Peter Isaac Diamondstone (December 19, 1934 – August 30, 2017)[3] was an American lawyer and socialist politician from the state of Vermont, best known as a perennial candidate and co-founder of the Liberty Union Party. He ran for various Vermont political offices, always unsuccessfully, in every election cycle from 1970 until 2016.[4]
Early life
Diamondstone was born in the New York borough of The Bronx in 1934 and raised in the borough of Queens. His father was a dentist and a socialist.[5] In 1944, at the age of nine, Diamondstone got a job passing out flyers for the fourth presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956.[6]
Diamondstone received a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1960 and moved to Vermont in 1968, where he soon entered the political scene.[3][5]
Career
Diamondstone, along with former U.S. Congressman William H. Meyer, Bernie Sanders (who is a current U.S. Senator), and others, founded the Liberty Union Party in 1970.[7] From then until his death, he ran every two years for various political offices, never receiving more than 8% of the vote in general elections.[3]
While Diamondstone usually carried the Liberty Union banner in his political campaigns, he occasionally ran under other party labels and even entered Democratic and Republican primaries. In 2000, he was the official Democratic nominee for U.S. House of Representatives and placed a distant third, behind Bernie Sanders (running as an independent) and Republican Karen Ann Kerin.
Diamondstone arrived late to a debate for U.S. Congress in 1980, and was told he would not be able to participate. He remained in the debate area and was arrested.[5] He was also arrested in 1996 while attempting to participate in a debate for U.S. Congress, for which he was a candidate. In 2006, Diamondstone was escorted off stage and charged with disorderly conduct after cursing at students in the audience and repeatedly speaking past his allotted time during a U.S. Senate debate.[2]
Once a friend and political ally of Bernie Sanders, the two gradually drifted apart as Sanders transitioned into mainstream electoral politics. In 1984, Diamondstone passed out anti-Sanders flyers, calling him a "Quisling" and criticizing him for endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale. He did not endorse Sanders' 2016 presidential candidacy and referred to him as a war criminal for supporting the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.[2][8]
Diamondstone, while coming from a Jewish family, was an opponent of Zionism, saying, "Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. As a matter of fact, probably about 90 percent of all Zionists are Christians." He endorsed withdrawing all military aid to Israel and criticized "war crimes and genocide" perpetrated by the Israeli government.[11]
Ideologically, he identified as a "nonviolent revolutionary socialist".[8] He argued it is an imperative for capitalism to end, to be replaced by a socialist economic system.[11]
Personal life
Diamondstone married Doris Lake in 1957. They had four children.[2] He was an atheist.[12]
Diamondstone died at his home in Dummerston, Vermont on August 30, 2017, at age 82. According to his wife, he was suffering from several ailments, including heart and kidney diseases, and had been recently released from the hospital.[13][14] Diamondstone also suffered from leg sores which required him to wear shorts to stay comfortable.[2]
Upon his death, Bernie Sanders said, "I first met Peter Diamondstone over 45 years ago. While I have not had any real contact with him for many, many years, I have the feeling that he never changed. Peter was a very independent thinker, unafraid to express his (often controversial) point of view on any subject. As a result, he forced people to examine and defend their own positions. No small thing. In his own way, Peter played an important role in Vermont politics for many decades."[8]
^While Diamondstone generally ran as a member of the Liberty Union Party, he also ran in the Democratic, Republican, and Progressive primaries for statewide office on several occasions and also as the candidate of the Socialist and Organic Life parties.
