Progressive Party Flexes ​“Fusion” Muscles

Sarah Ganong — whose third party helped labor-friendly Democrats win elections all over the state last week — doesn’t buy the theory that voters delivered a Republican-lite strategy on taxes.

Ganong is the executive director of the Connecticut Working Families Party (WFP), which cross-endorses Democrats who back labor-oriented policies like higher minimum wages, parental leave, universal health care, and ​“fair work week” stable working-hours rules for service workers. She has been a rising behind-the-scenes force in Connecticut politics since organizing State Rep. Joshua Elliott’s initial 2016 Sanderista-style upset victory and building New Haven’s WFP chapter; she ascended to the state WFP helm this past year and has been working with candidates and volunteers statewide to strengthen progressives’ influence at the Capitol. 

All 54 Connecticut incumbents the party cross-endorsed, from governor down to state legislators, won in last week’s general election. Democratic U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes won more WFP votes (4,020) than her 2,026-vote margin of victory over Republican George Logan in the state’s 5th Congressional District, where Ganong’s WFP concentrated much of its get-out-the-vote efforts. Overall WFP outperformed all other third parties on the ballot and won enough gubernatorial votes to secure a ballot slot in all state elections for the next four years.

Reelected Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont drew a lesson from his party’s rout of the Republicans: Suburbs like Greenwich, Westport and Madison moved to the Democratic side thanks in part to a ​“no new taxes” strategy. That translates to: No new marginal income tax hikes for millionaires. He announced he’ll stick to that position for the next four years.

After months of grassroots campaigning, Ganong — whose party considers high taxes on the wealthy among its top three positions — came away with a different interpretation of the results. Especially outside of a few ultra-wealthy enclaves like Greenwich.

“I think it’s a mistake to take all those election results and say this means there’s a mandate for no equitable taxation in Connecticut. That’s certainly not my take from talking to voters,” Ganong said during an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”

“I spent a lot of time this cycle out in various communities all over the state, knocking on doors, talking to incredibly progressive voters, talking to unaffiliated voters, talking to more conservative voters. Definitely the sense I got was that folks were voting this election for Democratic policies and for big changes” like the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness policy and Connecticut Democrats’ passage of paid leave, minimum wage hikes and a child tax credit, along with the governor’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, she said. ​“Folks were also voting against right-wing authoritarianism. Folks were voting against a national abortion ban” and Republican calls to slash Social Security and Medicare.

“Now that we’re moving out of these lockdowns, we have a chance to make big political risks again and respond to that” by addressing income inequality and racial and educational disparities, Ganong argued.

Measuring Impact

Part of the ability of WFP and its allies to translate electoral victories into continued policy wins rests in part on how to measure the impact it had on Democratic election victories.

One observer from across the aisle, veteran state Republican legislative aid Pat O’Neil, said he’s ​“not buying” the argument that WFP’s votes put Jahana Hayes over the top.

Yes, Hayes’ margin of victory was smaller than the number of votes she received on the WFP line. But those same voters would have voted for Hayes on the Democratic line if the WFP line weren’t available, O’Neil argued — unlike some Republican-leaning voters disgusted with extremism associated with the GOP brand, who couldn’t bring themselves to pull a Republican lever this year but might have chosen some Republican candidates if they had a third-party cross-endorsement option. (The Independent Party used to cross-endorse Republicans, but moved to the center and ran many of its own candidates this year instead.)

O’Neil was open to the argument that WFP has influenced Democratic legislation because of its past work for Democratic candidates. Even there, he’s not sure that will be the case this year because ​“they’re riding a wave of a far more progressive party” that no longer has a moderate caucus. He noted that the WFP was not involved in any Democratic primaries this year.

State Senate President Martin Looney, a New Haven Democrat, said the WFP does have an influence in close races. That impact is measured not just in voters who might not have voted for candidates on a Democratic line, but also in the get out the vote (GOTV) effort WFP brings.

Ganong cited that GOTV effort in characterizing the party’s impact this year. She said the party concentrated its staffers and volunteers in races where they’d make the most difference. It endorsed around 90 candidates. It then chose 20 candidates to help. It narrowed the list further to ​“six or seven races” where staffers concentrated their time in the field and volunteers did the most phone banking, door knocking, and texting to get out the vote.

Two of those races were in Hayes’ Fifth District: on behalf of reelected Danbury State Sen. Julie Kushner’s race and newly elected Meriden State Sen. Jan Hochadel.

Fewer voters show up at the polls in non-presidential years. Ganong said her team encountered numerous voters who decided to cast ballots because of the two state senator races — and then voted ​“Row E” (WFP), including in Hayes’ race.

One challenge moving forward is to convince progressive candidates not in close races to seek the WFP endorsement so that the party can maintain the strength of its ballot line, State Rep. Elliott suggested. That will involve letting candidates know they don’t need to be in lock step with every WFP position, he said.

For instance, New Haven U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro has in the past run on the WFP line. This year she didn’t. She didn’t face a strong challenge this year — and she has not embraced the WFP’s ​“Medicare for All” position, although she has championed the rest of its platform.

“Everything I want to see in Connecticut is embodied by the Working Families Party. So it’s great when other candidates get votes on that line, because it helps economic and social justice,” Elliott remarked.

Fusion

Ganong argued that this year’s Connecticut election results vindicated WFP’s strategy of almost exclusively cross-endorsing candidates rather than running their own candidates.

“We’re working as a minor party in a system created and designed by the major parties,” she said. ​“We’re uninterested in playing the spoiler.”

The Independent Party, by contrast, switched its strategy this year. It largely moved away from cross-endorsements toward fielding its own candidates, with a few exceptions. The resulting slate ranged from conservative to moderate to liberal candidates; the party failed to earn enough votes (1 percent) in the governor’s race to maintain its statewide ballot line over the next four years (barring a change in the official recount).

Connecticut is one of four ​“fusion” states (along with New York, Oregon and South Carolina) allowing candidates to run on more than one ballot line. Cross-endorsements enable voters to ​“vote their values” through a third party aligned with their political views without worrying about helping to elect a greater-of-two-evils major party candidate, Ganong argued.

She was asked if adopting a ranked-choice voting system in the state might better accomplish that goal while supporting independent parties. She didn’t take a position on that — beyond saying she is interested in seeing what a proposed study group would come up with on the subject.

Click on the video to watch the full interview with Sarah Ganong on ​“Dateline New Haven.”

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