Vermont Progressive Party:
http://www.progressiveparty.org/Working Families Party
http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Families_PartyThe Working Families Party (WFP) is a minor political party in the United States founded in New York in 1998. The party also has a wing in Connecticut, and is working towards establishing itself in Massachusetts, Oregon and California<1>.
New York's Working Families Party was first organized in 1998 by a coalition of labor unions, ACORN and other community organizations, members of the now-inactive national New Party, and a variety of public interest groups. The party blends a culture of political organizing with unionism, 1960s idealism, and realistic tactical pragmatism. The party's main issue concerns are jobs, health care, education and energy/environment, and it has won notable policy gains at the city, county and state level by piggybacking on Democratic or Republican candidates.
In the 1998 election for governor of New York, the party cross-endorsed the Democratic Party candidate, Peter Vallone. Because he received more than 50,000 votes on the WFP line, the party gained an automatic ballot line for the succeeding four years. <2> In the 2002 election, the Liberal Party, running Andrew Cuomo (who had withdrawn from the Democratic primary), and the Green Party, running academic Stanley Aronowitz, failed to reach that threshold and lost the ballot lines they had previously won. This left the WFP as the only left-progressive minor party with a ballot line. This situation will continue until at least 2011 following the party's cross-endorsement of Eliot Spitzer in the 2006 election, at which he gained more than 155,000 votes on the Working Families Party line, more than three times the required 50,000.
As of 2006, the executive director of the WFP is Dan Cantor. The party's Co-Chairs are Sam Williams, UAW Region 9 CAP director; Bertha Lewis, ACORN's executive director; and Bob Master of the Communications Workers of America. The WFP also has a powerful alliance with Dennis Rivera and Local 1199/SEIU (Service Employees International Union). The intensely activist union is known to contribute more than $100,000 a year of the party's $1.4 million annual budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Progressive_PartyThe Vermont Progressive Party is a major political party as defined by Vermont state law. The Vermont Progressive Party was founded in 1999 and is active only in the U.S. state of Vermont.
The Vermont Progressive Party originated with the independent campaign of Bernie Sanders for mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Sanders, who was later elected to the United States Congress, and subsequently to the United States Senate, never officially associated himself with the Progressive Party, although the Progressives were among his biggest supporters. A group of his supporters organized themselves as the Progressive Coalition to contest further elections.
The Coalition succeeded in electing several members, including Terry Bouricius, to the Vermont General Assembly, and, after establishing a stable political base, formally became the Progressive Party. After picking up three new seats in the 2004 elections, it now has six representatives in the state House of Representatives, making it the only third party in the United States to have more than one state legislature seat, excluding states such as New York and South Carolina, which allow candidates to affiliate with more than one party (for example, leading to many Republican/Conservative or Democrat/Working Families members of the New York Legislature.)
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