“Our primary goal is not to be a legal political party. It is to build political power for working people,” said Georgia Hollister Isman, the party’s New England regional director.
One of the first steps, she said, is to help get its preferred candidates into office, including on Beacon Hill, where Democrats have shown what she called an “over-deference to corporate forces and wealthier folks.”
“We’re not the Green Party,” Hollister Isman said. “We’re trying really hard to win.”
A minor left-wing party in New York, the Working Families Party has wielded power in New York City politics for years, including helping boost Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani in this fall’s mayoral contest. It also touted wins in a variety of Democratic primaries around New York state this summer, elevating a group that, under New York’s so-called fusion voting rules, can cross-nominate a candidate from another party.
It’s also grown its footprint elsewhere. Party officials have chapters in 17 other states, including Connecticut, where two state legislators won office running on a Working Families Party ballot line. The group also has obtained official minor party status there.
Massachusetts voters rejected a fusion voting proposal nearly two decades ago, the same year Rand Wilson ran under the Working Families Party banner for state auditor.
Nonetheless, the group has maintained ties to Massachusetts politics. The Working Families Party is considered one of dozens of “political designations” that voters can register under. US Representative Ayanna Pressley delivered the party’s official response to the State of the Union Address in 2020, and it endorsed Elizabeth Warren for president in that cycle.
Two years later, it launched a super PAC in Massachusetts, through which it funneled more than $230,000 in mailers and ads backing Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux in his successful challenge against a Republican incumbent.
In 2023, the group’s super PAC put a few hundred dollars behind several local candidates, including Worcester City Councilors Etel Haxhiaj and Khrystian King, among others.
The monetary contributions are expected to grow substantially this year, with the party planning another push behind King, who’s running for Worcester mayor, and Haxhiaj, who’s running for reelection months after drawing national headlines, and criminal charges, when she stood between a woman and federal immigration agents in a chaotic scene in May.
The party is also endorsing three others — Cayden Davis, Jermoh Kamara, and Robert Bilotta — in Worcester City Council races, as well as Jonathan Guzman in his reelection bid to the Lawrence School Committee.
The party’s super PAC will spend $30,000 on digital media, phone-banking, and other efforts backing those candidates in the coming weeks, said Josh Wolfsun, the party’s newly named Massachusetts state director.
“There’s a way in which some of this can make the Democratic Party stronger,” Wolfsun, who manages former state Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign, said of the Working Families Party’s presence in Massachusetts. The group has largely endorsed Democrats around the country, and in New York, has helped embody the city’s left wing.
But, Wolfsun said, “nationally, but also here in Massachusetts, working-class voters are drifting away from a party that’s not fully representing their needs and interests and working on their behalf. Working people need an independent force.”
Indeed, despite Democrats’ decades-long dominance in elected office, President Trump made noticeable inroads in Massachusetts last year, gaining support among voters in high-cost areas and outright winning in places like Fall River, where Democrats had long thrived.
Organizers for the Working Families Party say they’re also spurred by frustration with Beacon Hill leaders, be it in the Legislature or Governor Maura Healey, whom they view as moving too slowly in pushing back against changes wrought by the Trump administration or not forcefully championing more progressive causes.
Wolfsun, also a former State House aide under Chang-Díaz, pointed to voters embracing a new surtax on the state’s wealthiest — and Healey and legislators a year later championing a $1 billion tax relief law that also eased the tax burden on short-term capital gains, which progressive Democrats argued would largely help more wealthy residents.
“The state’s getting harder and harder to live in,” Wolfsun said. “Working-class people can’t afford to keep waiting for Democratic leaders to get in the game and actually work proactively.”
To what degree the Working Families Party can push them remains to be seen. Organizers framed their effort as a years-long endeavor that would operate both within and with the state’s Democratic Party, while influencing public policy. Hollister Isman said organizers have not yet asked Pressley, perhaps its most high-profile supporter here, to play any formal role, but she said they view her as an “ally and model for the kind of politician we want.”
“We’re very serious about building political power and infrastructure,” Hollister Isman said, “that’s independent of the Democratic Party.”
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.
