When the Working Families Party was founded in 1998, the idea was to take advantage of the fusion law in New York that allows candidates to run on more than one ballot line. That way, the WFP could work to help progressive candidates win primaries and run on both the Democratic Party line and the Working Families line. And unlike typical third parties splitting the progressive vote, the WFP would never be in the role of spoiler helping to elect a Republican.
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani had the WFP endorsement. With the endorsement came thousands of dedicated volunteers as well as complementary wins for other public offices. WFP did not do it alone, of course, but the party helped anchor a broad coalition.
WFP pursued a similar strategy in America’s only other fusion state, Connecticut, working with other progressive grassroots organizations such as the Connecticut Citizen Action Group. In a generation, these efforts turned Connecticut not just from purple to blue, but to progressive blue. Today, Connecticut has a progressive Democratic governor in Ned Lamont, progressive senators in Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, and a working majority in the state legislature.
But in recent years, WFP has concluded that you don’t need fusion to have a quasi-third party that works both with, and sometimes against, Democrats. Even without fusion, it’s possible for WFP to create a local party, recruit members, endorse candidates, and make members available to work in campaigns. The 2025 local elections proved that strategy to be an impressive success in places far from New York City.
WFP-endorsed insurgent progressive candidates won mayoral elections in Seattle, Dayton, Ohio, and Fort Collins, Colorado, as well as Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany in upstate New York. And the strategy was basically the same in fusion and non-fusion states.
Seattle was especially instructive. Community organizer Katie Wilson announced her challenge to incumbent Bruce Harrell, who was running for re-election in Seattle’s nonpartisan election. Wilson was founder and lead organizer of the Transit Riders Union, which pushes for more and better mass transit in Seattle.
In a February 2025 special election, Seattle voters passed Proposition 1A, which created a new business tax to fund social housing. Proposition 1B, a much weaker alternative proposal endorsed by Harrell and business leaders, rejected the business tax. The result was a victory for Seattle’s progressives and helped push Wilson into challenging Harrell.
In the August nonpartisan primary, Wilson placed first, with 50.75 percent to Harrell’s 41.71 percent. Seattle’s business forces went all out to defeat Wilson, and the final November election was a squeaker. Wilson beat Harrell 50.20 to 49.47, or by just over 2,000 votes. Harrell finally conceded on November 14.
The volunteer effort swept other WFP-endorsed candidates into office, including challenger Dionne Fosterfor a Seattle City Council seat, as well as Eddie Lin and incumbent Alexis Mercedes Rinck, and Girmay Zahilay as King County executive; and Erika Evans for Seattle city attorney.
According to Vanessa Clifford, Northwest regional director for the Working Families Party, the party was able to enlist about a thousand campaign volunteers. Elsewhere in Washington state, Working Families Party candidates now hold a supermajority on the Spokane City Council, not famously progressive territory, thanks to insurgent WFP-backed candidates’ wins over incumbents.
How did the WFP decide to move beyond fusion states?
In New York in 2009, they elected several stalwarts to the New York City Council, including Brad Lander, who went on to win citywide as comptroller, and Jumaane Williams, who won citywide as public advocate. “We realized that this didn’t require fusion,” says Joe Dinkin, WFP national deputy director. “It just required winning Democratic primaries.”
According to Dinkin, WFP leaders were also intrigued by the success of the Tea Parties as a “partylike structure” that was shaking things up on the Republican side. So WFP gradually began organizing in about 15 states.
They’ve been able to elect two WFP-only members to the Philadelphia City Council, oust a House Speaker in Delaware, defeat several oil-and-gas Democrats in the New Mexico legislature, and a lot more.
What does this all mean? First, well-organized progressives can beat the power of big money.
Second, since some of these areas are not exactly left-wing strongholds, it challenges the mantra that successful Democrats need to move to the center. As the party’s name suggests, candidates are successful when they emphasize pocketbook issues that matter to working families.
Third, there are more working families than billionaires. Democracy still works when leaders inspire and mobilize ordinary people.
The WFP successes also remind us of the role of a party—to emphasize a common ideology and agenda, to which candidates and members subscribe. Activists and voters engaged to support the top of the ticket are likely to support the whole ticket.
These are not bad takeaways for that other party—the Democrats.
[Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.
Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.]Read the original article at Prospect.org.
Used with the permission. © The American Prospect, Prospect.org, 2025. All rights reserved.
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