Myra Tanner Weiss, May 17, 1917 (Salt Lake City, Utah) – September 13, 1997 (Indio, Calif.)
VP candidate for Socialist Workers Party (aka Militant Workers Party aka Workers Party) (1952, 1956, 1960)
Running mate with nominee (1952, 1956, 1960): Farrell Dobbs (1907-1983)
Popular vote (1952): 10,312 (0.02%)
Popular vote (1956): 7,797 (0.01%)
Popular vote (1960): 40,175 (0.06%)
Electoral vote (1952, 1956): 0/531
Electoral vote (1960): 0/537
The campaign (1952):
Farrell Dobbs was once again nominated for President by the Socialist Workers Party, as he would be in 1956 and 1960. In all three elections his running mate was Myra Tanner Weiss, marking the first time in American history any party nominated the same ticket three elections in a row.
Long a SWP activist in the Los Angeles area, Weiss moved to New York in 1952 and worked as writer for the Militant. Her selection as a running mate was a balancing of the ticket in the sense that Myra and her husband Murry were considered from the Right wing of the Party and had their own distinct following.
The overly long 1952 SWP platform was anti-Stalin, anti-war, proposed the creation of a Labor Party, and demanded an end of the domestic anti-Communist persecutions by the US government.
They were on the ballot in seven states and performed poorly in all of them: New Jersey (0.16%), Wisconsin (0.08%), Minnesota (0.04%), New York (0.03%), Pennsylvania (0.03%), Michigan (0.02%) and Washington (0.01%).
The campaign (1956):
The Party had lost a number of members in the Detroit and Cleveland areas due a leadership dispute involving the definition and direction of Trotskyism.
With the death of Stalin in 1953 and Khrushchev's de-Stalinization efforts underway, the SWP openly courted refugees from the Communist Party USA who were looking for a new political home.
Weiss, ever the purist Trotskyite, attacked the CPUSA as much as she was the major political parties. One news source said she "condemned American Communists as complacent champions of bureaucracy and both Democrats and Republicans as 'big business' parties."
In a miserable election year for third parties in general, the SWP had a result that was more miserable than most. They were on the ballot in only four states but also waged a write-in campaign in California (0.00%): New Jersey (0.16%), Minnesota (0.08%), Pennsylvania (0.04%), and Wisconsin (0.04%).
The campaign (1960):
A small faction had left SWP in 1958 in a disagreement over the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The official Party line did not support the suppression of Hungarians on Trotskyist grounds. The Cuban Revolution was already starting to create further divisions within the SWP, especially as younger political activist recruits joined their ranks.
Murry Weiss suffered a stroke in 1960 around the same time the Weiss' were distancing themselves from the Party. It was dawning on Myra that SWP had some gender issues in their organization and that Marxist men could be just as sexist as capitalist men.
The CPUSA endorsed the Kennedy/Johnson ticket and in doing so took a swipe at the SWP: " ... it would be a still greater error to adopt a negative, defeatist, 'curses-on-both-your-houses' position" as this would "only encourage 'stay-at-home' moods and feed such sects as the SLP or the Trotskyites [i.e. the SWP], who render only lip service to socialist aims."
By the next election Murry and Myra Weiss would no longer be members of the Socialist Workers Party. Eventually they became involved with the Freedom Socialist Party.
The 1960 election results were, relatively speaking, a big upswing for the SWP. The Party was on the ballot in 11 states with New Jersey continuing to be their best showing at 0.41%. They finished with 0.20% in New York and Minnesota.
Election history:
1945 - Mayor of Los Angeles, Calif. (Nonpartisan) - defeated
1948 - US House of Representatives (Calif.) (Independent) - defeated
1949 - Mayor of Los Angeles, Calif. (Nonpartisan) - defeated
1950 - Los Angeles Board of Education (Nonpartisan) - defeated
1950 - US House of Representatives (Calif.) (Independent) - defeated
1953 - Mayor of Los Angeles, Calif. (Nonpartisan) - defeated
Other occupations: author, waitress, migrant worker, cannery worker, labor organizer
Buried: ?
Notes:
One of her opponents in the 1949 mayoral election was Jack B. Tenney, who she later competed with
in 1952 when he was the VP nominee for the Christian Nationalist Party.
Suffered a severe stroke ca. 1992 and died in a nursing home.
Joined the Workers Party in Salt Lake City 1935, became a founding member of the Socialist
Workers Party 1938.
Organizer of the Los Angeles SWP 1942-1952.
Brooklyn College BA 1969, NYU MA 1972
Originally studied to be a chemist but realized she might be employed to create weapons so she
dropped that field of study.
Dropped out of SWP ca. 1963, was part of the Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party
1978-1980, then joined the Freedom Socialist Party.
#11 on the "Most Famous Person Named Myra" list on playback.fm
Was socially and politically connected with Lyndon Larouche in the 1960s.
" ...Murray and Myra were typical party leaders, intolerant to a fault and convinced of their own
intellectual and political superiority to everybody else. At a big cocktail party in the 1950s, Junius
was having a pleasant chat with Alger Hiss who spotted Myra Tanner Weiss. Also at the party was a
left-wing Labour Party MP who Hiss mischievously decided to introduce to Myra. He brought the
two together and within a matter of minutes the two of them were castigating each other loudly and
had drawn a circle of onlookers about them, as if a fist-fight was going on. Hiss stood on the
sidelines enjoying the spectacle thoroughly."--Synopsis of an interview with Junius Scales.
Descended from Mormon pioneers.
