Delivering Legislatively

From the beginning, the WFP’s goal was to build political power and influence governance to secure tangible benefits for its constituents.¹ Even today, state directors, including Gripper, still stress that “gain[ing] power to win tangible change for lives…[is] at the core of what party-building is about.”² Delivering on the policy front is a challenge for a minor fusion party since it cannot control governance.³ For the WFP, votes on the party line became a visible measure of electoral impact and political support.⁴ Gripper continued, “The ballot line is our superpower…To be able to find and count our voters and our influence is a huge asset.”

The WFP leverages its electoral power into a legislative agenda that benefits its supporters, despite its status as a minor party.⁵ Democratic and Republican officials, to be sure, sometimes expressed skepticism when the party sought to do so. Speaking of Connecticut, one interviewee recalls: “Sometimes Democrats would say to us, ‘Well, all those people would vote for me anyway, so I don’t really care.’ And our response to that was, ‘There’s only one way to find out.’ And they would be like, ‘Turns out I do care. I don’t want to test my own theory.’”⁶

The vote count is the objective measure of the party’s political capital in the policymaking process. Thus, while merely voting on the WFP line does not make one a party member, the party is eager to secure votes on its line, and the WFP’s member organizations, especially the CWA in the early years, called on its members to vote on the WFP line. The turning point for this strategy came in the early 2000s, when the WFP was not just amassing votes on its line but provided the margin of victory in critical elections.⁷ With this development, its cadre of experienced staff began to flex its electoral muscle in the legislative arena.

The WFP’s first major legislative victory was securing an increase in the minimum wage, and it illustrates how the party set legislative priorities and the political pragmatism by which they secured them. In 1998, the year the WFP was founded, New York’s minimum wage was $5.15 (the federal floor). Master, representing a union-affiliate, recalls the decision to work on raising the minimum wage was not terribly controversial within the party. But Lewis remembers things differently: “The community members, their issue was a minimum wage because they needed to make a decent wage. They needed to make a living wage, you know, because they were not part of a union. Never would be.” The union members were skeptical. As Lewis puts it, their attitude was, “But wages—ack! Oh my God, [unions] don’t do that.” ACORN and the other community groups, once again, turned to their members to build their case. Lewis recalls: “So, you know, we began to hash it out and look at the issue that crossed over between community members and union members. And again, what we did on the community side was to identify union members that lived in the community, and that’s how we would hash out different issues.” Eventually, “our union brothers and sisters said, ‘Okay, minimum wage and living wage, because everybody that works is concerned about wages.’”

Cantor offers a slightly different take, one that emphasizes the political pragmatism that union members brought to the table: “For the first six years, the only issue we basically worked on hard was the minimum wage, which affected zero of the unions. Right? Every single unionized worker in New York did not get a raise from us raising the minimum wage. They all [were] making a lot more money than that.” Why then did the unions agree? Because they understood this as a wedge issue: “This was the tip of the spear for both showing that the party could accomplish something and also pushing back ideologically. Remember, this is 1998. The DLC is still in control. The Democratic Leadership Council, you know, who said that—if you remember all this—‘Democratic Party’s gone too far to the left. It’s too pro-union, it’s too pro-Black.’”

Once the WFP had settled on raising the minimum wage as its legislative priority, its leadership devised its political strategy. In 2004, it decided to run two vulnerable, pro-labor Republicans on its line. No one was enamored with these candidates, Cantor recalls, but the upper chamber of the New York legislature was Republican-controlled and had been for nearly six decades. The two candidates, including one who was chair of the Labor Committee, were running in extremely competitive districts and committed publicly during their interviews to the party’s top demand: a $2 increase in the minimum wage. The WFP line proved critical in an election that was ultimately decided by a court after numerous ballots were challenged. Cantor recalls, “The main guy who we endorsed got 2,000 votes on the Working Families Party line, and he won by 18 votes. So, we were clearly the margin of victory.”

