Independence Party of New York - Platform and Candidates

Platform and Candidates

The Independence Party's platform is somewhat ambiguous. The party itself is designed to draw independent voters and allows nonaffiliated voters to vote in its primary elections, the only significant party in the state to do so.

Like other minor parties in New York, the Independence Party sometimes nominates its own candidates and sometimes endorses one of the major party candidates using electoral fusion. The listing of a major-party candidate on the Independence line can be seen as an indication of that candidate's friendliness to centrist views. Jeffrey Graham, the mayor of Watertown and one of the highest ranking elected officials to be a member of the party, describes the party platform as such: "There is no mystery about the disposition of Line C (...) amassing the greatest number of votes to allow the party to remain on that line(.)" (Line C is the line located immediately under those of the Democratic and Republican Parties; the Independence Party held that line in elections held between 1999 and 2010. Ballot position is determined by the number of votes the line gets in the state gubernatorial election.)

During each gubernatorial election, the votes received by each party determine the order in which the parties will be listed on all state ballots for the next four years. The Independence Party placed fourth in 1994 with its own candidate, Tom Golisano to Row D, and moved up to third in 1998 and 2002, again with Golisano to achieve Row C. In 2006, the Independence Party endorsed Democratic candidate Eliot Spitzer, and retained its place as the top minor party-Row C. Democrat Andrew Cuomo won the party's nomination for governor in 2010. However, Cuomo drew less than 140,000 votes on the independence line (compared to the 190,000 Spitzer drew in 2006), which resulted in the Independence Party falling to Line E as of 2011 behind the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party.