A New York gubernatorial election poll conducted by David Binder Research shows that if the Working Families Party ran its own nominee for Governor of New York this year, the party would poll between 6% and 13%, depending on who its nominee was. Its best showing, 13%, is if New York City’s Public Advocate, Letitia James, was the WFP nominee. See this story.
I also think that poll’s nonsense, but for a different reason than Cuomo and co. likely do. WFP probably doesn’t have enough experience dealing with things like the “spoiler theory” to run a third party campaign on its own. It’ll be too used to its fusions with the Democrats. I predict less than 5% if they run on their own.
But by all means, if they want to run as a bona fide third party, that’s fine. Maybe they’ll stop picking on the Greens one they find out what it’s like.
For the moment, this is an attempt by the WFP to inject itself into the budget negotiations, which must be wrapped up by April 1st. We’ll see what they can get by playing ‘inside baseball’ in this way. As for me, I’ll vote for “The Rent Is Too Damned High” Jimmy McMillan again if he runs. That’s because the rent is too damned high.
I think they just want to take votes away from the Greens, and keep the Greens out of the media, by allowing speculation like this to continue.