(x-posted from The Albany Project)
I think Laura Nahmias is one of the best reporters covering New York State politics these days. She's a fantastic reporter and incredibly well sourced. But her piece in Capital NY this morning on the future of Andrew Cuomo's fake Women's Equality Party seems to repeatedly miss a rather glaring point, namely that no one knows what to do with it after it qualified for ballot access next cycle because it has already served its purpose. The future is so fuzzy for for the Women's Equality Party because WEP was always considered completely disposable by the men who created it.
"The Women's Equality Party qualified as a party," said Cuomo, who campaigned hard for the party, in a radio interview on "The Capitol Pressroom" last week. "Barely, but it qualified as a party. And that's, I think, going to be an exciting development down the road."
But to truly transform the W.E.P. from a conveniently named campaign vehicle to an enduring political party in New York State will take some doing.
The W.E.P. will require leaders, money and staff, starting with a set of bylaws that spell out how the party will govern itself, said Tom Connolly, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections.
A political party usually has a small set of officers elected by the party's own members—at minimum, a chairman, a treasurer and a secretary—who must then propagate the party throughout the state, setting up county committees and delegates to help determine the party's candidates.
"You have to build a structure throughout the state in order to actually function as a political party—that's what the election law calls for," said Jerry Goldfeder, an attorney who specializes in election law. "Just look at any political party. It takes hundreds and hundreds of people throughout the state to make the party function."
There was no planning for WEP's future because the men that created it a) never thought it would qualify and b) didn't care. So now they've got this
fake political party on their hands and they can't just kill it, though they'd be perfectly happy to do so. If WEP is going to exist going forward, it's going to staff, bylaws, officers and some money. And that's not as easy as it sounds.
WEP only raised about $70,000 since Cuomo created it and almost half that money came from a single donor, a dude. In fact, only two actual women are on record as donors to WEP. They donated a grand total of $5,000. Almost all WEP expenses were paid for by Cuomo's campaign committee. That's what a fake political party looks like.
Then there's the little problem of party registration. You see, anyone who wants to hold an official position in WEP, a commission member or a party leader, has to drop their current party registration and register as WEP. And no one, not even WEP's biggest public cheerleader not named Cuomo, wants to do that.
During the campaign, the party was mostly pushed by Cuomo, his running mate Kathy Hochul, and other reliable Democrats, none of whom have yet committed to switching their registration to lead the W.E.P.
A spokesman for former City Council speaker Christine Quinn—who served as the public face for the women's party—said "Christine Quinn has always been —and will always be —a Democrat."
The spokesman said Quinn has no plans to change her registration.
The Women's Equality Party was created by men, was funded by men, was run by men and ran mostly male candidates. It was created to two things and two things only. And neither of them had anything to do with passing the Women's Equality Act. It was created to exploit the gender gap between Cuomo and Astorino as much as possible and
to fuck with the Working Families Party. That's it. There was never anything else there.
So no matter what Cuomo and Quinn may say about all the ambitious things WEP will do in the future, don't buy it. WEP has served its purpose already. Just because they somehow got over the 50,000 hump doesn't mean it has a future.
It never had a future.
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