The Working Families Party (WFP) of New York was formed in 1998 by radical progressives who didn't think the Democratic Party was radical enough.
The WFP was an outgrowth of the New Party (NP), a "party within a party," which the NP founders, Dan Cantor and Joel Rogers, called their "fusion" party.
By 1998, with the NP losing support, the party merged with our old friends in the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN was a notorious electoral cheater, hiring college kids and bums off the street to register non-existent voters.
The fused parties rebranded themselves as the "Working Families Party" and went to work revolutionizing New York politics.
The WFP got a big boost in 2006 when a state court struck down a law that prevented parties from spending money in other parties’ primaries. Coupled with New York's system of fusion voting, where candidates on several ballots would have their votes tallied together, it gave WFP the muscle to become kingmakers in the state.
The WFP has become a one-stop shop for progressive candidates running in New York. It functions as something like a SuperPAC because it "can accept contributions significantly larger than those permitted for most individual candidates—up to $138,600 per donor," according to Joseph Burns writing in City Journal. The WFP also has legions of volunteers who perform the scut work of any campaign, including voter registration, get-out-the-vote efforts on election day, and manning phone banks.
The WFP deployed these tools with precision in New York City’s 2025 mayoral primary. Its campaign focused not just on boosting Mamdani but also on blocking his chief rival and the WFP’s longtime nemesis, Andrew Cuomo. The WFP encouraged its supporters to rank anyone but Cuomo in the ranked-choice primary election system.
The strategy worked: Mamdani was ranked on nearly 60 percent of ballots, Cuomo on just 45 percent. Ranked-choice voting was sold to voters as a way to help centrist candidates win primary elections; the WFP turned this concept on its head and used the system to deliver a win to the most left-wing candidate in the primary field.
It's not unusual for a minor political party to make a huge impact in New York politics. James Buckley, brother of conservative icon Bill Buckley, successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970 on the Conservative Party line.
But the WFP has worked the unique New York state electoral system to perfection. They've done it by enforcing strict discipline that punishes apostates and disloyal members.
The party has backed challengers to moderate Democrats who had broken from the WFP line. Out of the six apostates, four were defeated for re-election.
The WFP continues to police its ranks. A former ally, State Senator Jessica Ramos, was once a favorite of New York’s progressives. But after her own mayoral bid stalled earlier this year, she threw her support behind Cuomo’s candidacy. The WFP has already begun lining up a challenger—Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas—for a primary fight with Ramos in 2026.
The party may even expand its formal authority over its members. Before adjourning for the year, the state legislature passed a bill giving the WFP’s state committee the power to expel (or, as it’s known under New York law, disenroll) party members it believes are not in alignment with the party’s principles. Under current law, only county party leaders can remove members for disloyalty. Unlike the other recognized parties, however, the WFP has no organized county committees. The new legislation therefore lets the party exercise a power that it previously lacked.
Since Zohran Mamdani's primary win, WFP personnel have populated his general election campaign, including naming a long-time WFP member as his campaign manager.
"The party’s former operatives now populate city council offices, state legislative staffs, major unions, and influential nonprofits. Such a network would have impressed any Tammany Hall ward heeler," writes Burns.
Indeed, the WFP plays hardball as well as any modern political party. Chicago Democrats can't hold a candle to them. The WFP is opening chapters all across the country, and while the electoral landscape won't be as favorable, given far different laws on party fusion in other states, they will have the money and the support of radical leftists to try and change that.
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