Nate Cohn, the New York Times’ chief political analyst, writes in “The Tilt” (part of the Times) that conditions possibly are right for the emergence of a new, popular political party.

New York is one of the few states that has a procedure for a party to expel members.  Current law lets a party do that if it has a county committee in the affected county.  On June 11, the State Senate passed S7111.  It says that if a party wants to expel a member, but doesn’t have a county committee in the relevant county, then the state committee can handle the expulsion.

The bill was introduced at the request of the Working Families Party, which is hoping to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2024 in the 17th U.S. House district.  Individuals sympathetic to the Republican Party organized a group of similar-minded individuals to enroll in the Working Families Party, so that these newcomers outnumbered the ordinary enrolled members of the Working Families Party.  They then used their voting power in the WFP primary to nominate someone other than the Democratic nominee.  The leadership of the WFP couldn’t do anything about this, because the party doesn’t have county committees.  The WFP would have preferred to nominate the Democratic nominee in that district, as the party did in all the other US House districts in which it had a candidate.

The vote in the State Senate was 37-22.  Now the bill goes to the Assembly.

Independent New York City mayoral candidate Jim Walden wanted to have “Independence” as his ballot label in the November 2025 election.  On May 2 the Second Circuit ruled against him in a one-sentence order, and said it would explain later.  But it still hasn’t issued its explanation.  Walden v Kosinski, 25-764.