Willa Kenoyer (13 December 1933 – 28 March 2020) was an American politician of the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) candidate for President of the United States in the 1988 U.S. presidential election.
The SPUSA was not on the ballot in 1984 (the previous election) due to a lack of interest among its members,[1] and only hoped for a vote total of five digits, expecting to do better in the next century, according to the chair Anne Rosenhaft.
[2] Kenoyer's running mate was Ron Ehrenreich; they also ran on the Liberty Union Party (LUP) line in Vermont, defeating Herbert G. Lewin of the Internationalist Workers Party by a vote difference of 199–66 in the LUP primary, which socialists use to gauge the relative strength of their campaigns.
[3] They hoped to spread their ideas, finding some similarities to the goals of Jesse Jackson's campaign, with significant differences regarding the military and intelligence agencies, and faulted him for, in their opinion, attracting more people to the Democratic Party.
[10] Prior to running for President, she served a six-year term on the Economic Development Commission for Oceana County, Michigan, to which she was reappointed in 1987.