In 2018, Sex in the City star Cynthia Nixon ran for Governor of NY. Nixon challenged incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lost the democratic primary, but she was also nominated by the Working Families Party. Eventually, Nixon’s name was removed as the WFP candidate for Governor, and Cuomo went onto an easy re-election.
But the Governor considered the decision by the WFP to support Nixon a betrayal, and over the next three years began an effort to disenfranchise the minor political parties in New York by making it more difficult for them to keep their automatic ballot access.
The new ballot access law, which was included in the state budget agreement this year, now requires political parties to run a candidate for President and receive 120,000 votes, or else lose their party status.
Many members of the Assembly and Senate in NY did not agree with the new law but let is pass as part of the larger budget bill.
On November 3, the Working Families Party had Joe Biden on their ballot and the Conservative Party had Donald Trump on their ballot line. Both parties received more than enough votes to keep their ballot status.
But other minor parties in New York State, including the SAM Party, the Independence Party and the Green Party, either did not run a Presidential candidate or did not receive enough votes on Nov 3.
Based on the new law, these parties will not automatically be on the ballot, but must petition to run candidates for office, always a difficult task for statewide offices like Governor in 2022. Ironically, the attempts by Gov. Cuomo to remove the WFP from existence was not successful, but instead affected other, minor parties who got punished for what?
We do not agree with the ballot access law and we agree with the SAM Party, who has filed a lawsuit against it, claiming that it is unconstitutional We need more voices in our political discourse, and more choices when we go into the ballot booth.
The Daily News agrees with this view and recently wrote the following Editorial. Titled, The party’s not over: Democrats’ attempt to kill the Working Families Party and others doesn’t work, the Daily News Editorial Board wrties,
“Of the millions of votes cast by New Yorkers for president, the Serve America Movement Party’s candidate didn’t get a single one. That’s because the SAM spot on the ballot was left empty, as SAM is a party only in New York; it doesn’t operate in other states or field or back White House contenders. As should be its right.
“But New York wants to now declare SAM dead and buried because it failed to notch 130,000 votes or 2% of the state’s total presidential vote (whichever is higher). The only way for SAM to have survived was to have run its own presidential candidate or cross-endorsed Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
” In other words, it would have been forced by law to support someone it didn’t want to. It will be up to Manhattan Federal Judge John Koeltl to save the First Amendment rights of this party and others, knocking out an unfair requirement that Gov. Cuomo pushed though the Legislature
“Cuomo and his pals had it out for the Working Families Party, which backed his primary opponent last time out, and concocted the offensive standard. The WFP survived, as did the Conservative Party, but only by cross-endorsing Democrats and Republicans. That’s fusion voting, which we don’t mind, but many others do.
“The free-standing Greens and Libertarians, which actually stand for something and put up their own candidates, fell far short. As did the Independence Party, roughly 85% of whose enrolled registered voters are dupes thinking that they are members of no party, or what we normally call independent voters. While its demise would be welcome, Koeltl should still kibosh the new rules,” writes the Daily News. We couldn’t agree more.
