Liberty Union co-founder Peter Diamondstone dies at age 82

BRATTLEBORO — Liberty Union Party co-founder Peter Diamondstone ran in every one of Vermont’s two dozen general elections since the party’s start in 1970.

“I choose to be ‘the dandelion on the manicured lawn of the wealthy,’” he explained in 2014.

But the perennial candidate for attorney general, lieutenant governor, governor, congressman and U.S. senator’s nearly half-century ballot streak is ending — and only because Diamondstone, still talking politics even as his heart was failing, died at home Wednesday at age 82.

“I am a nonviolent revolutionary socialist,” he told Calais writer Dirk Van Susteren three years ago while hospitalized with a life-threatening infection that added to the challenges of his pacemaker and artificial hip. “My belief in socialism is unshakable!”

Read more: https://vtdigger.org/2017/08/31/liberty-union-co-founder-peter-diamondstone-dies-age-82/#.WakrZcaQzRY