Posted on 11/14/2025 10:38:29 PM PST by Angelino97
A member of the Communist Party USA was elected this month to the Ithaca Common Council in New York on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines, defeating an independent candidate in a two-way race for the city’s Ward 5 seat.
A November 7 People’s World report shared by the Communist Party USA confirmed that Hannah Shvets, a Cornell University student elected November 4 as an Alderperson, is a member of the organization’s Ithaca club. The report added that she also ran with support from the Democratic Socialists of America and its student affiliate, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, with the Cornell chapter describing her as “the youngest elected endorsed by DSA in history.”
“The Shvets campaign, which leveraged a working-class coalition against a clique of property owners, demonstrated the potential for exceptional electoral success when emphasis is placed on community coalition-building rather than a strategy of public relations and personal relationships among the existing political elite,” the People’s World report reads. It further notes that she was endorsed by advocacy groups like the United Auto Workers, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, and the Ithaca Teachers Association.
Before seeking office, Shvets was active in local organizing around labor and student activism. According to her campaign website, she worked with the Tompkins County Workers’ Center, where she assisted with labor outreach and community education. She also participated in student organizing efforts at Cornell University and local campaigns advocating for workplace protections and affordable housing.
Shvets’s campaign centered on labor rights, housing affordability, and tenant protections. Her policy proposals included creating a local Workers Rights Committee, adopting a Just Cause employment standard, establishing a city-specific minimum wage, and implementing rent stabilization measures. She also called for expanded public transit and community-owned renewable energy projects.
While she ran on two ballot lines, unofficial county returns list only Shvets’s combined total. She received 243 votes, or 64.12%, compared with 134 for G.P. “Gepe” Zurenda, who ran as an independent on the Affordable Ithaca Party line. It was a rematch for the two, as Zurenda had earlier lost the Democratic primary to Shvets by 11 votes. No Republican or Conservative candidate contested the Ward 5 race.
A customer came by from Ithaca. I asked where the term “EVIL Ithaca” came from. She, well-educated, said “Never heard of it”.
Ithaca...City of EVIL !
Crammed and communist.
Commie stake over of the state
Expect more of this as the middle class withers away.
‘DSA’. Folks need to wake up. But kitty tiktoks.
Cornell University student elected
Gee I wonder where the idea of Communism came from?.
Didn’t Ithica just elect a Commie mayor? New York has become a cesspool of far left nut cases.
“The workers control the means of production” meets Maynard G Krebs
“WORK?!!”
-——243 votes, or 64.12%——
The communist apparently won with only 243 votes.
If there are almost no voters, is it really a democracy?
only 243 votes.
Is it really a democracy?
NO it’s called laziness for people who let it pass.
Ithaca USED to be a beautiful place- 50 years ago....
People pay so little attention to off-season local races and that is a damn shame. It’s where the power of the people begins, and if this continues, it’s where it dies.
This won’t end until N Y becomes an independent communist muslim Country.
This is what happens when 18 year olds are given the vote - Ithaca is a town is full of lefty college students.
I remember voting in my first election at 19 - the voting age had just been lowered - for Jimmy Carter. I was in college in a different town from my own, allowed to vote in their local elections.
Haven’t voted for a single Democrat since...
City of Ithaca to raise parking rates starting in new year
Bigly.
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