive campaigning involving public events and aggressive youth organizing.

Whether or not the Democratic National Committee and its chairman Terry McAuliffe still intend to treat LaRouche like the plague and bar his delegates—going back to the days when Donald Fowler and Joseph Andrew ran the DNC—the LaRouche Youth Movement intends to change the rules of the game. They intend that not only will LaRouche win the Washington, D.C. primary, but their organizing will transform the political geometry in the country so that the Democratic Party will wake up and realize that LaRouche's voice must be heard.

As LaRouche said in his Dec. 12 webcast, "We are coming out as a movement, not as a bunch of voters to be polled outside the poll, but as a movement, to move in and let them know we're there. We are a movement. We are no longer going to be stepped on. We are a movement! And that's what we need in politics in this country today."

As the youth plan new flanking actions to expand the campaign in ways never before thought possible, LaRouche himself laid out the stakes in answer to a question from a Democratic consultant at his Dec. 12 Washington, D.C. webcast: "If I'm not running as an acknowledged candidate of the party by the party machine, then none of the candidates will ever make it."