Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Commissioner Diane Savino questions Winsome Pendergrass on the Working Families Party's role in Democratic primaries
0:38:13
·
120 sec
Commissioner Diane Savino questions Winsome Pendergrass about her opposition to open primaries and her affiliation with the Working Families Party (WFP). Savino, a former WFP executive board member, asks how Pendergrass reconciles the WFP's decades-long efforts to influence Democratic primaries with the idea that open primaries are an undue interference.
Pendergrass responds that she sees the WFP as helping the Democratic Party by supporting progressive candidates and doesn't view it as interference. She acknowledges the question of when the WFP might become a standalone third party is still open.
Diane Savino
0:38:13
Winsome, I I'm sorry.
0:38:14
Forgot your last name.
0:38:15
So Kind of.
0:38:15
I apologize.
0:38:16
I I just wanna be clear.
0:38:18
Yours you don't believe that
Dr. Jessie Fields
0:38:20
we should change the oh, we should
Diane Savino
0:38:21
we should keep the closed primary system.
0:38:23
Yes.
0:38:24
And we should not allow open primaries.
0:38:26
But I'm just gonna ask you a simple question.
0:38:28
As a member of the Working Families Party not I was at the Working Families Party when we created it in 1998.
0:38:33
I was on the executive board of the Working Families Party before I got elected to the senate.
0:38:38
But out of curiosity, how do we square this circle?
0:38:41
The Working Families Party has made twenty five years of of of trying to influence the Democratic primary.
0:38:49
They endorse candidates that run-in the Democratic primary.
0:38:51
They campaign for them.
0:38:52
They run campaigns for them.
0:38:54
They created a whole mechanism to try and elect the Democrats that they wouldn't run on their line.
0:38:59
Do you not see that as interference in the democratic party?
Winsome Pendergrass
0:39:02
I don't see it as an interference.
0:39:04
I think we're helping the democratic party.
0:39:07
The the WFP is the progressive section that the Democrats doesn't seem to they still wanna hold on to old politics and don't want to expand and and, to bring in more progressive people.
0:39:22
Then why not just run their own candidates on their own
Diane Savino
0:39:25
line and not attempt to influence democratic primary?
Winsome Pendergrass
0:39:28
Yes.
0:39:28
But we right now, I think we see it fit.
0:39:32
We do have the d line on all on the ballot that goes towards democrat, but we we we are helping to shore up the democratic party.
0:39:42
I don't know I can't tell you exactly when we are gonna step out to be a third party.
0:39:49
It is yet to be seen.
0:39:50
I guess I, myself, am asking the question.
0:39:52
When are we gonna be strong enough or be bold enough to step out and say, we are the third party?
Diane Savino
0:39:58
It's it's twenty seven years
Winsome Pendergrass
0:40:00
since the And I'm sorry.
Diane Savino
0:40:01
I can't of the ballot line.
Winsome Pendergrass
0:40:03
Yeah.
0:40:03
But that's something for me to take back to them.
Sharon Greenberger
0:40:06
Thank you.
0:40:07
Any other questions
Sophia Cohen
0:40:09
from anybody else?
Sharon Greenberger
0:40:11
Thank you so much.
0:40:12
Appreciate it.