Working Families Party

Based on Wikipedia: Working Families Party

The Party Within the Party

In November 2019, something happened in Philadelphia that hadn't occurred in forty years. A third-party candidate won a seat on the city council. Not as a Republican. Not as a Democrat. Kendra Brooks won as a member of the Working Families Party—a political organization that most Americans have never heard of, yet which has been quietly reshaping progressive politics for over two decades.

The Working Families Party, often abbreviated as the WFP, represents one of the more ingenious hacks in American electoral politics. It's a minor party that doesn't try to replace the Democratic Party. Instead, it works alongside it, around it, and sometimes through it, using obscure electoral rules that most voters don't know exist.

To understand how this works, you need to understand a peculiar feature of elections in a handful of American states called "electoral fusion."

The Fusion Loophole

Here's how American elections typically work: each party nominates one candidate, and that candidate appears on the ballot under their party's name. Simple. But in New York, Connecticut, Oregon, and a few other states, something stranger is possible. Multiple parties can nominate the same candidate. When you vote, you see that candidate's name listed under each party that endorsed them, and your vote counts toward their total regardless of which line you choose.

This might sound like a meaningless quirk. Why would it matter which line you use if the votes all count the same?

It matters enormously. In New York, a party needs to receive at least fifty thousand votes in a gubernatorial election to maintain its official ballot status. Every four years, parties fight to hit this threshold. If they fail, they vanish from the ballot entirely and must start from scratch gathering signatures to get back on.

The Working Families Party figured out how to weaponize this system. They endorse candidates—usually Democrats—who align with their progressive values. Those candidates then appear on both the Democratic line and the WFP line. Progressive voters can choose to vote on the WFP line, sending a signal about why they're supporting that candidate while still helping them win.

The genius is in the leverage this creates.

How Leverage Changes Everything

Imagine you're a Democratic candidate running for governor. You're going to win the Democratic primary because, let's be honest, your opponent in the general election is deeply unpopular. You don't need the Working Families Party endorsement to win.

But you might want it anyway.

Because if progressive voters choose to cast their ballots on the WFP line rather than the Democratic line, you'll be able to see exactly how many of your votes came from progressives demanding bolder policy. More importantly, everyone else will see it too. That's data. That's a constituency you'll need to keep happy if you want their support next time.

And if you alienate them? If you govern as a centrist after promising progressive reform? Those WFP line voters might decide to support a challenger in your next primary. Or worse—in a tight general election—they might stay home.

This is what Dan Cantor, one of the party's founders, meant when he called for "a party within the party." The WFP doesn't need to beat Democrats. It just needs to hold them accountable by making progressive support visible and, when necessary, withdrawable.

Origins: The New Party and Its Death

The Working Families Party didn't spring from nothing. It emerged from the wreckage of an earlier experiment.

In 1990, Cantor and a political scientist named Joel Rogers founded the New Party. Their strategy relied heavily on electoral fusion—the same trick the WFP would later use. They planned to cross-endorse progressive Democratic candidates, building power without the impossible task of competing directly against America's two-party duopoly.

The Supreme Court killed that dream.

In 1997, the Court ruled in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party that states could ban electoral fusion if they wanted to. Most states promptly did. The New Party withered and died, its national strategy suddenly illegal in most of the country.

But not in New York. New York had used fusion voting since the nineteenth century, and the practice was too entrenched to eliminate. So Cantor and his allies regrouped. They brought together labor unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Communications Workers of America, community organizations like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (better known as ACORN), and various progressive advocacy groups.

In 1998, they announced the formation of the Working Families Party.

The Fifty Thousand Vote Test

A political party exists on paper only until it proves itself at the ballot box. In New York, that means fifty thousand votes for governor.

For their first test, the WFP endorsed Peter Vallone, the Democratic candidate for governor in 1998. Vallone wasn't a progressive hero—far from it. But he was acceptable enough on the party's core issues: healthcare reform, raising the minimum wage, paid sick leave, student debt relief, and progressive taxation. More importantly, he was almost certain to receive enough votes on the WFP line to secure the party's ballot status for the next four years.

He did. The Working Families Party was officially in business.

