A Minor Party with Major Possibilities
Working Families is an independent political party that is committed to fighting for working class and middle class families. But we're not like a lot of other third parties you might have heard of.
Most Americans are tired of the narrow choices offered by the two party system, or are sick of going into the voting booth holding their nose to vote for the lesser of two evils. On the other hand, voting for a minor party candidate offers another set of problems, even more distasteful to many people—a feeling of voting for a candidate who can’t win, or even worse, helping to elect their worse nightmare.
That’s why every third party movement in the last hundred years has self-destructed. The last third party movement to take hold in a serious way was the Republican Party. It shouldn’t have to be this way. And in Connecticut, it isn’t.
That’s because in Connecticut, like a few other states, we have something called cross-endorsement.The “protest vote” that actually matters
Under cross-endorsement, two parties are permitted to endorse the same candidate. That means that a minor party has the option (but never the requirement) to endorse a major party candidate. A sample election return looks like this:
| Democrat | Jane Doe | 45% |
| Republican | John Q. Public | 48% |
| Working Families | Jane Doe | 7% |
The votes are tallied separately, but then added together to determine the winner. Jane Doe wins with 52% of the vote. But at the same time, Jane Doe knows she owes her victory to the Working Families Party—she couldn’t have won without those additional votes. She is held accountable to our agenda, (fair wages, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and so on) because she knows if she doesn’t support the issues we care about, we won’t support her the next time. We can sit out of the race, or we can run our own candidate who will support our issues.
With this strategy, we can build our power, show our strength every election, hold elected officials accountable, fight for a progressive agenda, organize around issues that matter, all while building an independent party in which working people really call the shots.
We’re just getting started. But we’ve got some victories behind us, some big ideas with us, and some huge aspirations up ahead. Join us.