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WORKING FAMILIES PARTY -2026 THE RIGHT TIME FOR A WAVE OF WINS  
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Rachel Leingang
December 29, 2025
The Guardian
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_ The progressive party is now active in 18 states and much of its
expansion happened in the past five years. The party believes 2026
will be a wave year for the left nationwide, so it will be
aggressively recruiting candidates for state legislatures _

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families party,
with Zohran Mamdani and voters in Brooklyn, New York, on 4 November
2025., Photograph: Kylie Cooper/Reuters // The Guardian

 

The “time has come” for the Working Families party, the
progressive third party’s national director said after a year of big
wins and a growing hunger among voters for a home outside the two
major political parties.

“For 26 years, we’ve been building this argument,” Maurice
Mitchell said. “And the argument has met the moment.”

The party, founded in 1998, helped elect Zohran Mamdani
[[link removed]] as New York City
mayor, worked to get rid of an electoral process in New Jersey that
prioritized party insiders, and saw its endorsees win races across the
country this year. The party has made inroads beyond deep-blue cities
too, with endorsees winning in Dayton, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York.

In next year’s midterms, it will ramp up its involvement in primary
elections, supporting candidates that emphasize working-class politics
and seek to disrupt the political status quo. Already, Democratic
candidates have laser-focused on affordability – something the
Working Families party has advocated for.

The Working Families party describes
[[link removed]] itself as “a multiracial party
that fights for workers over bosses and people over the powerful”
that seeks to build “an America which realizes the promise –
unrealized in our history – of freedom and equality for all”. In
practice, candidates the party supports often run in Democratic
primaries as insurgents aligned with its goals of affordability,
improved conditions for workers, a stronger social safety net and
reforms to the democratic process.

Candidates can be endorsed by both Working Families and the Democratic
party. “We cook what we have in the kitchen,” Mitchell said.

Part of Working Families’ success stems from the Democratic
party’s flagging brand with some voters, who see it as too moderate
or simply unwilling to fight for the interests of its voters. As the
Democrats [[link removed]] spent the
last year soul-searching over how to improve their standing with
voters, Working Families peeled off some of those who previously
called themselves Democrats.

Could the US have a true third party? Mitchell said he wouldn’t do
the work if he didn’t think it was “both necessary and
possible”. The party is also working to dismantle structural
barriers that make the rise of third parties difficult in the US, he
said.

“Less and less people are identifying as being a Democrat or
Republican,” he said. “The brand of the Democratic and the
Republican parties are underwater consistently. I don’t think
there’s been a better and more right time for a third party to
emerge in this country that speaks to the interest of everyday working
people. I believe that our time has come.”

Working Families is now active in 18 states, with the party appearing
on the ballot directly in three (New York Connecticut and Oregon)and
much of the party’s expansion happening in the past five years. The
party has endorsed people in most states – this past November, it
endorsed more than 700 people, most of whom ran in Democratic
primaries. It counts more than 600,000 members, not including voters
registered as party members in states with the option to register as
Working Families voters. It has more than 100 staff members.

Part of the party’s work includes organizing in non-political
spaces. Nelini Stamp, strategy director for the party, ties politics
into fandoms – she’s created the Real Housewives of Politics to
tap into Bravo fans and organized Dungeons and Dragons nights.

Mitchell, who describes himself as a “political nerd”, said he
used to look at the culture war tactics of the right as a distraction
from the issues. Now, though, he sees the culture war as the “main
event”. People form their identities and values in the culture –
politics needs to meet them where they are already gathering.

Candidates like Mamdani – and Barack Obama and even Donald Trump –
“invited people into a movement” that went beyond politics, he
said.

“As much as I disagree with Maga and Trump, that is their political
project: winning a world,” Mitchell said. “The Democrats are
focused on winning an election.”

Where it’s working

In the New York City mayoral race, Working Families started early to
form a slate of candidates who were mutually supportive of each other
so they wouldn’t split the vote. It helped mobilize volunteers to
canvass and phone bank across the city and, through an independent
expenditure group, spent money on ads against Andrew Cuomo and to
boost Mamdani.

Not only did Mamdani win in an upset, but more people voted for mayor
on the Working Families ballot line than those who voted on the
Republican party line. Mamdani voted for himself
[[link removed]] on the Working Families
line. (His name, and the name of Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa,
appeared on ballots twice, under different political parties, part of
the city’s practice of “fusion voting” where parties can
nominate the same candidate.)

Mamdani joined Working Families for its 2025 victory party in
December, saying he was “so thankful for the party’s belief in me
and the people who call this city home”.

The party’s rise has also brought with it nefarious actors:
Republican operatives have run candidates on the Working Families line
as a way to pull votes from Democratic candidates, Politico reported
[[link removed]].
Mitchell called the tactic “desperate”, but a sign of the power of
the party’s brand.

Across state lines, in New Jersey
[[link removed]], the party has worked
for years to get rid of a system referred to as the “line”, where
party bosses would select preferred candidates to appear in a
prioritized column on the ballot, dinging challengers by making it
harder for voters to find their names. The party, and others making
similar arguments, succeeded in abolishing the line in 2024 – and
multiple candidates aligned with Working Families have now been
elected.

“It’s been a watershed moment in New Jersey politics,” Mitchell
said.

In Jersey City, for example, a Working Families-endorsed mayor, James
Solomon, won, and the party also gained a governing majority of its
endorsees on the city council. Candidates who didn’t have the
support of Democratic county party bosses won seats in the general
assembly as well.

Katie Brennan, one of the Working Families-aligned candidates who won
without Democratic party backing, said voters are tired of a broken
system and yearning for a party and candidates that will hear their
concerns and act on them. Familiarity with the Working Families party
is growing now, she said.

“This is really the first time that there’s been Working Families
candidates that ran outside of the Democratic party structure, and so
we’re building what that future looks like and what it means,”
Brennan said. “They’ve grown and have been making progress year in
and year out, and this next year will be big for us. Now we’re in
the statehouse, and what does that mean? I think it’ll continue to
bring attention to the Working Families party.”

The party believes 2026 will be a wave year for the left nationwide,
so it will be aggressively recruiting candidates for state
legislatures in hopes of flipping chambers – not just from red to
blue, but from red to Working Families orange.

It has announced primary challengers for three congressional districts
already – Nida Allam in North Carolina, Mai Vang in California and
Brad Lander in New York – and plans to announce more in the new
year. This week, the party launched
[[link removed]]
a recruitment effort for candidates who oppose datacenters.

“If there’s going to be a wave election, the ink hasn’t been
dried on the character of that wave, who led that wave, and how that
wave was won,” Mitchell said.

_[__RACHEL LEINGANG_
[[link removed]]_ is a Midwest
political correspondent for Guardian US. She is based in Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Signal rachelleingang.241]_

* Elections 2026
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* 2026 Midterms
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* Working Families Party
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* WFP
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* 2025 Elections
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* Politics
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* Electoral Politics
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* left political strategy
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* Left Politics
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* Democratic Party
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* MAGA
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* Donald Trump
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* Affordability crisis
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* Fight Oligarchy Tour
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* Bernie Sanders
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* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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* AOC
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* Elizabeth Warren
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