The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
WFP: Minority representation or exploiting a Dem loophole?
Local Connecticut governments are seeing more participation from the Working Families Party attempting to change the landscape of local politics.
The party has put forth candidates on its own line to take over seats held by Republicans on town councils and boards, and crossendorsed many Democrat candidates to pull the party further left.
With 92 candidates endorsed in municipal elections, its presence is larger
locally than ever before.
The party has sitting representatives on the Hartford City Council and Windham Town Council, but has endorsed candidates for the first time in Hamden and West Hartford.
“It’s definitely more independent candidates than we’ve previously run,” said Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party. “We have a reputation for being strategic and targeted. We want to expand upon that. We’ll take the same expertise and competence we’ve used in legislative races, but we’re trying to spread our wings.”
The WFP has endorsed local candidates this election cycle in Bridgeport, Danbury, Fairfield, Hartford, Middletown, Norwalk, Hartford, New Britain, Meriden, New London and West Hartford.
In New Haven, the party has thrown its support behind incumbent Mayor Toni Harp and several candidates for the Board of Alders.
Under state statutes, a municipal governing body such as a town council and board can’t elect all its members from the same political party, unless its members only represent districts.
Those positions were a lifeline of the minority party in Hamden, said Scott McLean, a professor of political science at Quinnipiac University.
In Hamden, the two WFP-endorsed candidates — Rhonda Caldwell and Laurie Sweet — are looking to replace the traditional minority Republican representation on the town’s Legislative Council as the new minority.
They’re trying to challenge Republican Legislative Council candidates Elizabeth Wetmore, Austin Cesare, Dolphus Addison and Dian Lewis.
The Working Families Party has been successful in electing candidates to Hartford’s City Council, where no Republicans are represented.
Farrell said the WFP is running the same strategy in Bridgeport’s Board of Education race and in West Hartford’s Town Council.
The Working Families Party came out of New York in 1998 to be a vehicle for people on the political left who felt they weren’t being heard by the town Democratic leadership, McLean said.
“There’s certainly a risk that the strength of the Working Families Party could diminish the rightofcenter voices that could be heard on the (Hamden) Legislative Council,” he said.
Replacing Republicans on local councils and boards with WFP members could mean eliminating true opposition to Democrats, said Gary Rose, professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield and chairman of the Department of Government, Politics and Global Studies.
“I suppose you could call it bipartisanship, but if you lose a Republican voice on any town council that’s Democraticdominated, you’re losing representation of the electorate as a whole.
“I’m a strong believer in choice and vibrant party perspective,” Rose said. “I don’t think it would benefit the overall electorate.”
J.R. Romano, the Connecticut GOP chairman, said the WFP and Democrats are idealistically the same so their election strategy is way to manipulate predominantly Democratic towns to not have any other voices — such as Republicans.
“It’s a workaround to get around minority representation on boards and commissions,” Romano said. “Ideologically they are the same and it’s the reason their mill rates are so high and their towns aren’t run well.”
Romano said allowing WFP candidates to count as minority representation is a way to force singleparty control over a municipality.
“Why are communities with WFP elected, constantly need to be bailed out?” he said.
The Hamden candidates said part of their strategy is to create a supermajority on the council.
McLean said while the Working Families Party is on the liberal side of the spectrum, it isn’t the same party as Democrats.
Farrell said the WFP agenda overlaps in many ways with Democrats but it also stands separate in others.
“We’re glad to work with Democrats on issues, but it’s not the entirety of our mission,” Farrell said. The WFP doesn’t get involved with corporate centrist Democrats and it looks for candidates to primary them, she said.
“We intend to be a real political party and that means growing and expand at municipal level,” Farrell said.
Much of the party’s work still involves endorsing progressive Democratic candidates. In legislative races the party typically endorses onethird of Democrats, Farrell said.
McLean said crossendorsement is a good idea because it gives candidates a chance to get on the ballot, but “it can be captured by people who are just looking for another opportunity when they don’t succeed on the Democratic side. That’s what’s happened in New Haven and Hamden.”
In New Haven, Harp lost the Democratic primary to Justin Elicker, but she’s still in the general election as a Working Families Party candidate.
“It’s a good strategy and our state laws allow it so you have every right to exploit it,” Rose said. “But when the dust settles after a primary, it speaks to people holding onto power.”
Because of New Haven’s lopsided voter registration, the general election is like another primary, he said.
“Voters just need to be aware that that is the option that the candidate is making and vote accordingly,” McLean said. “For many it’s a great opportunity to voice their dissent to candidates who did win the primary. Dissent is a legitimate way to use one’s vote.”
McLean said that’s the tradeoff that Connecticut makes for having policies such as cross-endorsement that allow minor parties a place on the ballot.
“It’s one of the things that voters have to be educated about and aware that sometimes there are genuine Working Families candidates and sometimes there are Democrats that use the Working Families Party as a means of staying on in the general election.”
Rose said the crossendorsements keep the Working Families Party alive.
“From a strategic standpoint there’s a lot of benefit to cross-endorsement,” Farrell said. “We’re independent political institution and we’re the only third party since 1930s to elect their people to state legislature. There’s a lot of Democratic issues we work together in but we’re not always in alignment and we’ve taken critique from Democrats.”
Rose said the WFP’s impact in the state has been because it’s growing and vocal.
“I see it as a third party that’s pulling the Democrats to the left,” he said. “More than them holding office, their message is causing a number of Democrats to seek their crossendorsement and the agenda of the Democrats has moved in a more progressive direction.”
McLean said the U.S. electoral system tends to promote few parties, which makes things difficult for third parties to be consistently competitive.
“The concern is Republicans feel they’re becoming a third or minor party and that they may lose their traditional role as the opposition party or the minority party,” McLean said. “This is what happens when communities change.”