Hermann, Marc, A.
The rise of the Working Families Party: de Blasio and James filing suit in 2009 to block the term-limits overturn.
Where have you gone, Carlos Danger? After a rollicking primary, the general election has been dull political theater. Spoiler alert: The Democrats, from Bill de Blasio on down, will win.
Never mind the doomsayers, including Joe Lhota, muttering darkly about the imminent return of the bad old days; there’s no question that New York is going back to the future and returning to its natural state as a one-party town.
After two administrations that have been right of the political center in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one, New York will be run by a Democrat for the first time since 1993, when the Dow ended the year at 3,750.09 (it closed at 14776.53 on Tuesday) and 2,420 people were murdered (it was 684 in 2012), and since the city charter was changed in 1990 to create a much more powerful mayor (David Dinkins didn’t seem to notice).
Over their five terms, neither Rudy Giuliani nor Mike Bloomberg made any effort to build a political operation that could turn out votes or wield political influence after they left City Hall.
Which helps explain why Lhota, who was Giuliani’s deputy mayor for operations, is down a staggering 50 points. De Blasio is a compelling candidate, and without a massive crisis, a private fortune or both to sway them, few of the city’s 3 million registered Democrats are going to cross party lines this year.
But while the mayors squandered their opportunities to realign the city’s politics, a small party far to their left has been doing just that.
For the first time since the office was introduced in 1993, the next public advocate won’t chomp at the mayor’s ankles. That’s because de Blasio and Letitia James are both Democrats, and also Working Families Party stalwarts — de Blasio one of its founders and James the first Council member elected on its line alone.
“On the issues they care about, from minimum wage to tenant issues to development, they are absolutely definitional — they can set the debate at the city and the state level,” de Blasio said of the WFP in 2010.
The party, founded in 1988 to take advantage of New York’s fusion voting system, which allows candidates to run on multiple ballot lines, effectively represents organized labor. Despite its small membership, its used its ballot line and operational resources to push Democratic officials farther left, and elect new ones who are already there. That plan has paid off.
Even as Bloomberg ally and Council Speaker Christine Quinn used the power of her office to effectively force her left-leaning membership to stay in the center lane, the WFP played the long game, slowly building a progressive caucus (including James) to counter her. That paid off massively this year, as the group turned the tables on Quinn, forcing votes on paid sick days and new restraints on stop-and-frisk — two issues that, along with the term-limits extension the WFP played a leading role in fighting, derailed Quinn’s mayoral bid.
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=15343
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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