N.Y.’s Green and Libertarian parties in peril as Working Families Party avoids disaster
ALBANY — It’s not easy being Green.
The Green Party of New York is feeling blue but vowing to fight on after failing to get enough votes in the presidential election to remain on the ballot in the Empire State.
An election law overhaul related to New York’s soon-to-be-implemented public matching funds program significantly increased the threshold needed for parties to retain their line on the state ballot ― a blow to liberal third parties.
According to the new rules, a party must garner either 130,000 votes or 2% of the total votes cast, whichever is higher, to maintain its status.
Howie Hawkins, a Syracuse native and the national Green Party candidate for president, received only 0.3% of votes in New York last week, according to the Associated Press.
“We always knew this would be a tough year,” Peter LaVenia, the state party’s co-chair told the Daily News. "I’m sanguine about it and I, unfortunately, always suspected that litigation is where we were going to end up.”
The Green Party and the Libertarian Party of New York filed a federal lawsuit in June in the Southern District of New York seeking to invalidate the new threshold.
The fate of both parties and that of the Independence Party, which also ran its own presidential contender, remains uncertain.
Jo Jorgensen, who ran on the Libertarian line, and Brock Pierce, the Independence Party candidate, both failed to breach 1% of the total vote count. The future of the New York-based Serve America Movement Party, which gained ballot access in 2018 running former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner for governor, is also unknown as it is not a national party and didn’t back a presidential candidate.
The Working Families Party, which critics contend was Gov. Cuomo’s true target with the new thresholds, as well as the Conservative Party were able to garner enough votes to retain their ballot lines by endorsing and running major party candidates on their lines.
Gov. Cuomo defended raising the number of votes needed on Thursday, arguing that the state just couldn’t afford to provide matching funds, from a program ostensibly meant to expand voter choice, to minor party candidates.
“The way we set the thresholds, we always expected the Working Families Party to survive," the governor said during a radio interview with WAMC. "It was set deliberately so. We expected the Conservative Party to survive. But you’re going to a public financing system: should taxpayers be expected to fund all these races? In all these little, marginal parties?
“If you want taxpayer money, you have to be a credible party,” he added.
The state campaign finance system, with public matching money for candidates who choose to participate and lower individual contribution limits, was passed as part of the budget this year after initially being struck down in court. It is slated to take effect in 2022.
The lawsuit filed by the Greens and Libertarians is ongoing, as is another suit brought by the SAM Party, even though a federal judge denied a request for a preliminary injunction to suspend the law before this year’s election.
