NEW YORK — In the week leading up to Election Day, New York’s political left was in panic mode: Gov. Kathy Hochul appeared in danger of losing her seat to a Trump-affiliated Republican, while Democrats up and down the ballot found themselves grappling with serious challenges in the typically-blue state.
So the Working Families Party called an emergency meeting of staff and supporters to reverse course five days before voters would decide whether to send a Republican to the governor's mansion for the first time in 20 years.
By the time New Yorkers hit the polls on Tuesday, the progressive third party had spent $500,000 on its eleventh-hour push: Organizing 60 canvasses and phone banks, sending 2 million text messages and making 250,000 calls. More than 300 volunteers hit polling sites across the five boroughs of New York City, imploring voters to give Hochul a chance, according to party spokesperson Ravi Mangla.
The effort helped carry Hochul over the finish line: Her 325,000-plus vote advantage included nearly 250,000 ballots cast on the WFP line. In short, an organization often at odds with Hochul’s brand of politics gave her a hefty assist as party apparatuses in her control were deemed to be falling short.
It wasn’t charity: The third party, which had endorsed Hochul's bid for a full term, needed to secure 130,000 votes for Hochul on its ballot line in order to stay in business. Nevertheless, it cemented an unlikely political alliance — an organization that lambasts moderate Democrats at every turn ended up helping to salvage the campaign of a centrist who stands against some of its core principles.
The final GOTV push also stood in contrast to some of the most recognizable leaders of the left-wing movement not helping Hochul, which further underscored the civil war within the Democratic Party that Republicans capitalized on throughout New York. In an election that saw the GOP falling short of expectations across the country, the party flipped three House seats and won an open one upstate, defeated several state lawmakers and came within 6 points of seizing the governorship in New York.
“There was a general sense amongst the membership of, ‘This can be disastrous,’” WFP director Sochie Nnaemeka said in a phone interview Friday. “We knew if top of the ticket performance was underwhelming, there’s no way you can have down ballot success. A lot of our leaders felt that sense of urgency and panic.”
Rallying for Hochul
The WFP had been in contact with elected officials about campaigning for Hochul since October. But as the polls drew even closer, the party blasted out an invite Nov. 2 to a virtual gathering headlined: “All Hands on Deck: Urgent Vote WFP Strategy Meeting.”
The next morning, more than 30 elected officials including state Sen. Jabari Brisport and City Comptroller Brad Lander hopped onto the Zoom to discuss the state of the race and plan canvassing shifts for the final stretch before Election Day.
Lander, for example, committed to a Sunday afternoon slot canvassing for state Sen. candidate Iwen Chu in Southern Brooklyn.
“I feel so grateful I did because that race is so close,” he said in an interview Friday. “I knocked on 50 doors with [Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou], and we had a ton of voter contact in Sunset Park.”
Chu is currently leading her opponent by roughly 200 votes.
Lander agreed to attend a rally in Washington Heights and knock doors at a public housing complex in Brooklyn on behalf of the Hochul campaign. But her team didn’t reach out until 10 days before the election, he said in explaining why he was not a fixture on the trail given his status as a citywide politician from a voter-rich neighborhood.
“There certainly was also activity [from the Hochul campaign], but nothing like the WFP,” he added.
Queens Council Member Tiffany Cabán, a far-left politician who also joined the WFP call, said a larger get-out-the-vote structure was essential to engage local politicians who could then reach their own constituents. Yet as Election Day approached, she grew alarmed at the lack of engagement from the governor’s camp.
“High voter turnout districts don’t come out of nowhere,” Cabán said in an interview. “Here I was sitting in a place like Western Queens, with high voter turnout, going into early voting and not being touched once by the Hochul campaign.”
Unions also touted their efforts to help Hochul in the final weeks, including work by the AFL-CIO and the New York State United Teachers union, which endorsed Hochul after not backing her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.
"Our greatest strength has always been our ability to educate and mobilize the 2 million members from Buffalo to Brooklyn to Long Island," AFL-CIO president Mario Cilento said earlier this month. "There is no other entity in this state or in this country that has ability to directly connect 2 million people. Only the labor movement can do that."
A party still divided
Following Hochul’s narrow win, the party unity immediately frayed.
Many on the left began to call for the ouster of state Democratic Party leader Jay Jacobs and blamed centrists, including Mayor Eric Adams, for parroting Republican talking points on public safety.
“Crime here is lower than most other places in the country,” Gabe Tobias, a progressive strategist who supports the WFP, said in an interview. “There is no actual crime wave here. There is a crime panic started by [Mayor] Eric Adams.”
Recent NYPD statistics show every major crime other than homicides is on the rise from last year.
Adams, who assumed office Jan. 1 on a promise to reverse that trend, has laced into the left for ignoring fears about crime and, in his view, hurting centrist Democrats at the ballot box.
“If every poll shows that New Yorkers were concerned about crime and their mayor is responding to their concern, who should be at fault? Those who ignored the concern,” Adams said during a press conference Thursday, responding to criticism that his relentless push for changes to state bail laws hurt Hochul. “So to say, ‘You know what, Eric was talking about crime.’ Duh. New Yorkers were talking about crime. And I was clear when I ran for office, I didn't sugarcoat it, we needed to be saved.”
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took aim at fellow Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her criticism of the party apparatus. Maloney himself lost his seat to Republican Mike Lawler in the Hudson Valley.
“The last time I ran into A.O.C., we were beating her endorsed candidate two to one in a primary, and I didn’t see her one minute of these midterms helping our House majority. So, I’m not sure what kind of advice she has, but I’m sure she’ll be generous with it,” Maloney told The New York Times, referring to his primary winin August over state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi.
“But let’s be clear, she had almost nothing to do with what turned out to be an historic defense of our majority [outside the state].”
As New York Democratic leaders gathered in San Juan, Puerto Rico, this week for an annual junket, the blame game persisted.
People who acknowledged the WFP’s efforts asked for anonymity to complain about Hochul’s lack of outreach to the organized progressive movement, and her insistence on keeping Jacobs as head of the state party amid calls from Ocasio-Cortez and others for his resignation.
At the SOMOS conference, Hochul spoke to concerns about the state of the Democratic Party.
"Now I have four years to build the party up so [it] becomes a powerhouse that New York Democratic Party should be," she told reporters. "I wanted to make sure that we reach out to people all over the state and get them energized about the values of the Democratic Party. So I think that's what we did in the final weeks, and I’m going to continue doing that."
Others were similarly optimistic.
“Hope springs eternal for me,” state Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) said in an interview in Puerto Rico, when asked if Democrats can unite after Tuesday. “The alternative is the demise of our party, and I certainly don’t want to be a part of that.”
