Only Working Families can do the work to avoid being hijacked
Maria Delgado, shown leaving her home in Huntington Station, said she didn't know she was on the ballot as the Working Families Party's candidate for Huntington Town supervisor. Credit: Kathy M. Helgeson
In last month’s unusual contest for Huntington Town supervisor, Republican-aligned residents with a toehold in the Working Families Party helped maneuver the left-tilted organization against its usual Democratic Party alignment.
A politically unknown 83-year-old candidate named Maria Delgado — clearly with pro-GOP help — managed to win the WFP nomination. She won a primary against Democratic candidate Cooper Macco. So in the general election, her presence on the ballot pulled enough votes to help reelect GOP incumbent Ed Smyth.
Dividing the opposition is an old and cynical strategy for incumbents. Delgado's candidacy was perfect for that. She's been registered with WFP since 2021 but there was no sign she ever ran to win as supervisor this year.
Because this gamesmanship is legal, nobody except the Working Families organization can or will be held responsible for whom it nominates.
Usually, Long Island voters have too few choices as when the major parties make cross-endorsement deals, which New York's rare "fusion" system allows. Without it, a candidate nominated by one party could not add votes from another party's line.
Yet it's highly unlikely that fusion will be killed. There was talk to that effect in Albany under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who tried different ways to curb the WFP's influence. But that moment is past.
With Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and Rep. Elise Stefanik now on a collision course for next year's GOP nomination for governor, Gov. Kathy Hochul will seek to make sure the WFP does not siphon progressive votes by nominating an alternative candidate. For Republicans, the fusion system since the 1990s has meant Conservative Party alliance in a governor's race.
Some choosy voters on the right or left still find the alternative lines useful for telling them whether the major party candidate really aligns with their views.
Working Families co-director Jasmine Gripper recently told Newsday: "There are bad actors across the state looking to take advantage of multiple ballot lines" but her party "will need help from the State Legislature and governor."
Actually, it appears that her party needs to help itself. The WFP has a structure like none other in the state. It lacks county committees, which is no small aberration. New York election law even prescribes how county committees should be constituted.
County committees in other parties can scrutinize and challenge petitions from possible "hijackers." Such operations take work and committed people. The Suffolk WFP appears to lack the personnel or volunteers to do that. The Brooklyn-based state WFP declared support for Macco but didn't prevail.
In 2009, alert officials of the Suffolk Conservative Party battled an attempt by the county PBA to "infiltrate" its membership in order to derail then-Sheriff Vincent DeMarco of a nomination. The PBA strategy fizzled, amid litigation.
As of November the county’s Conservative Party had 20,768 voters enrolled — nearly five times as many as Working Families, with only 4,248. Conservatives also have much stronger links to the GOP than the WFP does to Long Island Democrats.
The minor parties are just that. Suffolk has 358,471 Democrats, 344,328 Republicans and 335,218 voters without party affiliation, state figures show.
The state WFP’s frustrated leadership could make organizational reforms or bring in more people or both if it wishes to avoid being "raided" or hijacked. It's up to the party and nobody else to decide how its role as a leftist Democratic faction plays out in conservative-leaning regions like Suffolk.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