Among those present at the party's founding was a young political operative named Bill de Blasio. Two decades later, he would become mayor of New York City—a trajectory that illustrates just how deeply the WFP became embedded in progressive Democratic politics.

Growing Beyond New York

The Connecticut chapter launched in 2002, built on the same coalition of labor unions and community organizations. In 2010, they proved their value dramatically: the party endorsed Dannel Malloy for governor. Malloy won, and his margin of victory on the WFP line alone—26,308 votes—exceeded his total margin over his Republican opponent.

The Working Families Party had made itself indispensable.

By 2006, the party was attempting ballot access drives in California, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, and South Carolina. Not all of these succeeded. Electoral fusion remains illegal in most states, limiting what the party can accomplish outside its northeastern strongholds. But even where fusion isn't available, the WFP has found ways to influence politics through endorsements, volunteer mobilization, and candidate recruitment.

When Third Parties Actually Win

Most of the time, the WFP cross-endorses Democratic candidates. But occasionally, they run their own.

The most dramatic example came in 2003, under circumstances no one could have predicted.

James E. Davis was a New York City councilman representing Brooklyn's 35th district. On July 23, 2003, he was assassinated inside City Hall by a political rival named Othniel Askew, who was then killed by a police officer. The murder sent the district into chaos as Democrats scrambled to fill the vacant seat.

The party chose Geoffrey Davis, James's brother, to run in the primary. There was sympathy for the grieving family, and Geoffrey won the Democratic nomination. But it quickly became clear he lacked his late brother's political experience. Fellow Democrat Letitia James—no relation—decided to challenge him in the general election.

She couldn't run as a Democrat; Geoffrey Davis had that line. Instead, she ran on the Working Families Party ticket alone.

And she won.

Letitia James became the first third-party candidate elected in Brooklyn's 35th district in thirty years. She would go on to serve in the council, win election as New York City's Public Advocate, and eventually become the state's Attorney General—the position she holds today. (She did, however, switch back to the Democratic Party for her 2008 reelection campaign, a pragmatic move that WFP leaders understood even if they didn't love it.)

Pure WFP Victories

James's 2003 win was historic, but she had switched to the Democratic line by the time she sought reelection. The true test of the Working Families Party as an independent political force came later.

Edwin Gomes won a February 2015 special election for the Connecticut State Senate running solely as a WFP nominee—the first candidate in the nation to win a state legislative office with no other party backing. Two months later, Diana Richardson won a seat in the New York State Assembly on the WFP line alone. In 2017, Joshua M. Hall became the second Connecticut legislator elected purely as a WFP candidate.

These victories were small—state legislative seats, not Congress. But they proved the party could elect candidates on its own, not just provide helpful vote margins to Democrats.

Kendra Brooks and the Philadelphia Breakthrough

The 2019 Philadelphia election represented something different.

Philadelphia's city council includes two at-large seats reserved for minority parties—positions that, for decades, had been split between Republicans and occasionally Libertarians. The Working Families Party saw an opportunity.

Kendra Brooks ran an aggressive campaign focused on housing, education, and workers' rights. On November 5, 2019, she won one of those minority seats, becoming the first candidate in forty years to claim one of Philadelphia's reserved council positions from outside the two major parties.

This wasn't a fluke enabled by cross-endorsement. This was the Working Families Party competing directly and winning.

Presidential Politics and the Warren Controversy

For its first seventeen years, the Working Families Party stayed out of presidential politics. Their model worked best in state and local races where their endorsement could make a measurable difference.

That changed in December 2015, when the party made its first national endorsement: Bernie Sanders for president.

The endorsement process was revealing. Party leadership conducted a member poll and reported the results as "overwhelming" support for Sanders—reportedly 87 percent for Sanders, 12 percent for Hillary Clinton, and 1 percent for Martin O'Malley. When Clinton secured the Democratic nomination, the WFP endorsed her for the general election, as they had always done with Democratic nominees.

The 2020 primary proved more contentious.

On September 16, 2019, the Working Families Party endorsed Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders. This surprised many observers given the party's previous Sanders endorsement. What made it controversial was the voting process.

