Is Cuomo Killing the Democratic Party?

MICHAEL BENJAMIN

After Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s bruising battle for the endorsement of the left-leaning Working Families Party, I must ask, What is the future of New York’s Democratic Party? Is it in a continued alliance with the left-leaning Working Families Party?

Had Gov. Cuomo lost the WFP nomination, I tweeted that he would resume his pursuit of legislation ending the Wilson-Pakula law that permits cross-party endorsements by party leaders. Back in 2013 when he was an anticorruption leader, Cuomo proposed eliminating the Wilson-Pakula authorization given by a political party to non-enrolled candidates wishing to run on that party’s ballot line.

Queens State Senator Malcolm Smith and ex–New York City Councilman Dan Halloran are presently on trial in an alleged corruption plot that involved Smith paying bribes to Republican Party leaders to obtain a Wilson-Pakula so he could run on the GOP line for mayor of New York City.

Wilson-Pakula gives third parties like the WFP outsize influence with the two major parties, because New York law enables candidates to combine their vote totals from multiple party lines in the general election, and in many close races, that aggregate total is the difference between victory and defeat. To their credit, the Green Party of New York has stayed out of the major parties’ political affairs by refusing to cross-endorse any of their candidates.

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