Founded 2014 Seats in the Senate 0 / 100 | Political position Center-left Seats in the House 0 / 435 | |
Leaders Andrew Cuomo
Kathy Hochul Ideology Women's rights
Feminism
Pro-choice
Progressivism | ||
The Women's Equality Party is a New York qualified political party active only in that state. It was founded in 2014.
History
Incumbent Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo created the party in July 2014 under New York's electoral fusion laws, which allow votes on any ballot line to count toward a ticket's overall vote count. The party's name came from the Women's Equality Act, a bill that Cuomo was attempting to push through the New York State Legislature but stalled after he and the bill's supporters demanded a clause codifying Roe v. Wade be included even as the Republican-led New York State Senate refused to include the clause (the Senate did pass the rest of the bill, but the rest of the legislature refused to consider the bill without the Roe clause).
From its beginning, the party was met with controversy. Zephyr Teachout, who was challenging Cuomo in a primary election, accused Cuomo of blatant pandering, since Cuomo was not a woman. (Cuomo instead used Kathy Hochul, his female running mate, as the public face of the party.)
The party registered over 50,000 votes for the Cuomo–Hochul ticket in the 2014 gubernatorial elections, granting it automatic ballot access and a requirement to form a full political party. Cuomo and Hochul submitted a set of rules that has twice been challenged: once by a pair of Republican clerks who noted that the rules were not signed off on by a majority of the WEP's statewide candidates (the judge nonetheless threw the challenge out for lack of standing), and again by former State Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk, who submitted her own set of rules and is attempting to become chair of the party.