What a Glorious Anniversary!
By 
A year ago this week, the Working Families Party decided to endorse Andrew Cuomo for governor. He made “promises” to promote parts of the WFP platform. Guess how that worked out!
From a strict scorecard perspective, the fact is that none of the legislative items that were supposed to have been part of it—from a full women’s equality package, public financing of elections and decriminalization of marijuana, to the Dream Act and a statewide minimum wage indexed to local markets—have become reality.
Same for the political goals: The Independent Democratic Conference is still allied with the Senate Republicans, and the mainline Democrats are still in the minority.
What happened?
W.F.P. says the governor simply broke his end of the bargain.
“The promises Governor Cuomo made would have amounted to a real difference in the lives of millions of New Yorkers,” the party’s New York State director, Bill Lipton said in a statement to Capital. “He didn’t keep his promises.”
Clearly no one could have seen this coming!
The WFP not only made a mistake in endorsing Cuomo, but it was an obvious mistake that many commenters noted at the time, including myself. It was terrible politics and it will take a long time for WFP to live it down.