New Party (USA)

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The New Party was an innovative and unusual third political party in the United States that tried to re-introduce the practice of electoral fusion as a political strategy for labor unions and community organizing groups. In electoral fusion, the same candidate receives nomination from more than one political party and occupies more than one ballot line. Fusion was once common in the United States but is now commonly practiced only in New York State, although it is allowed by law in seven other states. The party was active from 1992 to 1998.

The New Party was founded in the early 1990s by Daniel Cantor, a former staffer for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, and by sociology and law professor Joel Rogers as an effort to break with the largely unsuccessful history of left-leaning third parties in the United States.

The party could best be described as social democratic in orientation, although party statements almost invariably used the terms "small-d democratic" or "progressive" instead. Its founders chose the name "New Party" in an effort to strike a fresh tone, free of associations with dogmas and ideological debates.

After a false start in New York, the New Party built modestly successful chapters in several states. Some of these chapters — such as those in Chicago and Little Rock — had their main bases of support in the low-income community organizing group ACORN, along with some support from various labor unions (especially ACORN-allied locals of the Service Employees International Union). Other chapters — such as those in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Missoula, Montana, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Dane County, Wisconsin, received institutional support from a variety of other labor unions and community organizations. These chapters built local political organizations that ran or endorsed candidates, primarily in local non-partisan races but with occasional forays into Democratic Party primaries or (more rarely) traditional third party-style independent candidacies as well. The party's chapters elected or helped to elect dozens of candidates. Party chapters were also active between elections, pressuring elected officials to pass legislation on issues such as living wages and affordable housing.

Left-wing critics of the New Party, such as supporters of the Green Party, argued that the New Party was merely a pressure group on the fringes of the Democratic Party, rather than a genuinely new political party. New Party leaders argued that classic third-party strategies were doomed to failure, but that the Democratic Party was too entrenched and undemocratic to be a useful institution for "small-d democrats" either, even if they could succeed in taking it over, and so a new kind of organization was needed.

Although the party's founders hoped to foster a shift toward electoral fusion, thereby making a multi-party electoral system possible in the United States, they were not successful in doing so. Their hopes rested largely on the U.S. Supreme Court case Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party. In 1997, the Court rejected the New Party's argument that electoral fusion was a right protected by the First Amendment's freedom of association clause. This 6-3 decision marked the first time that the Court enshrined the two-party system as a fundamental feature of the US electoral system.

After the Timmons case, the New Party quickly declined. Several chapters — initially, those chapters not connected with ACORN — disaffiliated. Cantor and other key staff members left to found the Working Families Party of New York, an organization which has had considerable success in building a New Party-style organization within New York state, and which is now exploring possibilities for expanding into other states.

Although the New Party has been effectively defunct since the late 1990s, a website still exists.