The WFP uses a weighted voting system: 50 percent of the endorsement vote comes from the party's leadership committee, and 50 percent from the broader membership. Warren won 60.91 percent of the overall vote to Sanders's 35.82 percent. But the party refused to release the breakdown between leadership and membership votes.

Critics did the math. For Warren to have won with those margins, she would have needed to receive somewhere between 82 and 100 percent of the leadership vote—meaning Sanders likely won the membership vote but lost because the leadership overwhelmingly favored Warren.

The Jacobin magazine, a left-wing publication sympathetic to Sanders, published a detailed analysis suggesting this is exactly what happened. Party leaders denied any impropriety but offered no transparency to settle the question.

When Warren dropped out of the race in March 2020, the WFP endorsed Sanders. After Sanders dropped out, they endorsed Joe Biden—the same pattern as 2016, though with considerably more bruised feelings along the way.

The State of the Union Responses

Since 2019, the Working Families Party has adopted a clever publicity tactic: recruiting prominent progressive elected officials to deliver an alternative response to the president's State of the Union address.

The official opposition response—typically delivered by a rising star from the party not holding the White House—is a tradition dating back decades. But the WFP has carved out space for a specifically progressive response, positioning themselves as the voice of the Democratic left.

The speakers tell the story of the party's growing influence. In 2019, Mandela Barnes, then the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, delivered the first WFP response. He was followed by Ayanna Pressley, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, Delia Ramirez, and Nicolas O'Rourke—a roster of the party's most visible allies in elected office.

The Cynthia Nixon Schism

The Working Families Party's relationship with Andrew Cuomo illustrates both the power and the limitations of the "party within the party" strategy.

Cuomo had been a useful ally. In 2010, more than 150,000 of his votes came on the WFP line—a significant chunk of the party's relevance in New York politics. But progressive frustration with his governance had been building for years. By 2018, many in the party wanted to endorse someone else.

That someone was Cynthia Nixon, the Sex and the City actress turned education activist. Nixon was running against Cuomo in the Democratic primary on an explicitly progressive platform.

The WFP endorsed her. Several of the party's key union allies—including SEIU and the Communications Workers of America—immediately announced they would not support the party in the election. The defection threatened to devastate the party's finances, which totaled about $1.7 million with a statewide staff of fifteen.

More dangerously, there were concerns that Nixon might drain enough votes from Cuomo in the general election to let a Republican win. New York hadn't elected a Republican governor since George Pataki left office in 2006, but in a tight race, anything was possible.

Nixon lost the Democratic primary. On October 5, 2018, the WFP cleared her from their ballot line and endorsed Cuomo for the general election. They had made their point about progressive discontent, but not at the cost of self-destruction.

Scandals and Scrutiny

No political organization survives decades without controversy.

In 2009, various media outlets raised questions about the relationship between the WFP and a for-profit company called Data and Field Services (DFS). The concern was whether DFS might be charging below-market rates to select clients—essentially, whether the party was using a private company to subsidize its political operations. A federal investigation ensued.

In August 2010, the investigation ended with no charges filed and no referrals to other agencies. The party survived.

In 2011, Connecticut WFP director Jon Green received a $10,000 fine for lobbying without wearing his required identification badge. A minor scandal, but an embarrassing one for an organization that positions itself as more ethical than ordinary politics.

The Child Care Ruling

One of the party's more unexpected contributions to American politics came in 2018, during a congressional race on Long Island.

Liuba Grechen Shirley was running for Congress with WFP support. She had two young children and, like many working mothers, struggled with child care costs during the campaign. She asked the Federal Election Commission whether she could use campaign funds to pay for child care during time spent running for office.

The FEC said yes.

Grechen Shirley became the first woman in history to receive approval to spend campaign funds on child care. She lost her race, but the ruling opened doors for every parent running for office afterward. Sometimes the most lasting changes come from losing campaigns.

The California Expansion

In January 2022, the Working Families Party established a California chapter, naming a former San Francisco supervisor to lead it. California doesn't allow electoral fusion, so the party can't use its signature New York strategy there. But with nearly 40 million residents and a heavily Democratic electorate, California offers something else: scale.

Even without fusion voting, the WFP can endorse candidates, mobilize volunteers, and apply pressure during Democratic primaries. In a state where the real electoral battle often happens within the Democratic Party rather than between parties, that's not nothing.

