Liberal Party of New York - Strategy and Electoral Fusiion

Strategy and Electoral Fusiion

The Liberal Party was one of several minor parties that fulfill a role almost unique to New York State politics. New York law allows electoral fusion – a candidate can be the nominee of multiple parties and aggregate the votes received on all the different ballot lines. Several other states allow fusion, but only in New York is it commonly practiced. In fact, since each party is listed with its own line on New York ballots, multiple nominations mean that a candidate's name can be listed several times on the ballot.

The Liberal Party's primary electoral strategy was generally to cross-endorse the nominees of other parties who agree with the Liberal Party's philosophy; only rarely did the Liberal Party run its own candidates. By supporting agreeable candidates and threatening not to support disagreeable ones, the Liberal Party hoped to influence candidate selection by the major parties. Other currently active parties pursuing a similar strategy in New York include the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party.

While the Liberal Party generally endorsed Democratic candidates, this was not always the case. The Liberal Party supported Republicans such as John Lindsay and Rudy Giuliani for mayor of New York and Jacob Javits and Charles Goodell for U.S. Senator, and independents such as John B. Anderson for president. In 1969, Lindsay, the incumbent Republican Mayor of New York City, lost his own party's primary but was reelected on the Liberal Party line alone. In 1977, after Mario Cuomo lost the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York to Ed Koch, the Liberal Party endorsed Cuomo, who proceeded to again lose narrowly in the general election. Liberal Party candidates played the role of spoiler by being the possible cause of the defeat of Democrat Frank D. O'Connor in the race for governor in 1966 by naming Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. as its candidate in the race against incumbent Nelson Rockefeller; and again in 1980 when it endorsed Javits (who had lost in the Republican primary for United States senator to Al D'Amato). In the general election for Senator in 1980, it was assumed that Javits took Jewish votes away from Elizabeth Holtzman, the Democratic candidate, as they both lost to D'Amato.