(I have relatively little expertise in NY politics, but one of the people I trust the most- both because of his progressive politics and because he is a truly great organizer- is the founder of NY's Working Families Party. WFP is one of the best and most effective state level political operations on the progressive side in the country, so when Danny calls me about something, I pay attention, and he called the other day when he saw that BlogPac had endorsed one of Shelly Silver's primary opponents. I encouraged him to share his thoughts with you on the topic. Here they are... - promoted by Mike Lux)
I don't blog very often, being a bit intimidated by the blogging culture. But I have enormous respect for Open Left, and my anxiety is trumped by a desire to engage on an important topic.
I'm writing in response to the first Blue to Bluer post about the election campaign underway in New York between Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and challenger Paul Newell (and a third candidate, Luke Henry). I currently serve as the Executive Director of New York State's Working Families Party.
First, let me say that the Working Families Party strongly supports the concept of Blue to Bluer. We have backed progressive challengers to incumbent Democrats repeatedly, and doing so is at the very core of our strategy to take the state, and our country, in a more egalitarian and humane direction. One prominent example of the value of the Blue to Bluer approach was the 2004 race for Albany District Attorney, in which the WFP and its allies took on a powerful incumbent because we wanted to highlight our opposition to the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws. Our candidate (David Soares) won that primary, has served with distinction, and if the right-wing revives and tries to defeat him this year we will work just as hard to make sure he stays in office.
In fact, I think it's fair to say that the very reason for the 1998 formation of the WFP was to counter what we saw as the rightward drift of the Democratic Party. Public opinion in New York, as in the nation, is better and more progressive than public policy, and we felt then (and feel now) that building a ballot-line party under New York's "fusion" voting system would give us a powerful lever to advance ideas and elect candidates. As we enter what we hope will be a Democratic-leaning era in state (and national) politics, none of us should think for a nanosecond that the free-market, winner-take-all, anti-regulation crowd is about to give up or be reborn as egalitarian-minded social democrats.
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