Politics

Activist seeking nation's top office

The outspoken war critic has lost three other political races but says he can't just "sit idly by."

By MICHAEL KRUSE, Times Staff Writer
Published August 22, 2007

Brian Moore, 64, has less than two months until the Socialist Party convention to spread the word about his platform. The Party's convention is Oct. 19-21 in St. Louis.
	[Times photo: Keri Wiginton (2006)]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Keri Wiginton (2006)] Brian Moore's main platform is ending the war in Iraq. Juan Carlos (left), 10, is Moore's adopted son and the grandson of his wife Peggy.

SPRING HILL - Hernando County's political Don Quixote is back at it.

Brian Moore, 64, the outspoken antiwar activist who has run as a Democrat and as an Independent for mayor of Washington, D.C., for Congress and for U.S. Senate, now wants to run for president - as a dues-paying member of the Socialist Party.

The office he's seeking is new to him. So is the approach.

His reasons for running are not.

"The society's unbalanced," he said Tuesday at his home off County Line Road. "It's not equal. It's not fair. There's all kinds of problems.

"You can't sit idly by and watch us go down the drain."

He submitted his application for the Socialist Party's nomination last week. He also did the same thing with the California Peace and Freedom Party. His campaign manager is Darcy Richardson, the Jacksonville man who ran his Senate campaign last year and is the author of Others, a history of American third-party candidates.

The Socialist Party convention is Oct. 19-21 in St. Louis.

That gives Moore not quite two months to spread the word.

Moore is a semiretired health care executive recruiter with a wife who works at a bank and a 10-year-old adopted son. He spent time in a Franciscan seminary and in the Peace Corps and founded the Nature Coast Coalition for Peace and Justice. He thinks the war is illegal and immoral and has called President Bush a tyrant, a criminal and "a danger to the nation."

Moore has never won an election - never even come close - but he keeps running.

In last year's Senate race, he was hoping to get 5 percent of the vote, but he didn't even get 0.5.

It didn't take long, though, before he started having "town hall meetings" on the war. He was desperate for discourse on American democracy instead of American Idol.

And since last year's election, he watched more and more headlines on taxes going up, and insurance going up, and the state jobless rate going up, and all the foreclosures, and he thought: Maybe now. Maybe people are mad enough. Finally.

So he started thinking about the presidential election in '08.

He's not just antiwar. He wants universal health care and a living wage. No more tax cuts for the rich. He hates big money and the two-party system.

He looked at the Reform Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party.

And then he looked at the Socialist platform. He filled out the questionnaire for the party's nomination. It can be seen at www.votebrianmoore.com.

Moore matches up.

He supports affirmative action.

He supports a woman's right to choose.

He supports equal rights for noncitizens, and gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals.

He supports socialized health care.

"One of my functions, if nominated," he wrote in an e-mail to this reporter, "will be to make 'socialism' a more acceptable term in our country."

Socialism, he wrote in his questionnaire, "is a commitment to the creation of an egalitarian society versus the inequalities of wealth and power."

"Capitalism has failed," he said Tuesday. "Capitalism and corporate America is killing America. The greed is killing everything - our health care, our job opportunities.

"This," he said of the Socialist ticket, "is a natural fit for me.

"I want people to say, 'Hey, maybe I'm a Socialist, too.' "

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 813 909-4617.

[Last modified August 21, 2007, 21:15:40]