Upon assuming office, the two WFP-Republican officials took the lead in pushing the still majority-Republican legislatures to act on the minimum wage. When the initiative was vetoed by the state’s Republican governor, George Pataki, the two again took the lead and secured a legislative override.⁸ In 2005, New York raised its minimum wage to $6; a year later, it went up to $6.75, and then gradually rose to $7.25 by 2010.⁹

The WFP’s strategic choice to nominate these two vulnerable Republicans did not come without its costs. For one, the new legislation, sponsored by Republican allies, came with compromises. It decoupled the minimum wage rates for restaurant staff from the new rates, reducing its scope—a compromise the WFP ultimately accepted.¹⁰ For another, the decision antagonized Democratic legislator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, whom the WFP had helped defeat. Cantor reflects, “She was right to be angry at us. But I felt like we were right, because a million people got a $2 an hour raise.” Stewart-Cousins soon returned to office and “ended up being very important,” but “it took 20 years” to repair that relationship.

The minimum wage fight was the party’s first major legislative success. It illustrates that the WFP was able to deliver tangible legislative goods to its supporters as an associational party, notwithstanding its status as a minor fusion party. It is also illustrative of the WFP’s broader commitment to delivering legislatively and highlights four aspects of the WFP, as a party, that reinforced its capacity to deliver for its supporters. These four aspects, also evident in later fights and other aspects of the party, are its acceptance of a politics of pragmatism; strategic savviness in converting candidate pledges into legislation; in-person, face-to-face version of party membership; and capacity to mediate intraparty conflict reinforced by its party’s culture.

As a party committed to doing more than making an ideological point about what they took to be the misguided nature of Clinton’s third way, WFP leadership engaged in a transactional politics, sacrificing ideological purity to a politics of pragmatism in order to achieve tangible wins. In competitive elections, for example, it was not uncommon for the WFP to work for candidates that were neither ideologically pure nor particularly charismatic solely because their election would create political leverage, such as developing an ally in a Republican legislature that would shift control of the state legislature.

Both the disciplining and brokering roles played by union members within the WFP were essential to the pragmatic politics that underwrote the party’s political power.¹¹ The unions within the WFP were committed to a left-of-center ideology, but they also had relationships to preserve and believed that ideological commitment “did not mean commit[ing] suicide,” says Cantor. As a union-affiliated interviewee explains, unions necessarily function in a “concrete world.” “Are the lives of our members getting better? Because our job is to improve the lives of our members. That means that we cannot be risking relationships for vague ideals.”¹² Union leaders are accountable to their members in a very concrete way: “Members pay our salaries…Members elect the leadership.”¹³ Such pragmatism can have a downside, but it also has an upside.

The upside was that the “unions enforced a rigor” on the WFP.¹⁴ The unions within the party demanded that any “decision to piss off the Democratic establishment was intentional and strategic.” What are we going to get from this endorsement? Is it worth it? As this union-affiliated interviewee further explains, “Because we were accountable to our members, unions were not willing to make enemies if it was going to hurt their members. These elected officials had power over our members. It had to be worth it.” This is not to say the WFP was unwilling to make enemies, or that it never miscalculated, but only that those decisions were made intentionally and only for specific expected returns.¹⁵ Indeed, Cantor readily admits that not every decision proved wise or came without electoral costs.¹⁶

The WFP’s successes engaging in this sort of pragmatic politics, despite its minor party status, remain a lesson for future associational party-building efforts. A major party committed to reconstituting itself as an associational party would have significantly more opportunities to secure tangible legislative goods for its members, especially at the state and local level. The current challenges that Democrats and Republicans face in delivering for their constituents arise from an unfortunate confluence of a tepid commitment to policy responsiveness and a rejection of a politics of pragmatism. In Congress, the major parties not only refuse to compromise with each other but police members’ willingness to cross the aisle to broker deals. This unwillingness reflects a tepid commitment to addressing the problems faced by constituents, whether in the form of affordable health care, lower prices in the grocery store, or a desire for managed immigration (governance). Meanwhile, at the state and local level, political parties are hollowed out to a degree that in too many places, they remain disconnected from the issues people care about. They are no longer offices where you might “go to get access to jobs or find help with parking tickets or attend picnics to meet elected officials.”¹⁷ Where local parties are more vibrant, it is largely because they have been captured by ideological extremists, whose refusal to compromise undermines effective governance.

