‘LABOR’ OF GOV
Leaders eye new party to boost Cuo
Union leaders closely allied with Gov. Cuomo are considering creating their own ballot line to back him amid indications that the left-leaning Working Families Party is moving toward nominating Cynthia Nixon for governor, sources told The Post.
Cuomo ran on the WFP ballot line in 2010 and 2014, but many party activists have soured on him, seeing him as politically opportunistic. A WFP endorsement would be a coup for Nixon and help generate enthusiasm for her campaign.
But labor unions are looking at creating their own ballot line to back Cuomo and might even call it the Real Working Families Party or Labor Party to steal the WFP’s thunder, sources familiar with the discussions said.
Empire State labor unions helped co-found the WFP and have bankrolled the party for decades, but some larger organizations — SEIU Local 1199, the Transport Workers Union and the United Federation of Teachers — have stopped writing checks to the WFP over the past few years amid disagreements over strategy.
One labor leader, TWU President John Samuelsen, criticized the WFP as pushing more of a “social-lifestyle agenda” instead of an “economic-security agenda” for the working class.
“Creating a ‘Labor Union’ party would be a good idea,” said Samuelsen, a Cuomo booster. “There’s a rift between sociallifestyle progressives and tradeunion progressives.”
Samuelsen, noting that Cuomo pushed through a $15 minimum wage, paid family leave and free public-college tuition for middle-class families, said it’s baffling that the WFP wouldn’t endorse him.
“You have a sitting governor who has done more for labor than any New York governor in history,” the TWUleader said.
The Cuomo campaign suggested the WFP is dividing the left, just as it criticized the Independent Democratic Conference in the state Senate of doing.
“The WFP situation could now replicate a new ‘IDC’ dynamic, dividing Democrats to the benefit of Republicans,” said Cuomo campaign adviser Sarah Paden.