Liberal Party of New York
The Liberal Party of New York State was founded in 1944 by former supporters of the American Labor Party led by David Dubinsky because of Communist involvement in the latter organisation.[1]
According to the Forward, the party had strong support from Dubinsky's International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union:
- By the early 1940s, however, garment union chiefs David Dubinsky and Alex Rose had become disgusted with communist infiltration of the ALP. After a three-year battle for control of the ALP, they left in 1944 to found the Liberal Party, allying their powerful unions with prominent liberal intellectuals such as Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and philosopher John Dewey.[2]
In 1948, the Liberal Party was the main supporter of President Harry Truman in New York state.[3]
It was responsible for the election of Averell Harriman as New York state governor in 1954.[3]
In the 1960 presidenital election it helped produce the margin of victory for John F. Kennedy.[3]
In 1961 the Liberal Party defeated the Democratic Party machine in New York in all five boroughs which had opposed the re-election of Mayor Wagner.[3]
In 1965 and 1969 it gave decisive support to the mayoral campaigns of John V. Lindsay.[3]
By siphoning off enough votes for its own candidate (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.) during the 1966 gubernatorial campaign, it defeated the Democratic Party candidate (Frank O'Connor) of whom it disapproved, and insured the election of a liberal Republican (Nelson A. Rockefeller).[3]
It gave Hugh Carey strong support in the 1974 gubernatorial election.[3]
The Liberal Party supported Rudolph Giuliani's first attempt at becoming Mayor of New York City in 1989, when he was narrowly defeated by David Dinkins. Giuliani was victorious in 1993 and 1997 when he again ran with the support of the Liberal Party. In 1998 then Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughy Ross switched to the Democratic Party and ran for Governor against her boss Governor George Pataki. When the Democrats refused to help her campaign, the Liberal Party stepped in. Despite a well-run campaign, the Liberal Party's candidate for Governor failed to win even two percent of the state-wide vote.[3] During the 2002 Governor's race, Andrew Cuomo, endorsed by the Liberal Party, abandoned his campaign months before the election, as a result the Liberal Party failed to receive enough votes (15,761 of the 50,000 needed) to be automatically included on subsequent ballots. It ceased its operations at its state offices soon after.[3]
People
- Alex Rose
- Ben Davidson - former secretary[4]
External Resources
- Liberal Party of New York State, New York Public Library.
Notes
- ↑ John E. Vargo, End of the Line for the New York Liberal Party?, liberalparty.org, accessed 25 January 2012.
- ↑ Anthony Weiss, Harding Indictment a Symbol of Liberal Party's Downfall, Jewish Daily Forward, 8 May 2009.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Liberal Party of New York State, New York Public Library, accessed 14 May 2012.
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, p.134.
