Walter Price was selected by the Socialist Party to run for Governor in 1928 after their original nominee, Emil Herman, died Oct. 9. Price, who was 68 years old, had about two weeks to campaign.

Walter Price was a bit different than the usual Socialist Party Ungovernor. He came into socialism through the Grange and Populist movement in South Dakota. He ran for U.S. Congress as a Socialist on at least three occasions: 1902 in South Dakota, 1916 and 1918 in Washington's 4th District. The 1916 election was his best showing, with 2,637 votes (4.56%). He also ran for Yakima County Treasurer in 1908.

The Price family moved to Outlook, Washington in 1903. Walter appears to have been held in high esteem by his neighbors. While other Socialists were being jailed and beat up by mobs for streetcorner speeches and opposing the Great War, Walter was serving on the school board and had sons in uniform.

The following is his biographical entry in The History of the Yakima Valley, Washington, Comprising Yakima, Kittitas and Benton Counties (S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1919). It is curious to note this was published at a time when it was generally considered dangerous to your health to be associated with the Socialist Party, yet Walter Price is accorded the same respect as bankers and preachers:

WALTER PRICE

"Walter Price, a well known rancher living near Outlook, was born near State Center, Iowa, July 19, 1860, a son of William O. and Martha (Tramel) Price, who were natives of Pennsylvania and of Indiana respectively. They became pioneer residents of Iowa, the father removing to that state in 1855, while the mother had gone to the west in 1852. She had accompanied her parents on their removal with ox teams from Indiana and her father had purchased thirteen hundred acres of land in that state. Three years later William O. Price became a resident of Iowa and there he formed the acquaintance of Martha Tramel, whose hand he sought and won in marriage. At the time of the Civil war he responded to the country's call for aid and joined the Twenty-third Iowa Infantry, in which he served as sergeant. With his return to Iowa he took up the occupation of farming, which he followed continuously in that state save for a period of four and a half years spent in California during the '70s. He was long numbered among the progressive and representative agriculturists of Iowa, where he continued to make his home until his death."

"Walter Price acquired a good public school education in his home locality and was associated with his father in the development and improvement of the latter's farm until he attained his majority. He then started out in life on his own account. In the spring of 1885 he went to South Dakota, where he took up a homestead, preemption and desert claim, and his wife also secured a claim of one hundred and sixty acres, so that they had six hundred and forty acres in all. He became a successful farmer of that district, carefully and systematically developing and cultivating his fields there until the fall of 1903, when he sold his property in that state, attracted by the opportunities of the growing northwest. He then made his way to Yakima county and bought forty acres of land two miles northwest of Outlook. This he partly cleared and has improved the place, developing it into an excellent ranch. The summer seasons find his fields green with good crops of corn, potatoes and hay, which, ripening in the fall, find a ready sale upon the market, bringing to him a substantial annual income. He also makes a specialty of handling hogs and cattle and conducts a dairy business. He is interested in the most progressive methods of farming, which he employs in the further development of his property, and for four years he was president of the Outlook Irrigation District. He has closely studied irrigation problems as well as the questions relative to the methods of farming his land and caring for the crops and he is able to speak with authority upon many problems relative to the agricultural interests of this section of the state and its water supply."

"On the 31st of December, 1886, Mr. Price was united in marriage to Miss Mary Hartman, who was born in Iowa, a daughter of Valentine and Christina Hartman, the former a native of Switzerland. He became a pioneer settler of Iowa, taking up his abode first near Burlington and afterward removing to Keokuk county. To Mr. and Mrs. Price have been born ten children: Clinton F., who is engaged in ranching near Outlook; Ethel, the wife of Axel Lennstrom; William, who was an ensign and was connected with the staff of the Officers' Training School in the Naval Training Station at Seattle, teaching navigation; but has now been discharged; Alfred, who in April, 1918, went to France as a member of Battery C, Twelfth Field Artillery, Second Division, but is now on the Rhine with the American Army of Occupation; Albert, twin brother of Alfred, who died at the age of seven years; Martha, who is attending a business college of Yakima; Stella, who is engaged in teaching school; Frances W., who died at the age of eighteen months; Herbert; and Russell."

"Mr. Price is a prominent member of the Grange and was deputy state master of the Grange of Washington in 1915. He has done much public speaking in behalf of the organization and upon other vital public questions. He is a socialist and was a candidate for Congress in South Dakota. He has been active in the people's party and was its candidate for the state senate in South Dakota in 1892. He has twice been a candidate for congress on the socialist ticket in Washington and he fearlessly and earnestly espouses the cause in which he believes. He served as postmaster and also as town clerk while in South Dakota and at the present time he is a member of the school board. He is the possessor of a fine library, reads broadly and thinks deeply. He possesses the most important historical works of the world and after thorough reading and investigation he forms his opinions, which he presents clearly and cogently."

The Oct. 18, 1928 issue of the Sunnyside Sun announced Price's nomination thusly: "Not because he has been in the state five times as long as Scott Bullitt, does Walter Price claim the right to have his name on the ballot at the coming general election, but because of the fact that the socialist candidate, Emil Herman, died on Oct. 9th. The certificate was filed with the secretary of state yesterday."

Election Day 1928 was a snapshot of how far the Socialist Party had fallen. Price finished 4th out of five, with 1,262 votes (0.25%). In almost half the counties his total was in the single digits. For once, the rival Socialist Labor Party placed ahead of the Socialists.

In the fall of 1942 Walter, now living on his own since his wife died in the late 1930s, moved to Yakima to live with his son. He died Feb. 2, 1943 in Yakima's St. Elizabeth Hospital after a brief illness. By an eerie coincidence, his 1928 Socialist Labor Party opponent, James F. Stark, died the next day in a Bellingham hospital.