Dan Cantor

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Daniel Cantor is an American political organizer known for organizing labor and community figures to advocate for social democratic reforms in the Alinskyite Social Democrat tradition. He is most well known for being the co-founder and long-time leader of the Working Families Party (WFP), a social democratic and progressive third party in New York.^[1][2][3][4]

Cantor was born in 1955 and was raised in Levittown, New York to an Ashkenazi Jewish family.^[2][5] Cantor's father co-owned a local auto-parts store. His mother was a librarian who was active in civic affairs and engaged in anti-censorship movements.^[2][6] Cantor has stated that his interest in politics began when, as a teenager, his uncle gifted him a subscription to The Progressive.^[2]

Bob Master, a close childhood friend of Cantor and the northeastern political director for the Communications Workers of America, stated that Cantor was elected student body president during his time at MacArthur High School.^[2] Cantor enrolled at Wesleyan University, but left in his sophomore year to work on an Israeli Kibbutz.^[2] When he returned, Cantor became a student activist. After his graduation in 1977, Cantor joined ACORN and studied the writings of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.^[2]

As a community organizer for ACORN, Cantor organized interracial alliances in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and St. Louis, Missouri, to pressure local governments for better services.^[2] In Detroit, he led an effort to organize a union of fast-food workers.^[7] In 1984, Cantor joined the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador and mobilized opposition to AFL-CIO's policy in Latin America.^[8] In the mid-1980s Cantor left the NLC and worked for the Veatch Foundation on Long Island. Cantor also worked on Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.^[2][1]

While Cantor was honeymooning in 1989 in Europe, there was a surge in support and electoral success for green politics across the continent, leading his wife to ask why there was no viable third party in the United States.^[2] Upon his return, Cantor got into contact with Joel Rogers, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, about the viability of third parties.^[2][1] Cantor and Rogers decided to use fusion voting to build a progressive third party. Rather than running standalone candidates, the party would offer alternative candidates in Democratic primaries in order to shift the Democrats to the left, and then cross-nominate Democrats in the general election on their own ballot line.^[2]

The pair raised $300,000 to found the New Party (NP) in 1992. The goal of the party was to challenge the constitutions of states where fusion voting was not legal in order to bring the practice nationwide.^[2] The party opened offices in Milwaukee, Little Rock, and Chicago.^[1] However, in 1997, the United States Supreme Court struck down a NP effort to have all state bans on fusion voting declared an unconstitutional abridgement of the right to freedom of association. This effectively brought the NP to an end, and it disbanded in 1998.^[2] Cantor moved to New York City, where fusion remained legal, and began working with leaders from the political organizations ACORN and Citizen Action, as well as from unions like the Communications Workers of America and United Auto Workers, to launch the Working Families Party in 1998.^[1][2][3][5] They also received support from The Nation.^[9] Although the party's eventual endorsed candidate, Democrat Peter Vallone Sr., was defeated, the new party garnered 51,325 votes for Vallone and as such secured future ballot access.^[2]

The WFP focused on grassroots campaigning and canvasing to impact the Democratic establishment, while simultaneously building their own base of community activists and union stewards.^[10][2] Bill Lipton, another New Party veteran, became the WFP's first organizing director.^[2] In the 2001 New York City mayoral election the party backed Mark Green, who made Lipton his field director in Queens.^[2] In 2003 the party elected its first standalone politician, Letitia James to the New York City council.^[2][3]

Cantor and various media outlets have described the WFP as the left's response to the tea party movement. In 2010, Cantor directly compared the WFP with the tea party, stating that "The tea party is saying government is a waste, or evil, even. Our view is that government will be as good as we make it, by electing people who stand for a certain set of values we all share about decency and equality and opportunity."^[3][1]

