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The WFP does not typically run its own “stand-alone” candidates—that is, candidates that run exclusively on the WFP ballot line—in New York.¹ WFP leaders, moreover, openly acknowledge their efforts to influence the Democratic primary and acknowledge that it is a significant source of their political power in the state. As one state director frankly admitted, the WFP’s power depends on a substantial number of voters sympathetic with its mission to remain Democrats to influence the candidates that emerge from the Democratic primary: “We wanted enough registrants to protect us from being taken over by folks registering in our party or using notaries to collect signatures and run candidates that we didn’t want. But we wanted to engage in the Democratic primary, which was hugely important for us. We wanted to keep a lot of our activists registered in the Democratic primary to push the candidates [the WFP] had endorsed.”² This director continues, “[It was] kind of a two-headed beast…We had power because we had the line and our ability to deliver votes on the line. But we had even more power, because within that structure we had built a machine that won primaries.”

The WFP also does not energetically seek to register voters.³ That choice reflects both a commitment to a robust conception of party membership and strategic accommodation to several political realities. The first was that in the early years, especially in New York City, sympathetic voters, like some family members and personal friends of party organizers, were reluctant to register as WFP, recognizing that the Democratic primary was “the true election.”⁴ Second, under New York’s ballot access rules, a larger registration base makes it significantly more resource-intensive to place a candidate on the ballot.⁵

At first glance, such facts appear to support the objection that the WFP is not really a party but rather an ideologically extreme faction within the Democratic Party—or, alternatively, and perhaps worse, the view that the WFP is a nefarious party that engages in persistent party raiding. Both characterizations are flawed.⁶ For one, while the WFP is more likely to cross-nominate Democrats, it has, in fact, cross-nominated Republicans in critical elections.⁷ More importantly, the WFP does not understand itself either as a faction of the Democratic Party or as engaged in party raiding.⁸

From the party’s perspective, the point is to operate where it matters: For a party that values “real power,” exercising power depends on “mak[ing] people fear their incumbency status in the next election.”⁹ When the two-party system is uncompetitive, the relevant “next election” is the party primary. Engaging in the Democratic primary is thus simply exploiting a political opportunity “to actually move things.”¹⁰ The decision to exercise its electoral muscle in the general election or in the primary is a product of its pragmatic politics. As one interviewee explains:

“In states like New York and Connecticut where we have fusion voting…we have three tools in our toolbox. One is that we can run our own candidates. We rarely do that. We do sometimes. We’ve won some seats, but it’s really kind of like the exception, not the rule…Two is we cross-endorse in close elections that are contests between the Democrats and Republicans. And sometimes that means we’re what we call the margin of victory. And we’re able to help get the more-aligned-with-us Democrat over the finish line…And then the third is like a bank shot on fusion, which is we support Democrats in their primaries because we want to be able to cross-endorse them in the general without spoiling.”¹¹

The party understands that in addition to demonstrating support on the ballot line, it can exercise power by ensuring that the candidates it wants in office come out of the Democratic primary—a strategy that requires that the people aligned with its program remain Democrats.

Indeed, the WFP’s primary involvement could easily be characterized as a strategy to ensure the Democratic Party fuses with its candidates. Unlike the WFP’s nomination process—which, as we have seen, is controlled by its dues-paying members through the screening interviews, subject to the discipline of the State Executive Committee and the Advisory Council and party staff—the Democratic Party relies on a direct primary to select its nominees. This essentially forces the WFP to engage Democratic voters directly to secure a cross-endorsement. Indeed, at times, when the WFP has been unable to persuade the Democratic Party to vote for its candidate during the primary, it has either left its ballot line open or run an independent candidate.¹² The key point is that the WFP cannot negotiate an alliance with Democratic Party leaders because, as a legal matter, they are sidelined in the nomination process.

Reflecting this understanding, with respect to Connecticut, one interviewee explains, “We were spending money to give our candidate the best shot at winning the final election, and the best shot of them winning the final elections included them becoming the Democratic nominee and winning the Democratic primary.”¹³ For WFP candidates (for example, Cynthia Nixon or Jumaane Williams) to have a chance of winning the general election, the party had to persuade Democrats to nominate Nixon over Andrew Cuomo, the incumbent governor, and Jumaane Williams over Kathy Hochul, the incumbent lieutenant governor, in the Democratic primary.¹⁴

Any claim that the WFP is a faction of the Democratic Party also ignores the overwhelming evidence laid out in the next two sections that, despite its status as a minor fusion party, the WFP, through its investment in its organization, has built a strong associational party that systematically exercises key party functions, including recruiting candidates, mediating intraparty conflict, and delivering both electoral wins and policy returns for its supporters through its own party formation. The WFP experience thus demonstrates that running independent candidates is not a necessary condition for being a minor party or exercising power. Running independent candidates is not necessary for securing a seat at the legislative table, passing policies, or facilitating constituent services, and it is not necessary for building associational ties, a broad partisan network, or a party organization.