Zohran Mamdani and the New York Breakthrough

In 2025, the Working Families Party achieved something that had seemed impossible throughout its history: one of their own was elected mayor of New York City.

Zohran Mamdani—a state assemblyman who had first won office in 2020 with WFP support—captured the mayoralty on a platform centered on housing, healthcare, and workers' rights. The victory represented the culmination of the party's quarter-century project: not replacing the Democratic Party, but pushing it leftward from within until their candidates became Democratic candidates.

Whether this represents the WFP's ultimate triumph or its absorption into the mainstream remains to be seen. Third parties in America have a habit of succeeding themselves out of existence—their ideas get adopted by major parties, leaving them without a distinctive reason to exist.

But for now, the Working Families Party has proven something important: in American politics, you don't always need to beat the major parties. Sometimes, you just need to make yourself useful enough—and troublesome enough—that they can't ignore you.

What the Working Families Party Actually Believes

Throughout this history, the party's core platform has remained remarkably consistent.

Healthcare reform, particularly expanding access and lowering costs. Raising the minimum wage, including the successful campaigns for $15 minimum wages in several states and cities. Universal paid sick days, which became impossible to ignore during the COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing student debt, a crisis that has ballooned over the party's lifetime from a problem affecting some graduates to one affecting most. Progressive taxation, meaning higher rates on higher incomes and wealth. Public education funding. And environmental reform, including aggressive action on climate change.

These aren't radical positions by international standards. Most developed democracies have universal healthcare, strong minimum wages, and mandatory paid leave. But in American politics, where the Overton window—the range of ideas considered acceptable for mainstream discussion—sits considerably to the right of other wealthy nations, these policies place the WFP firmly on the left.

The party describes itself as a "grassroots independent political organization" practicing "progressive politics." Some commentators have called it the Tea Party of the left—a comparison the WFP probably doesn't love, given the Tea Party's association with hard-right politics, but one that captures something true about both movements' relationship to their respective major parties.

Both work primarily through existing party structures rather than trying to replace them. Both use primary challenges to discipline politicians who stray from the base's priorities. And both have proven far more influential than their membership numbers would suggest.

The Limits of the Model

The Working Families Party's strategy has obvious limitations.

It only works fully in states with electoral fusion, which means most of the country is off-limits for their signature approach. Even in New York, their influence depends on Democratic candidates wanting their endorsement—if Democrats feel secure enough to ignore the progressive base, the WFP's leverage evaporates.

The 2018 Cuomo episode showed both the power and the danger of the endorsement weapon. The party made headlines by endorsing Nixon, but when push came to shove, they endorsed Cuomo anyway to preserve their ballot line. Candidates noticed. The implicit threat of the WFP line going to a challenger loses some of its power when everyone knows the party will probably come home in the end.

And there's the perpetual third-party problem: talented politicians eventually face a choice between building the third party and building their own careers within a major party. Letitia James switched to the Democratic line. Bill de Blasio ran as a Democrat. The pipeline the WFP builds often leads into the Democratic Party rather than strengthening the WFP itself.

The Ongoing Experiment

More than twenty-five years after its founding, the Working Families Party remains a unique experiment in American politics.

They haven't replaced the Democratic Party or even come close. They probably never will. But they've proven that a disciplined minor party, operating within the peculiar rules of certain state electoral systems, can punch far above its weight. They've elected their own candidates, forced major party politicians to take progressive positions seriously, and built durable infrastructure in multiple states.

The question now is whether the model can expand beyond its northeastern base, adapt to states without fusion voting, and remain relevant as the Democratic Party itself shifts in response to pressures from various directions. The WFP represents one theory of political change: not revolution, but persistent pressure from within and alongside existing structures.

It's not glamorous. It doesn't make for inspiring speeches about overthrowing the system. But it's produced results—more results, arguably, than any other minor party in recent American history.

For anyone trying to understand how progressive politics actually operates in America—not the rallies and the tweets and the viral moments, but the grinding work of winning elections and passing legislation—the Working Families Party offers a twenty-five-year case study in what's possible when you work the system rather than against it.