Second, the minimum wage campaign demonstrates how the WFP has used pledges secured during the nomination process to lay the foundation for future legislative demands. Whereas in the minimum wage fight, the dynamic occurred within a single election cycle, the party’s fight for public financing of elections shows how the practice worked over a longer timeframe. Public campaign financing “was considered impossible to win because it’s a meaningful, impactful reform that could change the game in New York state politics,” according to a lobbyist.¹⁸ “[Democratic and Republican] leadership didn’t want to see it happen,” knowing their “influence [over] how they do their governing and…[their] power over members” was tied to their control of money. 

Over the course of a decade, however, the WFP placed numerous elected officials on record in support of public campaign financing through the nomination process. This meant that “when the moment came [in 2020] when the Democrats were in charge and could actually pass this,…[the Party] had a majority of members in the senate and the assembly on record in support. And the governor.” This experienced lobbyist’s view was unequivocal: “Hands down, [campaign finance reform in New York] never would have happened but for the Working Families Party” and its ability to call in those public commitments.

Today, the major parties generally use money rather than campaign pledges to control their candidates, a strategy that has been weakened by the rising influence of individual donors and so-called outside spending. Still, it is worth recognizing how the specific mechanism of WFP control—pledges given after in-person interviews with local chapters—tethers candidates to their constituents. Were Democrats or Republicans to commit to associational rebuilding, it would be prudent to develop methods to anchor candidates to their constituents and their preferences (as the WFP did with the questionnaires that members developed), not just to central leadership and its money. In an associational party, moreover, the interest gap between membership and leadership would be less stark since leadership would itself be in a more constant and fluid communication with its membership and the party faithful.

Third, the minimum wage fight illustrates, once more, the delicate two-way street of communication between party leaders and members and constituents within the WFP. Sifry’s account of the party’s founding clearly indicates that the decision to pursue a minimum wage increase was made in January 1999 at a convention, where “about 50 of the WFP’s leaders gathered to hammer out the core components of the party’s legislative program.”¹⁹

The minimum wage legislative campaign shows how, as a party with deep ties to membership-based civic groups and a commitment to face-to-face participatory processes, party leaders were attentive to, or at the very least forced to reckon with, their members’ perspectives. The nomination interviews and members’ role in designing the candidate questionnaire, as we have seen, provided a regular opportunity for chapter members and the party faithful, including individual members, to influence the party platform. In addition, the WFP continued to hold regular retreats for supporters. A final facet of the two-way street of communication was the way that, as an associational party embedded in the local community, the party was able to inspire, support, and cultivate candidates who might not otherwise have run.²⁰

None of this should be taken to suggest that the party faithful drove its priorities. Neither candidacies nor legislative priorities bubbled up from the membership. Policy platforms, priorities, and strategies certainly emerged from the top with party staff often taking the lead. Archila firmly insisted, “The process never starts, just to be honest, just [to be] clear, never starts with, like, ‘Let’s ask the individuals in chapters what they think the issues should be.’…It’s always at the affiliate and volitional space.” Still, the party’s policy decisions were made by an Advisory Council, the dues-paying entity the party leaders created to ensure a voice for its members.

Moreover, the contrast with the two major parties is hard to overstate. Once every four years, the Democratic and Republican committees hold conventions that draw in the party faithful to negotiate and vote on the party platform. Both parties, however, lack a commitment to routinize such processes. Some party leaders, most recently Republican Jim Banks, have floated approaches to maintain a more constant engagement with the party base, and some state parties are better at it.²¹ Meaningfully implementing such calls is likely, however, to require the major parties to pivot from individualized, direct appeals to voters and instead to rebuild connections to the electorate by engaging the membership-based civic groups to which its supporters and potential supporters belong. This approach need not be limited to churches and unions. Although traditional face-to-face civic associations have been on the decline, the two major political parties could dig deeper to find the neighborhood groups, soccer leagues, hunting clubs, and knitting circles that continue to bring ordinary Americans into face-to-face association with one another, including through social media.²²

Fourth, the minimum wage initiative illustrates how the WFP engages in a constant and complicated process of formulating priorities and forging compromises while mediating the inevitable tension that follows—another quintessential party function. The party’s capacity to navigate its internal conflicts was initially a product of the unique personal ties and trust that existed and developed among its leaders, who were able to air, but also resolve, differences and tensions on the strength of their personal ties. The party has since invested in its staff and leadership to institutionalize this organizational culture and capacity. 

