CANDIDATE — Peter Sonski, American Solidarity Party candidate for president in the Nov. 5 election, spoke during a town hall meeting Saturday at Froehlich’s Classic Corner. -- Christopher Dacanay

STEUBENVILLE — A third-party presidential candidate made a campaign stop in Steubenville Saturday, describing his party’s roots in Catholic social teaching and platform centered around human dignity.

Peter Sonski is the American Solidarity Party’s nominee for president in the Nov. 5 general election. Along with running mate Lauren Onak, Sonski’s name will appear on Ohio voters’ ballots, listed as “other-party candidate” for president and vice president.

Officially incorporated in 2016, the ASP identifies as the “fastest-growing political party in the United States.” Since its initial founding in 2011, the ASP has nominated multiple candidates for public office across the U.S., including presidential candidates in 2016 and 2020.

The party says it is based on the ideology of Christian democracy, which applies Roman Catholic teaching on social issues to modern political questions. It espouses a “common good” approach to policy in a pluralistic state, with principles including respect for the sanctity of life, social justice, community-oriented society, centrality of the family, economic security, care for the environment and peace and international solidarity.

The Steubenville area’s significant pro-ASP turnout in the 2020 election is what elicited the weekend visit, according to Marie Hosdil, coordinator for the ASP in Jefferson County.

Results from the Jefferson County Board of Elections show the party’s Brian Carroll and Amar Patel received 56 votes in the 2020 election — less than 1 percent of the 33,421 total votes cast in the county for president and vice president. The ASP reports that its candidates received a total of 42,305 votes in 2020, as compared to the 6,697 votes received in the 2016 election.

Following a lunch event with Franciscan University of Steubenville students, Sonski held a town hall meeting at Froehlich’s Classic Corner, during which he addressed a small contingent composed of some longtime supporters and curious newcomers.

A graduate from the Catholic University of America, Sonski has worked in Washington, D.C., for eight years, as the director of communications for the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and an assistant editor at the National Catholic Register. Sonski has more than 12 years of experience as a municipal elected official, and he is currently finishing his second term on Connecticut’s Regional School District 17 Board of Education.

Sonski recalled his upbringing in a blue-collar Democratic family. Beginning as a registered Democrat, Sonski later gravitated toward the Republican Party because of its social conservatism. However, he would become disillusioned with the party and vote for a third-party candidate in 2016. “Politically homeless” at the time, Sonski would discover the ASP in 2018.

“Everything about this party — the values that I had to forfeit when I parted with the Democratic Party and the values that I had been attracted to in the Republican Party but just couldn’t maintain — were all brought together under the (ASP_,” Sonski said. “Some positions from the political left side of the spectrum, some positions from the political right side of the spectrum … all came together, and they harmonized.”

Having changed his affiliation and become more involved with the ASP, Sonski ran in the party’s presidential primary in 2023 and won the nomination.

Sonski called the ASP “the Americanization of Christian democracy,” which he described as a political movement that rose out of post-World War II Europe, combining elements of Christian thought with political philosophy. “Very successful” in the rebuilding of Europe, Christian democracy has been a “boon” to the region and spread to Latin America and the U.S., where its adoptees have mostly been those disillusioned with the nation’s two major political parties.

“There is a fear still … among some who look at our Christian democratic heritage and say, ‘Well, you’re in favor of integralism. You’re in favor of taking religious law and making it civic law,'” Sonski said. “No, that’s not the case because … everything that we have is easily implemented and, while it derives from Christian social thought, it’s not a theocracy. A Christian or a Catholic worldview … is looking at the common good.”

He continued: “All of these elements that you might find otherwise in portions of other parties’ platforms, when brought together all make sense. … They all have as their foundation the respect, the dignity of the human person. Every piece of public policy that we have relates to human being, (whether it’s) education, interstate commerce, national defense, health care, concern for the environment. Whatever it is, it all goes back to the welfare of individuals.”

Sonski said a concept integral to the party is subsidiarity, or the belief that decisions should be made at an appropriate level of government, granting lower levels more autonomy. For the ASP, Sonski said, that would mean combating bureaucratization that makes local decision making more difficult.

This election cycle has seen parties make concessions on long-held positions, Sonski claimed. The ASP, on the other hand, holds to a “consistent ethic of life” or a “whole-life” ethic that begins at a person’s conception and lasts until natural death. This means opposition to abortion capital punishment and euthanasia, as well as support for health care access and dignity in the workplace.

Accepting questions from the audience, Sonski said he’s “strongly in favor of diplomacy” as it relates to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts, as well as “international solidarity” in general.

Sonski also described the ASP’s belief in distributism, an economic system wherein the means of production are distributed among a wide group of private owners, rather than concentrated in the hands of a few elites. This would take the form of regulations to create employee-owned corporations or production machinery, he said.

Unlike other third parties, the ASP doesn’t wish to be a mere election spoiler with only one message to convey, Sonski said. Rather, the goal is to “give (people) an option” and “stand for something … that they can’t find in either of the two major party candidates.”

Sonski said his campaign has raised only about $60,000 and relies entirely on volunteers. The lack of support from large-scale donors is an advantage, he said, as it shows how he is not under the thumb of special interest groups.

Sonski’s name will reportedly be on ballots in seven states. Despite the statistical unlikeliness of his victory in the election, Sonski said he “can’t lose” because, by campaigning, he is increasing awareness of the ASP and setting the stage for future candidates’ greater success.

“When people say, ‘I can’t win,’ I say, ‘I can’t lose’ because what I’m doing is trying to bring a view to the public square. I’m trying to be a witness. … I may not succeed in being elected to office, but I will succeed by saying, ‘These are values that are being underrepresented. There are values that are being dismissed by the other parties.'”