Batten down for Superstorm Bertha.
That would be Bertha Lewis, a far-left founding sister of New York’s rolling-in-clover Working Families Party — who stood next to presumptive mayoral shoo-in Bill de Blasio on primary night to deliver an uncomplicated message:
“We’re baaaaack! The right wing will have to deal with it!”
As indeed it will. Also, everybody else — because “right-wing” is Lewis’ descriptive for anybody who dares disagrees with her.
The presumptive de Blasio blowout Tuesday is first and foremost a personal triumph, of course. But the Democratic nominee got a huge, if not decisive, boost along the way from folks like Lewis — whose former organization, the disgraced, defunded and now disbanded ACORN, was a founding partner of the really big winner in this year’s mayoral election.
That would be the Working Families Party, a laser-focused, hard-left-leaning coalition of militant private-sector unions, grasping public-sector unions and advantage-seeking hangers-on now masquerading as a “progressive” mainstream political party.
In most other American cities, the WFP would be a fringe group. But New York has a long history of minor parties pushing narrow issues or ideologies, then achieving disproportionate influence by pledging their ballot lines to major-party pols — in return for future considerations.
New York is one of the few states that permit minor-party cross-endorsements of major-party candidates, and such support can make all the difference in close elections.
It’s unlikely that Rudy Giuliani or Mike Bloomberg would have ever have become mayor without minor-party support. The payback came in old-fashioned patronage and, from Mayor Mike’s bountiful bottomless well of untraditional benefices.
And while now it’s Bill de Blasio’s turn, there is a difference.
What distinguishes the Working Families Party from most other minor parties is this: It’s fundamentally a vehicle for advancing the narrow, often-reactionary interests of unions.
Founded in 1998 by Lewis’ radically redistributionist ACORN, quasi-private-sector unions like the exquisitely ideological Communication Workers of America and fundamentally self-interested organizations as the United Federation of Teachers, the WFP early on saw a soulmate in de Blasio — essentially lifting him into the City Council in 2001.
Four years ago, the alliance was renewed as de Blasio successfully sought the city’s functionally powerless, but politically well-placed, public advocate’s office.
Now de Blasio and the WFP will ascend to the mayoralty together.
Significantly, the party also guided its current candidate for advocate, Brooklyn’s Letitia James, through a bitter primary campaign. Now she’s unopposed on Tuesday’s ballot, and presumably will be solidly behind de Blasio when the new mayor settles into City Hall in January.
Perhaps even more importantly, the party has played a crucial role in electing what promises to be the most radical City Council in memory — fully primed to do the WFP’s business.
All in all, then, a very good year for the Working Families Party.
Certainly it will be going full-tilt-boogie into the 2014 election cycle — and politicians who fail to pay proper heed to the numbers the WFP will put up Tuesday likely will regret it.
So, expect that much mischief will be committed in the coming months as de Blasio and the council redeem their debts to the WFP, and Albany does its best to court the organization.
At the top of the WFP’s immediate agenda, look for fat raises (and an end to all talk of pension reform) for rank-and-file city employees (DC Council 37 and others); for Albany to finesse a moratorium on hospital economies (SEIU 1199) and de Blasio’s signature millionaire-tax-funded baby-sitting, that is, “early childhood education” scheme (UFT Local 2).
All this boils down to public employees hiring their own bosses — a practice first condemned in 1937 by Franklin Roosevelt, of all people.
“[T]he process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” he wrote. “The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to . . . bind [themselves] in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations.”
Alas, time passed and the purchasing power of public-employee unions grew. New York’s 1970 Taylor Law essentially legitimized the practice.
It took a little more time, but the Working Families Party — 151-proof public-employee power — is the result.
And it’s not just the public unions.
Along with the power to resolve, say, the UFT’s grievances — perhaps by crushing the charter-school movement — the WFP now has juice to impose indirect tax increases and other commerce-depressing restrictions on the private sector.
So look for big boosts in so-called “living wage” minimums; a stand-alone municipal minimum wage; city harassment of non-union work sites; coerced “affordable” housing concessions and even more restrictive rent regulation. Plus much more.
All this will be undertaken in the name of “equity,” even if it does threaten existing jobs, and future growth, in a now-vigorous, but fragile, municipal economy.
The rhetoric is mother’s milk to the movement — but don’t be fooled. The real goal is to pick the public’s pocket on behalf of the constituent organizations of the WFP coalition.
And, per Bertha Lewis, “the right wing will just have to deal with it.”
For the Working Families Party has pinned its own tail on the Democratic donkey, and now comes payday.