Richard Dien Winfield
From Ballotpedia
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Richard Dien Winfield (Democratic Party) ran in a special election to the U.S. Senate to represent Georgia. He lost in the special general election on November 3, 2020.
Winfield completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.
In 2020, Winfield participated in a Candidate Conversation hosted by Ballotpedia and EnCiv. Click here to view the recording.
Biography
Richard Dien Winfield was born in New York, New York. He obtained a bachelor's degree from Yale College in 1972, a master's degree from Heidelberg University in 1973, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1977. He began teaching philosophy at the University of Georgia in 1982. As of 2020, he was the distinguished research professor of philosophy.[1]
As of 2020, Winfield was a member of the Communications Workers of America Organizing Local 3265 and a member of the Athens Clarke County Democratic Party.[1]
Elections
2020
See also: United States Senate special election in Georgia, 2020 (Loeffler vs. Warnock runoff)
General runoff election
Special general runoff election for U.S. Senate Georgia
Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent Kelly Loeffler in the special general runoff election for U.S. Senate Georgia on January 5, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Raphael Warnock (D) | 51.0 | 2,289,113 | |
| Kelly Loeffler (R) | 49.0 | 2,195,841 | ||
| Total votes: 4,484,954 | ||||
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General election
Special general election for U.S. Senate Georgia
The following candidates ran in the special general election for U.S. Senate Georgia on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Raphael Warnock (D) | 32.9 | 1,617,035 | |
| ✔ | Kelly Loeffler (R) | 25.9 | 1,273,214 | |
| Doug Collins (R) | 20.0 | 980,454 | ||
| Deborah Jackson (D) | 6.6 | 324,118 | ||
| Matt Lieberman (D) | 2.8 | 136,021 | ||
| Tamara Johnson-Shealey (D) | 2.2 | 106,767 | ||
| Jamesia James (D) | 1.9 | 94,406 | ||
| Derrick Grayson (R) | 1.0 | 51,592 | ||
| Joy Felicia Slade (D) | 0.9 | 44,945 | ||
| Annette Davis Jackson (R) | 0.9 | 44,335 | ||
| Kandiss Taylor (R) | 0.8 | 40,349 | ||
| A. Wayne Johnson (R) | 0.7 | 36,176 | ||
| Brian Slowinski (L) | 0.7 | 35,431 | ||
| Richard Dien Winfield (D) | 0.6 | 28,687 | ||
| Ed Tarver (D) | 0.5 | 26,333 | ||
| Allen Buckley (Independent) | 0.4 | 17,954 | ||
| John Fortuin (G) | 0.3 | 15,293 | ||
| Elbert Bartell (Independent) | 0.3 | 14,640 | ||
| Valencia Stovall (Independent) | 0.3 | 13,318 | ||
| Michael Todd Greene (Independent) | 0.3 | 13,293 | ||
| Rod Mack (Independent) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 7 | ||
| Total votes: 4,914,368 | ||||
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Watch the Candidate Conversation for this race!
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
2018
General election
General election for U.S. House Georgia District 10
Incumbent Jody Hice defeated Tabitha Johnson-Green in the general election for U.S. House Georgia District 10 on November 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Jody Hice (R) | 62.9 | 190,396 | |
| Tabitha Johnson-Green (D) | 37.1 | 112,339 | ||
| Total votes: 302,735 (100.00% precincts reporting) | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Patrick Moorehead (Independent)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Georgia District 10
Tabitha Johnson-Green defeated Chalis Montgomery and Richard Dien Winfield in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Georgia District 10 on May 22, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Tabitha Johnson-Green | 50.2 | 17,020 | |
| Chalis Montgomery | 26.5 | 8,971 | ||
| Richard Dien Winfield | 23.3 | 7,911 | ||
| Total votes: 33,902 | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Kellie Collins (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Georgia District 10
Incumbent Jody Hice defeated Bradley Griffin and Joe Hunt in the Republican primary for U.S. House Georgia District 10 on May 22, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Jody Hice | 78.9 | 42,960 | |
| Bradley Griffin | 10.7 | 5,846 | ||
| Joe Hunt | 10.4 | 5,644 | ||
| Total votes: 54,450 | ||||
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Endorsements
Winfield received the following endorsements in 2018:[2]
- Rita Scott
- Andrew Young - Former congressman & former mayor of Atlanta
- Jim Barksdale (D) - 2016 congressional candidate
- Alyssa Milano
- Shaun King
- Ady Barkan
- Bradley Whitford
- Sandy Darity
Campaign themes
2020
Candidate Conversations
Candidate Conversations is a virtual debate format that allows voters to easily get to know their candidates through a short video Q&A.
