Syracuse Post Standard
by The Post-Standard Editorial Board
November 05, 2010

While most third-party candidates got trounced, the midterm election did produce incremental gains for nontraditional politics.

“We helped send Carl Paladino and the tea party packing by electing Andrew Cuomo for governor and Eric Schneiderman for attorney general,” says Dan Cantor, executive director of the Brooklyn-based Working Families Party. “In the state comptroller race, Democratic/Working Families candidate Tom DiNapoli would not have won without the votes he received on the WFP line.”

Because the party received more than 100,000 votes in New York on Tuesday, it is poised to move up on the ballot in the 2012 election.

Meanwhile, Green Party co-chair Eric Jones remains optimistic in the wake of Syracusan Howie Hawkins’ unsurprising failure to capture the governor’s seat, noting that Green vote total exceeded 50,000, thus ensuring the party a place on the ballot for the next four years. “This is a building block for the future,” he says.

Cantor takes this message from the voters: “This is one of those amazingly close elections where we’re reminded why the WFP’s unique approach to politics — showing politicians that they need the votes of working families — gets real results.”

Third-party politics is still far from the political mainstream in New York. But the midterm election showed that minor parties with substance do have a role to play in the process.