Democratic New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been removed from the progressive Working Families Party (WFP) ballot line by a judge from the New York Supreme Court.
Fox News reported on the situation telling what the Working Families Party is and why it is important to the upcoming primary elections.
“The Working Families Party is an independent political party that cross-endorses progressive candidates through New York’s fusion voting system — which allows endorsement across ballot lines — to press Democrats to the left and extract concessions without being dismissed by voters as a spoiler. Under fusion voting, multiple political parties can list the same candidate, pooling the votes for that candidate. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had lowered the number of signatures needed to qualify for the primary ballot to 15. Ocasio-Cortez submitted 14 signatures, but one was thrown out because the voter was a registered Democrat.”
AOC’s chances at re-election have been dwindling as her poll numbers have been dropping and her removal from the ballot line is another hit to her Democratic primary run giving New York lawmakers the chance to take her House seat and thus remove her from Congress.
In order to get on the ballot AOC needed 15 signatures, but she received only 13 from the members of the Working Families Party; A group with 5,903 active members in the Bronx and Queens, AOC was only able to garner 13 signatures.
Martin O’Connor, the attorney of AOC’s Democratic opponent Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, said that AOC will not be on the Working Families Party ballot line come the November general election.
Caruso-Cabrera told the New York Daily News “AOC has hurt working people of the Bronx and Queens with her votes and creates disunity within our party.” She continued saying, “No wonder why pro-union forces don’t want her, and neither do our neighborhoods.”
The former CBNC new anchor Caruso-Cabrera stands a good chance of beating AOC in New York’s Democratic primary as she has mounted a very strong campaign.