Click below to watch the conversation for this race.
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Richard Dien Winfield completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Winfield's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am a philosopher, author, professor, husband, father, union member, and former candidate for the House of Representatives. Since 1982 I have been teaching philosophy in Athens at the University of Georgia. In the Spring of that year, my one and only wife came from India to marry me. She became a lawyer, first practicing employment law on the side of employees, and then practicing immigration law. We have three grown children who all went to the public schools in Athens. I have published 21 books of philosophy and this year a book of political policy, Democracy Unchained. I am a member of the Communications Workers of America Organizing Local 3265, which is seeking to unionize all employees at our state university system. In 2018 I ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Primary for the US House of Representatives in Georgia's 10th Congressional District. This January I went on unpaid leave and entered the race for US Senate in Georgia's special election. I am running to bring to Washington the fight to fulfill our social rights, without which we cannot uphold our family welfare, social freedom, or political participation. In this pivotal election year, we must overcome the health, social, and political crises we face with the bold transformative solutions that will forge a new birth of freedom before it is too late.
We must secure the economic independence on which all our freedoms depend by wiping out unemployment and poverty income with a Federal Job Guarantee offering work at a fair wage serving our community to anyone willing and able to work, as well as equivalent replacement income to the disabled and retirees.
- We must secure the health of our planet and of every individual with a Green New Deal achieving 100% renewable energy by 2030 and with Medicare for All covering physical, mental, dental, and long term care with no premiums, no copays, and no deductibles, funded fairly by highly graduated wealth and income taxes.
- We must provide real equal opportunity for men and women alike by evening the playing field between employees and employer with automatic elections for unionization and worker seats on corporate boards and by balancing work and family with paid family leave, 9 month paid parental leave, one month paid vacations, free public child and elder care, and $900 monthly child allowances.
I am passionately committed to bring to the center of our national political agenda the fulfillment of our social rights to housing, education, and legal representation. To end homelessness and make decent housing available for all we must ban evictions, foreclosures, and utility turnoffs and make mandatory payment rescheduling, introduce national rent and mortgage stabilization, and use the Federal Job Guarantee to construct a sufficient supply of affordable housing, To give everyone access to quality education at all levels, we must introduce equitable federal funding of public schools, have free tuition and stipends at public post-secondary educational institutions, and forgive student debt. To enable everyone to defend their rights, we must ban cash bail, for profit prisons and probation services, fees for justice system services, and plea bargaining, and introduce Legal Care for All, a public legal insurance program allowing everyone to go to any lawyer and have personal civil and criminal legal counsel fully paid for by fair taxation. With these measures, we can forge a new birth of freedom and save our democracy.
To understand my political philosophy, I recommend that citizens read my book, The Just State: Rethinking Self-Government, published in 2005 by Humanities Books. It provides a detailed philosophical account of what the state should be and to what extent the United States Constitution measures up to the ideal of political justice. Readers who want a less philosophical account should look at my recent book of political policy: Democracy Unchained: How We Should Fulfill Our Social Rights and Save Self-Government, published in 2020 by Deeds Publishing, which argues in detail for the transformative measures I intend to bring to the United States Senate after my election.
I am committed to the investigation of truth and justice and to convincing my fellow Americans to perfect our democracy and secure all our rights. My diligent and stubborn theoretical labors over the last forty years are on display in the twenty one books of philosophy that can be found in all the great research libraries of the world. Like Socrates, I seek to be a gadfly of truth and refrain from pandering to anyone. My two political campaigns (my 2018 race for the US House of Representatives in Georgia's 10th District and my current 2020 race for the US Senate) exhibit my focus on the issues, rather than on ingratiating myself. I am not concerned with using politics to obtain fame and riches.