The WFP’s subsequent campaign to repeal New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws offers another illustration of the party’s capacity to set important priorities and mediate the predicted internal fallout. Passed in the 1970s, New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws imposed stiff and disproportionate sentences on low-level drug crimes, including crack offenses, driving mass incarceration in the state.²³ The WFP’s decision in 2000 to make its repeal a priority, unlike the decision to go after the minimum wage, was fraught with risks: The party included ACORN, whose constituents were the Black and brown communities most negatively affected by New York’s drug policies and the associated over-policing, as well as several white working-class unions and their members with “law and order” sympathies. 

When asked about how that controversial decision was made, Master, a trusted member of the leadership and legislative and political director for the CWA at the time, explains that, by this point, the white, male leadership of the party, despite their primary commitment to “economic populism,” had come to understand that “you couldn’t really completely duck the social issues if you wanted to be a progressive party in New York State.” Cantor offers a slightly different take, observing that the party’s membership also included public-sector unions and “[the] of-color-led public-sector unions, they’re pretty good on social justice, criminal justice stuff. Not perfect, but pretty good.” And “in this case, the Rockefeller Drug Laws were seen as so degraded” that the public-sector unions threw their weight toward a focus on repeal; “they had nothing to lose.” 

Ultimately, the party decided to call for their repeal at the first party convention in 2000. Master was the keynote speaker at the convention that night. One interviewee describes the speech from his perspective as a staff member who sat among the 70 or so white union members he had organized:

“So, Bob and the party decided to do a keynote about Amadou Diallo. The message of the keynote was, ‘My son, Ben, is a redheaded kid who’s 14, and he lives in Park Slope, or whatever. He’s young, and he lives in Park Slope. And I do not worry when he goes out at night. If he were…’ Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada…Well, that was a very controversial thing, even in a left party, or like a left-side-leaning party at that time. And many of the members that I had just spent a whole bunch of time organizing, upped and walked out. I remember the conversations. I was talking to all the firefighters. It’s like…‘My fucking brother’s a cop, man. What the fuck? That’s not what we said. We were building a labor party. My brother works really hard. He’s a good guy.’”²⁴

Master also shared his recollection of the night:

“And Giuliani was the mayor at this point. And the Patrick Dorismond incident happened. And if you remember, there were riots in Crown Heights. And I said, ‘We have got to address this’ and gave a talk from the podium about the disparity in treatment between white kids and Black kids…And one of the CWA local presidents who was in attendance, like, walked out during my talk. I mean, it wasn’t a big thing. There were, you know, a thousand people there. But there was definitely tension over addressing those kinds of issues. But I feel like we had a very robust leadership group for the first 10 or 12 years.”²⁵

In the end, the party formally agreed to pursue the repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. The unions fell into line, largely, according to Cantor, because “everybody thought we were going to lose, but it wasn’t going to hurt the unions.” The loss never materialized. Instead, in 2004, the WFP nominated David Soares to run a primary challenge against Albany’s incumbent district attorney, Paul Clyne, a politician “from a very famous family…[who] had been there for decades.” The primary challenge centered around opposition to New York’s drug laws.

Soares won the primary with the support of the WFP’s machine and additional door-knocking by members of Citizen Action.²⁶ His victory, according to Cantor, turned, at least in part, on the fact that “nobody had ever door-knocked on a criminal justice race before. This is before, you know, [the] Movement for Black Lives. Soares won with a 25 percent margin…Twelve weeks later, the legislature reconvened and took the first step in repealing Rockefeller Drug Laws” by passing the Drug Law Reform Act of 2004.²⁷ In 2009, after Democrats won the state senate, the laws were fully repealed.

