Working Families bet on 2026 as the right time for a third US party after a wave of wins

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Mon 29 Dec 2025 07.00 EST
Last modified on Mon 29 Dec 2025 07.03 EST


The “time has come” for the Working Families party, the progressive third party’s national director said after a year of big wins and a growing hunger among voters for a home outside the two major political parties. “For 26 years, we’ve been building this argument,” Maurice Mitchell said. “And the argument has met the moment.”

The party, founded in 1998, helped elect Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor, worked to get rid of an electoral process in New Jersey that prioritized party insiders, and saw its endorsees win races across the country this year. The party has made inroads beyond deep-blue cities too, with endorsees winning in Dayton, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York.

In next year’s midterms, it will ramp up its involvement in primary elections, supporting candidates that emphasize working-class politics and seek to disrupt the political status quo. Already, Democratic candidates have laser-focused on affordability – something the Working Families party has advocated for.

The Working Families party describes itself as “a multiracial party that fights for workers over bosses and people over the powerful” that seeks to build “an America which realizes the promise – unrealized in our history – of freedom and equality for all”. In practice, candidates the party supports often run in Democratic primaries as insurgents aligned with its goals of affordability, improved conditions for workers, a stronger social safety net and reforms to the democratic process. Candidates can be endorsed by both Working Families and the Democratic party. “We cook what we have in the kitchen,” Mitchell said.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/29/working-families-party-2026-run

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The Philadelphia City Council is made up of 10 "Councilmanic District" seats and 7 "At-Large" seats, where the latter has 2 seats reserved for a "minority party". As a blue city, that "minority party" has always been Republicans. But in the last City Council election in 2023, it ended up that the Working Families Party won BOTH of those "minority party" seats, thus shutting out the GOP (at least for "At-Large" ) from City Council. As it stands, there is a single District with a GOP member who has been in that seat for over 40 years and he is the only one out of the 17 members.