I hope to leave to humanity a body of philosophical investigation that will help guide generations to come in their search for truth and justice. My ambitions for my political engagements are more limited, but whatever my electoral success, I hope to change the political conversation so that more of my fellow Americans join me in advancing the real solutions to our failures to fulfill our defining mission as a bastion of freedom. My family knows what I have done for all of them.
My first full-time permanent job was a position as a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, which I began in the Fall term of 1982 and which I continue to hold, now at the rank of Distinguished Research Professor, although I am currently on unpaid leave in order to run for the United States Senate.
Hegel's Science of Logic. Besides being as difficult as any book ever written, Hegel's Science of Logic presents the most uncompromising development of the freedom of thought that anyone, as far as I know, has ever dared to venture. It is an unparalleled monument to human achievement.
Ulysses, to come home again after a long campaign of unforgettable adventures.
The song “Kaisi Paheli Zindagani” from the Bollywood movie “Parineeta” sticks in my mind, together with the memory of my wife dancing to it with wild abandon at my older son's wedding.
I have struggled for over four decades with the forbidding difficulty of thinking truth and justice without assumptions. Throughout these decades I have also dealt with the usual struggles to find a job that I could love, to find the woman with whom I would share my life, to contend with all the challenges of raising three children, and to deal with my family’s fair share of illness and death.
The greatest challenges we face as a nation over the next decade are 1) saving our democracy from olilgarchy by fulfilling our neglected social rights to genuine equal opportunity and eliminating racial and gender disadvantage, 2) containing the threat of disastrous climate change with a domestic and international Green New Deal to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2030, 3) mobilizing international cooperation to contain the coronavirus and all future pandemics, 4) halting nuclear proliferation and moving to reduce nuclear weapon stockpiles, and 4) achieving comprehensive immigration reform tied to ending drug wars and fostering social justice and economic development throughout the world.
The US Senate is unique among all Federal offices in several key respects. First, it is the one institution whose equal representation by state is explicitly guarded from any amendment by the US Constitution. It thereby restricts the more democratic principle of equal representation by which seats are allotted in the House of Representatives. Although the Senate is primarily a legislative body, it has a crucial role in constraining the abuse of Presidential power by wielding the power of judgment and removal from office in cases of impeachment. Further, the Senate wields a power of advice and consent on foreign treaties and on cabinet and Supreme Court appointments. Through these authorities, the Senate provides an independent check upon executive power, without assuming executive or broad judicial responsibilities of its own, that would allow the legislative branch to wield unlimited power.
Previous experience in government or politics is not of itself a benefit for Senators, since such experience does not determine the vision for justice that they should bring to office. Such prior experience may in fact be counter productive when our nation faces severe crises with which we must respond with transformative policies that break with business as usual. What is most important is the legislative program that Senators seek to implement. Candidates who have little to say about policy and much more to say about their identity and biography are ignoring the task that a Senator should be addressing: enacting laws that uphold and extend our freedoms in face of ever changing challenges.
The filibuster can operate as an impediment to democratic rule by allowing a minority to block legislation that a majority of Senators approve. The filibuster is not necessary as a check upon improper law-making since we have two authorizing powers that limit what Congress can do - the veto power of the President and judicial review of the constitutionality of laws by the US Supreme Court.
The most important criteria to apply in confirming presidential appointees are their commitment to upholding the rights of all citizens and residents of the nation, their recognition of how we must fulfill the social rights that our Constitution ignores, and their independence from vested interests and their history of never using public office for personal or other private benefit.
The Senate is a deliberative body and as such, Senators must build the civil and cordial relationships that permit them to engage in free, serious debate about the crucial challenges we face as a nation. Each Senator should regard every other as a discussant whose positions can be changed through good faith argument and persuasion.
I would like to be a part of all those committees that will play significant roles in guiding legislation that will uphold our social rights by enacting Medicare for All, a Federal Job Guarantee tied to a new fair minimmum wage and equivalent replacement income starting at $20hr and keeping pace with inflation and productivity gains, a Green New Deal, evening the playing field between employees and employers with mandatory union elections and equal worker representation on corporate boards, balancing work and family with paid family leave, free public child and elder care, and child allowances, national equitable funding of public schools and free tuition and stipends at all public post-secondary educational institutions, and Legal Care for All.
I intend to break the mold.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2020 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on June 22, 2020
- ↑ Winfield for Congress, "Endorsements," accessed May 11, 2018
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