Posted on 03/07/2003 9:21:46 AM PST by Milltownmalbay
John Rossiello
Newsday is reporting that New York’s oldest third party, which was founded by Alex Rose and David Dubinsky on progressive political principles, has closed its doors after 58 years.
The Liberal Party, which had lately been more concerned about patronage than ideology, contributed to the elections of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, and Mayors Fiorello LaGuardia and Rudolph Giuliani.
Daniel Cantor, the executive director of the Working Families Party, which was created as an alternative to the Liberal Party, commented on the fold of the Liberal Party.
“For the first thirty years of the Liberal Party, they were honorable,” said Cantor. "They lost their way, and that's why they went out of existence."
The leader of the fallen party, Raymond Harding, was unavailable for comment yesterday.
However, a posting on www.libertyparty.org said that, even as the party crumbled, party leaders were trying to "protect both our name and our symbol."
Harding was seen as one of the most influential power brokers in New York, following his assistance in the election of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Members of the Liberal Party Associates will no longer be registered for primaries, but the posting stated that some planned to join other parties.
They could maintain membership in those other parties "until our next opportunity – in four years – to resurrect the party on a statewide organized basis," claims some members.
To paraphrase Sinatra, if the Liberal Party can't make it in New York, they can't make it anywhere.
NewsMax intern John Rossiello attends St. Joseph's by-the-Sea High School in Staten Island, N.Y.
I'll bet they'll be lined up at Republican Party doors.
The article neglects to mention the Liberal Party's greatest "gift" to New York- the second term of Mayor John Lindsay. He lost the GOP nomination after his first disasterous term but was reelected on the Liberal line in 1969 due to a divided opposition. Reason enough to celebrate the party's demise.
In the last few years, the party lost its raison d'etre as New York Democrats became consistently liberal and the Republicans more conservative (by northeast standards); the Liberal Party simply became the personal tool of its chairman, Raymond Harding, who, for example, endorsed Giuliani over more liberal Democratic opponents in every mayoral race in exchange for City jobs for his family members.
They can't take credit for having elected LaGuardia if they were only in existence for 58 years, as claimed.
He was last elected in 1941.
They are probably counting the predecessor to the Liberal Party, the American Labor Party. Originally a labor union-New Deal party in the 1030s and 40s, it became increasingly infiltrated by Communists; in the early 50s, the non-communist factions took over the party and renamed it the Liberal Party.
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