Jon Green never got the memo about third parties being whiny, irrelevant spoilers. He was too busy building a third party that mattered.
Green is the brains behind the Connecticut Working Families Party, a coalition of labor unions and affordable housing advocates that didn't exist six years ago. Almost overnight, Green and his band of left-leaning activists have built the WFP into the most influential third party Connecticut's seen in a decade (sorry, Connecticut For Lieberman).
Not by running candidates, mind you. But by running issues. The same ones that rocketed Barack Obama to history-making stardom: universal health care, a living wage for workers, tax relief for the middle class and help for homeowners trapped by subprime mortgages.
Rather than run its own candidates, the WFP traditionally cross-endorses major party candidates who support its agenda of workers' rights and health care for all. This year, all five candidates elected to Congress and 58 sent to the state legislature fit that bill, which meant their name appeared on the ballot twice: once on the major party line (usually Democrat) and again on the Working Families Party line.
The big winner this election year was the Democratic Party, which increased its supermajorities in the state legislature to numbers not seen since the post-Watergate era. The second place winner might be the Working Families Party.
As Republican Gov. Jodi Rell warns of massive state service cuts to close a budget gap that's climbing into the billions, Democrats elected with the biggest mandate in a generation are pledging "unprecedented bi-partisanship." It could take the Working Families Party to remind them why they were sent to Hartford, and to keep them from caving if the governor demands cutting programs for the needy without raising taxes on the wealthy.
Full Story: http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=10598
