The Prohibition Party is gaining momentum. The nation’s oldest third party political organization, centered on advocating for ethical governance, promoting the public welfare, and social reform, has seen rejuvenation and growth within recent years. In 2016, the party’s presidential candidate, Jim Hedges, received the party’s largest vote result since 1988. The party has seen an influx of new members and interested people, many of whom are millennials. With this, the Prohibition Party is working to further this with increased messaging and recruitment efforts, organization building, and producing candidates for various offices.
Back in June, the Prohibition Party held its 2017 conference, which I wrote about in detail in this previous article. This included the addition of several new members of the party’s national committee, including myself. The Prohibition National Committee now has roughly twice the number of committeemen it had at the end of the 2015 conference.
Members of the Prohibition Party have been working to establish and grow state party organizations across the country. The Prohibition Party’s state organization in Pennsylvania is the oldest continuing state organization of ours. It is working on establishing new projects to help-encourage non-drinking, such as a video contest for middle and high school students. Before 2016, there were efforts to build state party organizations in Florida and Illinois, with the Florida Prohibition Party trying to regain its status as a state-recognized party. In Mississippi, a state prohibition committee was formed as part of our 2016 election efforts, and it is reported that it gained has state recognition. Since 2016, efforts to establish state party organizations have begun in states including Alabama, Missouri, and New York. I am currently working to organize the Prohibition Party of New York, and plan on writing an article about it sometime in the near future.
The Prohibition Party is also working to field candidates for various elected offices in the coming years. We are working to produce a set of congressional candidates and get them on the ballot in Mississippi and Tennessee. Mississippi only requires an organized state committee to be able to field congressional candidates, and Tennessee only requires a petition of 25 valid signatures from voters in the district. We already have Bill Bayes running for Mississippi’s 4th District, and are working on finding candidates to run in as many other districts as we can. If we succeed, then this would be the first time having a Prohibitionist on ballot for congress since the 1980’s. We also plan to run candidates for local and state offices where we can. For instance, Rev. Todd Cooper, the state chairman in Alabama, is running for city council in Warrior, Alabama. And if the people of New York vote "yes" on the state constitutional convention vote, I am planning on running to be a delegate.
If one is interested in running for office with the Prohibition Party, you can contact the party at prohibitionists@hotmail.com, bvbayes@yahoo.com, or write to P.O. Box 11, McConnellsburg, PA 17238.