In the mid-2000s, the WFP was active in efforts to abolish various drug laws and outlaw the practice of stop and frisk. They supported David Soares in his election as District Attorney of Albany County, which put the party in a national spotlight. Soares, who is Black in a 95% white district, worked with the WFP to run a grassroots, door-knocking based campaign that saw him win the election with more than 26%.^[2] After this victory, Cantor and the WFP focused more on progressive candidates in Upstate New York, a traditional Republican stronghold.^[2] By 2009, WFP members in the New York City Council had begun to organize themselves as the Progressive Caucus to emulate the Congressional Progressive Caucus.^[2]

In 2009, the WFP was closely aligned with Bill de Blasio, then running for Public Advocate.^[2] During this election, the New York Post ran several articles attacking Cantor and the WFP as part of a larger anti-Socialist culture war.^[2] Cantor, meanwhile, focused on local issues; childhood education, affordable college, and increased park and library budgets.^[2] At this time Cantor also gave several interviews in the New York media clarifying that the WFP was not a party exclusively for unions, advocating strictly for union members, but rather sought to "advance the broad social good."^[11]

In 2013 with an interview with Bill Moyers, Cantor argued for extensive political finance reform to effectively overturn Citizens United v. FEC at a local level. Cantor argued for "one person one vote, not one dollar one vote," and to construct limits on the amount of money in politics. Cantor argued that local, grassroots donations should be the sole metric of if a campaign is viable so that the politician is held responsible to their constituents instead of their donors.^[10]

2013 would serve as a high-point for the reach of the WFP, seeing longtime ally de Blasio elected mayor, while 12 of the 13 candidates the WFP ran for city council won their election.^[2] Additionally, the party had begun seriously expanding outside of New York, with a growing movement in Northern New Jersey.^[2] Also, the group began opening affiliates in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington D.C., and Wisconsin.^[2] In subsequent elections Cantor and the party raised $7.8 Million, with only $600,000 coming from sources other than individual donors.^[2]

The party and Cantor's influence entered a period of decline during and after the 2014 New York gubernatorial election where Cantor initially sought to run a WFP candidate against Andrew Cuomo, opposing his tax cuts for the wealthy and for banks, and his expansion of union-free charter schools.^[1] Additionally, the party distrusted Cuomo due to the high amount of wealthy corporate donors contributing to his campaign.^[1] The party eventually backed Cuomo after he let New York City increase its minimum wage independently of New York State.^[1] The socialist magazine Jacobin criticized the WFP for their support of Cuomo and other centrist and "corporate" Democrats.^[1]

In 2017 Cantor helped organize anti-Trump healthcare protests, organizing "sit-ins" in numerous Republican offices after Trump signaled that he would be replacing the Affordable Care Act. The protests took place in 21 different states and specifically targeted Mitch McConnell, Jeff Flake, Marco Rubio, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, and John Boozman. Cantor stated that "Trumpcare has never been about health care, it’s a naked attempt to steal health care from millions of Americans in order to pay for massive tax cuts for the richest people in history. It's despicable. Even Republican senators must know in their hearts that this is wrong. But still they press forward."^[12]

Cantor stepped down as the head of the WFP after nearly 20 years leaving the party in 2018, being succeeded by Maurice Mitchell, a well-known social strategist and organizer in the Black Lives Matter movement.^[5] During the transition, Cantor lauded Mitchell's achievements and stated that he was the best candidate to turn the WFP from a New York party to a national party.^[13] At the time of Cantor's departure, the WFP had committees in 15 states and in 2017 endorsed more than 1,000 candidates for state and local office.^[5]

In 2019 Cantor and Mitchell co-wrote an op-ed in The Nation supporting the practice of Fusion voting, the reason why the WFP has been successful in New York, stating that the practice helps the United States strive towards "a more perfect union."^[14] Cantor also highlighted how the practice allowed the Populist Party to impact the views its major party allies. Cantor closed the op-ed criticizing Andrew Cuomo's attempt to ban fusion voting practice in New York, and calling for it to be adopted nationally.^[14]

Cantor has outlined his personal political belief that government can help mitigate some the inequalities of a market system, and this his answer to "is to win massive investment in public goods, so you don't have to be rich to have a decent life."^[2]

Cantor married child psychologist Laura Markham in 1989.^[2]