OH: City Beat Profiles Dan La Botz, Socialist Party Candidate for US Senate

From City Beat:

As Republicans and Tea Party members continue to throw around the term “socialist” as a sort of epithet, LaBotz, a Clifton resident, is one of just three national candidates from the Socialist Party, and the only one running for a Senate seat. The wry 65-year-old, running against Republican candidate Rob Portman and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, a Democrat, isn’t bothered by the name-calling, though. In fact, he’s relishing it.

As opponents against President Obama’s health-care bill increased their “socialist” rhetoric, he says, it has only seemed to draw more interest in Socialist Party ideas, helping turn his candidacy from a mere curiosity to an alternative that’s gaining attention. “While the Tea Party has been attacking socialism, I find many Ohioans, especially young people, interested in the socialist alternative,” LaBotz says.

Free, or at least affordable, health care, better education, being paid living wages, having a voice in the workplace and being able to retire with dignity — these are socialist staples, he says. And as unemployment climbs, home foreclosures share daily front pages with natural disasters and schools continue to struggle, LaBotz is finding more sympathetic voters.