In a few days, Maine House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree will introduce a bill to legalize fusion (“fusion” means that two parties are permitted to jointly nominate the same candidate). Pingree comes from a prominent family; her mother, Chellie Pingree, was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Maine in 2002, and was thereafter head of Common Cause.
Bad move if they pass it. We have fusion here in New York and the only thing it produces are:
1) A myriad of small, special interest parties that are run by people who like the power they have over politicians running to them trying to get their endorsement, It ends up being a power trip for the Party Head rather than deciding who is the best candidate.
2) Politicians who are listed on 3, 4 or more lines because they think that the more lines they are on, the better their chances of winning.
3) It gives the major minor parties a bad rep since they see how these smaller parties operate and the public groups all third parties into the the same mold.
I recall that Dennis Vacco, the NY Republican attorney general, rejected the Right to Life Party’s endorsement when he ran for re-election. The RTL candidate got more votes than the margin by which Vacco was defeated.
Fusion must not have helped the RTL and Liberal parties, since they both became defunct.
Why do I suspect that the purpose of this bill is to create a Working Families Party to draw votes away from the Green Independent Party and give them to the Democratic candidates?
In response to Steve Rankin in #2 above, The Working Famlies Party and the rise of the Green Party killed off the Liberal party. The former took the union votes and the later took the environmentalists. Not much left after that. As for the RTL, they were a one issue party. Voters flocked to the Conservative Party since they had a larger platform. If you want to see a listing of all the parties that fusion has produced in New York State, got to my website at http://www.nysthirdparty.com and scroll to the bottom of the home page where I list them.