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Jasmine Gripper wanted to build a lifelong career as a New York State teacher, but changed course to become a political organizer after feeling frustrated that politicians weren’t representative of her needs as an educator.

“I realized that people making decisions about the classroom and making decisions around education didn’t know what it was like to be in the classroom and to be a teacher,” Gripper said.

Gripper is now serving as co-director of the Working Families Party in New York State alongside Ana María Archila. The WFP is a progressive political party founded in New York in 1998 that seeks to be an alternative choice for voters and aims to represent the needs of “every day” voters.

Leading up to November’s elections, the WFP endorsed over 500 candidates statewide, including Maurice “Mo” Brown, legislator-elect for District 15 of the Onondaga County Legislature. Other WFP-endorsed candidates who have previously won elected office include local state senators Rachel May and John Mannion as well as State Attorney General Letitia James.

The co-directors also emphasized their desire to use the WFP’s influence to identify the “pressures” on people’s lives. Similar to the rest of the state, the WFP in central New York advocates for more affordable housing and healthcare as well as economic equity as the region braces for economic transformation through Micron Technology’s investment and the I-81 viaduct project.

Gripper and Archila said they hope to continue building momentum for the WFP statewide — including Onondaga County — as the party for young people, women, immigrants and people of color.

“This invitation and this challenge is super exciting at this moment, when so many people are looking around and feeling just demoralized by the tone of our politics, feeling turned off by the polarization and feeling like the government is not delivering for them,” Archila said. “Instead of having people sink into despair, we want to say, ‘No, there is a way and that way is together.’”

Archila immigrated to the United States from Columbia when she was 17 years old. Archila said the WFP was the “only” party that felt attractive to her because of its commitment to improving the livelihood of workers and representing people in society who get “pushed out to the margins.”

She previously worked as co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, and later became co-founder and co-executive director of Make the Road New York — which aims to address statewide inequities primarily among working-class and underrepresented communities. Archila most recently ran for New York lieutenant governor in 2022.

“We are very focused on thinking about what are the pressures on people’s lives and what we can do by electing new champions, and by picking fights on issues to relieve those pressures and create more space for people,” Archila said.

Gripper started with the WFP as a statewide education organizer and worked her way up to become one of the party’s new co-directors. She also formerly served as executive director of Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group working to address systemic racism in-state public schools and improve access to education for Black, brown, low-income and immigrant students.

Together, Gripper and Archila said they’re aiming to increase the influence of the WFP on local and state policy. The WFP is also looking to flip several “swing” seats in New York which are Republican-controlled in the 2o24 election, including New York’s 22nd Congressional District which is currently represented by Rep. Brandon Williams.

NY-22 currently includes Onondaga County, Oneida County, Madison County and parts of Oswego County. In August, Williams announced he was running for re-election to keep the congressional seat. Mannion is running to be the Democratic nominee along with DeWitt Town Councilor Sarah Klee Hood — who ran for the seat in 2022 — and Utica University professor Clemmie Harris.

Archila said the WFP hopes to tilt the Democratic Party in a more progressive direction by pushing candidates to challenge incumbent politicians and improving turnout among younger voters.

Unlike most states with third parties, New York has implemented fusion voting — where multiple parties can endorse the same candidate. In the November election, Brown won his primary and became the main nominee for both Democrats and the WFP, while incumbent County Executive Ryan McMahon won re-election as a candidate for the Republican and Conservative parties.

The WFP tends to mostly endorse Democratic candidates, while the Conservative Party usually backs the Republican Party.

“Because of the fusion, or the cross-endorsement system, its influence is almost wholly within the Democratic Party, and the way that it works is that it is a force to try to push the Democratic candidates who get the nomination to be more to the left,” said Grant Reeher, a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.

During the Democratic Party primaries in June, establishment-endorsed Democrats in Onondaga County lost to more progressive candidates.

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Shana Gadarian, professor and chair of SU’s Political Science Department, said parties like the WFP that secure votes during a primary or general election can put pressure on major parties to adopt positions they support.

“For the Working Families Party to have its influence during the primaries and then also during the general election, they’re going to be pushing the candidates that are in the primary to take certain positions that speak to their deepest issues and concerns, and then getting behind those candidates,” Reeher said.

Similar to Archila and Gripper, Reeher and Gadarian both highlighted economic development as a factor that will remain one of the most important issues for elections in fall 2024, especially with Micron’s planned investments in the central New York area. Gripper said Syracuse should not experience what happened during the “Buffalo Billion” — a multi-year development project marred with corruption during former governor Andrew Cuomo’s tenure.

“We want a major investment in the people and in the city that actually leads to transformation and a better quality of life for everyone,” Gripper said.

Jordan Bellassai, who serves as elections chair and volunteer for the WFP in CNY, said the WFP’s big picture goal is to uplift the voices of everyday residents and make sure the lives of constituents are “constantly improving.”

Gripper and Archila both said the WFP will extend support to Democrats if the candidates align with its values, but the co-directors also stressed the party’s campaign on issues that are affecting local communities.

Archila noted how Democrats failed to do their job in boosting turnout for local and statewide elections this past fall, despite success with elections in other states. Democrats also fielded nine candidates in legislative races this year, nearly half the number compared to elections in 2019 and 2021.

The Onondaga County Democratic and Republican committees did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Orange.

The WFP is looking to find future candidates who are “deeply rooted” in the communities and committed to being legislators, Archila said. She also said the party prioritizes working with candidates who “traditionally are not the ones to raise their hands first,” like women and people of color.

“We need fighters that are willing to go out and advocate hard for our beliefs that are really going to draw the line and say, ‘No, folks need this,’” Brown said.

Looking to elections in 2o24, Gripper and Archila said they plan to pursue an initiative alongside other advocacy groups aiming to organize and rally support in “battleground” areas in the state like NY-22. WFP will also look to continue to support more affordability with housing and transportation, as well as advocate for more economic equity.

“We want to make sure folks know the system is rigged against us, but together, working class communities can come together and build more power,” Gripper said.

Published on December 5, 2023 at 1:26 am

Contact Dominic: dcchiapp@syr.edu | @DominicChiappo2