‘Fake campaign’: Expert says alleged ‘Republican plant’ exposes third-party vulnerability

In New York, the state’s Working Families Party is engaged in a battle to hold its ballot line, a battle that offers insight into the squeeze. smaller parties have undergone this year to maintain relevance and influence, despite the fact that a growing number of Americans say they would support another political party.

In New York, minor parties must maintain 2% support in elections to hold their ballot line. This provision was passed as part of a package that also provided for public funding for campaigns. In practical terms, that means the Working Families Party needs to get 130,000 voters to vote for the vice president. Kamala Harrison Party of Working Families the D line, instead of below the Democratic Party line.

The Working Families Party is what political scientists would call a “fusion party,” a third party that normally nominates the same candidate as the major party and essentially acts as an interest group within the same larger party. The New York Working Families Party almost always nominates the same candidates as the Democrats. Also, the state’s Conservative Party normally nominates the same candidate as the Republicans.

Merger parties are in contrast to a more traditional third party, such as the Green Party or the Libertarian Party, which normally nominate their own candidates. This year, the Green Party nominated Jill Stein and the Libertarians nominated activist Chase Oliver. While third-party nominees are ostensibly in the running for the win, they have historically had the most impact when they are able to present a real threat to act as a spoiler for major parties.

Bernard Tamas, a political scientist at Valdosta State University and author of “The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties,” told Salon that this strategy is known as “stinging like a bee.”

“The idea is that the point of a third party is to pick an issue or set of issues that people feel are being ignored and attack one or both of the major parties on that,” Tamas said. “As much as they like to say ‘we’re not spoilers,’ the strategy threatens to ruin them. If they are successful, then the major parties will co-opt whatever issue the third party campaigned on.”

A classic example of this is the Progressive Party or the Bull Moose Party of the early 20th century. Tamas said the party was able to pressure the Republican Party to pass anti-child labor laws and other progressive positions that had a major impact on American life.

In recent history, however, there has not been a credible threat like that of the Progressive Party, according to Tamas. The most recent example was with the Reform Party, led by businessman Ross Perot in the 1990s. Since then, Tamas said, there hasn’t been a third party with enough voting power to really impact an election.

This year, Robert Kennedy Jr., who was MOUNTING an independent bid for the presidency, saw his support collapse and dropped out of the race well before Election Day, endorsing former President Donald Trump, apparently in exchange for a seat position on a proposed vaccine committee.

In the absence of a credible ‘sting like a bee’ strategy, third parties have split into two categories, parties such as the Working Families Party and parties such as the Green Party.

Ana Maria Archila, co-director of the New York Working Families Party, told Salon that this year she sees voting on the Working Families Party line as a way “for New York State voters who want to defeat Trump, but they are frustrated with the continued bombing of Gaza to send a message.”

“Having a voting line is a way for voters in New York State to have a more expressive vote,” Archilla said. “We enter this year committed to defeating Trump, defeating the MAGA Republicans who enable his agenda here in New York, and working hand-in-hand with Democrats to redistrict Congress.”

In many ways, Tamas noted, the Working Families Party functions more like an interest group or a union, except that instead of providing money or votes to union members, it provides labor for activism and a bloc of voters progressives. So far, this method has allowed the Working Families Party to hold its ballot line in a state where the merger party system was explicitly designed to eliminate third parties, dating back to the reelection campaigns of former President Franklin Roosevelt , when Democrats feared that union parties might play spoiler.

“They came with the attitude of ‘we have to be practical’ when they first developed the party,” Tamas said. “They refer to it as an inside-out party and so what the Working Families Party claims is if they like it. they will co-nominate a Democratic candidate and try to support that candidate, but if they don’t like the third-party candidate, they will run their own against them. They almost never nominate their own candidate.”

This year, the best-known candidate on the Working Families Party line is congressional candidate Anthony Frascone, who is running in New York’s 17th. Frascone, however, has not received the party’s endorsement, and the Working Families Party says Frascone is a factory Republican who runs a “fake campaign” intended to spoil the race for the Democratic nominee, former Rep. Mondaire Jones, DN.Y., who faces Rep. Mike Lawler, RN.Y.

Tamas noted that this kind of maneuvering is something that third parties are particularly vulnerable to and is part of the reason why a party running merger candidates is usually on the last legs. Tamas noted, however, that the Working Families Party has been unusually durable, even though it acts mostly as an interest group in the Democratic coalition.

“I’ve long been skeptical of the Working Families Party, but I’ll have to say, after seeing how deeply ineffective the Greens and Libertarians have been this year, at least they have a seat at the table,” Tamas said.

The other strategy embodied by the Green Party this cycle is to try to build a political infrastructure completely independent of the two major parties.

“Building power is an interesting way of saying it because we’re in a position in NYS where we’ve been officially repressed,” said Peter LaVenia, a co-chair of the New York Green Party. “When you don’t have a ballot line, it’s very difficult to put forward candidates.”

LaVenia said the Green Party is trying to reclaim its party line this year with Stein as its presidential candidate, but that it’s an uphill battle. He added that the party is increasingly skeptical even of the traditional “sting like a bee” strategy of picking an issue to try to force a major party to adopt, saying “this idea of ​​political concessions, that is liberalism, that is reformism and not that. the party is about.”

“I don’t see at any level, no Biden, no Kamala Harris, no opening at any level,” LaVenia said. “What typically ends up happening is that if they take advantage of any of these issues, it means avoiding any real change.”

LaVenia said the party’s current strategy is “the idea that workers and people who think we need radical change in this country need their own organization, and it’s a harder road to walk.”

“We’ve been hit by election law and a public that is very skeptical of smaller parties,” LaVenia said. “Our legitimacy — it’s difficult for people to see.”

As for whether any third-party efforts in the United States are working effectively this year, Elain Kamarck, senior fellow for government studies at the Brookings Institution, says she is “unimpressed.”

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“Structurally, with third parties you have to be skeptical of their intentions because they don’t do a very good job of building a party. If he was, he would be running for county commissioner,” Kamarck said. “There is a Republican county committee in all 3,000 counties in America, how many Green Party county committees are there? How many Conservative Party county committees are there?”

Kamarck said that generally when a third party is relatively successful, they will be absorbed into a larger party, such as the Reform Party, and when they fail, it tends to be because of a lack of grassroots support. She used the Uncommitted movement this year as an example of an organization that went out of its way to try to affect politics, but ultimately “got away” because it could only win 37 delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

“They had a good idea, they got quite a bit of attention for it, they built it as best they could, but in the end they didn’t have the votes,” Kamarck said.

What the Uncommitted movement understood, in Kamarck’s analysis, is that, structurally, primaries are the time to have the kinds of political and ideological struggles that many third-party sympathizers would like to have.

“If you look at The Squad, these are people who got elected to Congress. They have influence and people listen to what they say. Similarly, look at the Freedom Caucus and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. In fact, the Republican Party is fundamentally divided,” Kamarck said. “Town halls are the place to do that, you’ll never get anywhere with a third party.”