| America's Socialist Experiment |
Socialists have been elected mayor, to city councils, and to county commissions in the USA. Emil Seidel was the first socialist mayor in the USA. He was elected mayor of Milwaukee in 1910. Other socialists were elected to the city council. Another socialist, Victor Berger, was elected to the House of Representatives, to represent Milwaukee in Washington, DC.
By concentrating on Milwaukee, I am downplaying the extent to which socialists were elected mayor in cities in the USA. Wikipedia has a list, and so does the University of Washington. More than 130 mayors were socialists. Maybe I want to read David R. Berman's 2022 book, Socialist Mayors in the United States: Governing in an Era of Municipal Reform, 1900-1920.
Wisconsin is a democracy. Up until 1960, the mayor was mostly a socialist. Daniel Hoan, the second socialist mayor, was elected in 1916. Frank Zeider, the third socialist mayor, was elected in 1948.
The socialists focused on cleaning up Milwaukee, both figuratively and literally. For the former, they fought corruption and graft. They obtained their name, Sewer Socialists, from the latter. Introducing sanitation, electric, and power systems was an importance advance in their day.
The name, I guess, was coined by Morris Hillquit, a prominent member of the Socialist Party of America (1901 – 1972). He was tired of the boasting from Milwaukee socialists. But they had good cause to boast.
As I understand it, German immigrants, who fled to the US after participating in the failed 1848 revolutions, were an important current for the development of the sewer socialists. Nicholas Howland, in the link, makes an explicit link to Eduard Bernstein's reformism. Bernie Sanders, the former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, can be said to be in this tradition. Ruth Messinger, a former city council member in New York City, borough president of Manhattan, and co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America is maybe another example.
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