Hoeppner Socialist And Only Challenger To Dwight Evens
By Bob Small
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is one of at least 20 communist/socialist parties listed in Politics1.com
Why so many? The factions run candidates as a way to get their message out.
The separations started in 1938 when CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA) expelled all Trotskyites, under orders from Joseph Stalin. who was then halfway through his dictatorship. Stalin allegedly ordered the assassination of Trotsky less than two years later.
The three Communist/ Socialist Parties had received over one million votes in the 1932 election, a high water mark for the Left in this country, with James Hudson Mauer of Pennsylvania being the running mate of Norman Thomas.
Chris Hoeppner is the only surviving member of four SWP members originally on the Pennsylvania ballot, a story that the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties are all too familiar with and requires a separate post.
He is the only opposition to incumbent Democrat Dwight Evans in the Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District as the Republicans neglected to put up a candidate. The district includes most of center city Philadelphia, along with parts of North and West Philly. It is the most Democratic congressional district in the nation. In 2020 it gave Joe Biden 91 percent of the vote.
Hoeppner is a freight rail conductor and a member of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation union (SMART). He lives in South Philly.
Chris was quoted in a September Article of the Militant, the offical newspaper of the SWP regarding the looming railroad strike strike.
“Railworkers need to get our voices heard. The big-business media is only going to tell the companies side of the story,” he said . “The problems we face, particularly the challenges of having a life outside of work, of spending time with our families, is widespread in the working class”.