Deep bonds and mutual trust within the party leadership ultimately mitigated the internal fallout of pursuing a repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Indeed, multiple interviewees referred to the “deep trust between the actors.”²⁸ Early debates and hard-fought compromises over the party’s name—like the shared experience of that first election night in 1998, at the Two Boots restaurant in the East Village, when Master prematurely conceded after the Vallone returns appeared to come short of the 50,000 needed to qualify as a minor party—had forged deep solidarity among the early party leaders.²⁹ As Cantor explains, “The thing we had that was hard to replicate was tremendous trust among five or six people, each of whom reflected a very important base…These were people who had a lot of standing. And they were willing to lose. They didn’t demand that every time that they get their own way because they could feel we were building something.” Lipton, similarly, noted that early leaders accepted that “this project was more than any one organization’s perspective, and…that we needed to come together as an organization afterwards, and that it was so important and special that people lost votes and still cared about what we were building.”³⁰ The early WFP thus illustrates what sociologists have long known: strong personal ties make for strong politics.³¹

The WFP, however, has recognized strong personal bonds and trust arising from shared experience and vision, like charisma and grit, are not a replicable basis for sustaining a party’s mediating capacity. Mediating disparate interests into a functioning platform and set of priorities required constant management by party staff. As Lipton explained, it requires “staff and leaders to really be diligent about listening and charting a path that tried to respect all the parties and push us in specific directions.” Leadership is required because “without a lot of active management,…it could be really unproductive.” Senior staff thus actively managed the Advisory Council and State Executive Committee; they advised potential candidates on electoral strategies; and they managed officials, individually and collectively, when in office. Junior staff managed the maintenance and nomination processes at local chapters and ran specific campaigns. Today, Mitchell similarly acknowledges that it takes “social and emotional skills to be able to manage conflict, to be able to mediate, to be able to facilitate conversation, and to be able to align people around a North Star.” Those skills can and were cultivated.

Political scientists have long identified the capacity to mediate conflict as one of the characteristics of a strong political party. As an associational party, the WFP’s capacity to mediate intraparty conflict was initially the product of the unique strong ties and party solidarity between its leadership. It has been sustained, however, not only by organizational investments in staff but by building a party culture of party over individual. Individuals accept that building political power is worth compromise. They accept that the focus must always be on “the destination,” as Mitchell describes it. The Democratic and Republican parties today operate instead as an amalgam of individuals, and the parties have become simply a hollow vehicle available for ambitious ideologues to take over. The result, as Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld argue, is that both major parties, but particularly the Republican Party, transition from one hostile takeover to another.³²

Despite this investment, the strength of the party’s capacity to mediate conflict was challenged by external forces when Andrew Cuomo was elected governor in 2010. From the start, Cuomo was determined to play hardball, and by 2018, he decided it was time to destroy the WFP.³³ The immediate precipitating event was the party’s decision to support actress Cynthia Nixon in her primary challenge to Cuomo. In response, Cuomo made it clear to the unions that they “had to make a choice: to have a relation with Cuomo or to have a relation with WFP.”³⁴ His clear message was that any union that stayed with the WFP would have its access to his office cut off. The party’s three most active unions—CWA, the upstate units of the UAW, and SEIU Local 32BJ—all left.

With the departure of the unions, the party lost access to key powerbrokers in the Democratic establishment and experienced a significant shift in its membership and finances. Still, it took the external political force of Cuomo’s strength to divide the party, and it survived. Reflecting on this moment, one interviewee suggests, “When you lose institutions that represent a lot of people, that’s a challenge. And, you know, I think the party has done a good job of, at the same time, responding to that and being, you know—doing more to galvanize grassroots energy and participation to the point where, like, you know, if you look at the ballot line numbers in 2020, they were astronomical.”³⁵ Indeed, as we have already seen, the institutionalized power the WFP had already accumulated through the ballot line, ultimately, protected the party from the full impact of Cuomo’s political offensive.