FAQs

In early 2024, Mondaire Jones applied for the endorsement of the Working Families Party as a candidate for congressional district 17. To be endorsed by the WFP,  candidates must complete an endorsement questionnaire and participate in an interview with a panel of WFP activists. Jones successfully applied and secured the WFP endorsement in February of 2024.

Anthony Frascone never applied for the WFP endorsement. He is a conservative with a checkered personal history who never intended to be a real candidate of the Working Families Party.  Unbeknownst to the WFP and Jones’ campaign, Frascone and his associates registered a few hundred Rockland county residents as Working Families Party for the sole purpose of collecting enough petition signatures to put Frascone on the ballot and force a surprise WFP primary for the congressional district 17. 

Since the WFP rarely has primary elections, real Working Families party registrants are not accustomed to voting in June primaries. Most of the people who voted in the WFP June primary were those Frascone and his team had recently registered as WFP voters. 

Despite the efforts of WFP and the Jones campaign to educate real WFP voters about this dirty trick, Frascone won the WFP primary elections by mobilizing the voters he had recently registered as WFP registrants. That is why Anthony Frascone appears on the WFP ballot line.

Frascone is a MAGA plant, not a Working Families champion. His dirty trick was done to use the WFP line as a spoiler in the general election between MAGA Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Mondaire Jones. Do not let them fool you!

If you care about protecting abortion rights and prioritizing the needs of working families above the whims of billionaires, vote for all WFP-endorsed candidates on the Democratic Line (Row A).

The congressional election between MAGA Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Mondaire Jones will be extremely close. The votes cast on the Working Families ballot line could very well be the difference. In 2022, Republican Mike Lawler won by just 1,820 votes (less than 1%). Usually, the Working Families ballot line gets between 4% to 6% of the vote in this district. By stealing the line,  Lawler and his MAGA radicals hope to confuse WFP voters and stifle the will of the district.The only way to fight this is to make sure that every voter knows that the candidate appearing on the WFP line is a MAGA spoiler, and not a real candidate for Congress. 

If you believe that our leaders should prioritize the needs of working families, we urge you to vote on the Democratic line in NY-17 in 2024.

Yes. The Working Families Party has had to fight tooth and nail to continue to have a ballot line so that voters can have an opportunity to express their values by voting WFP. Normally, we encourage voters to vote on the Working Families line in every general election. But this year we are asking voters in congressional district 17 to put country above party and vote on the Democratic line instead. 

The congressional race in CD-17 will be too close. We do not want to allow MAGA to confuse voters into voting for someone who isn’t running to represent the district in Congress. That’s why we’re asking people to keep it simple: If you live in congressional district 17, vote on the Democratic up and down the ballot.

Lawler has been enthusiastically cheerleading Frascone’s efforts to confuse voters and steal the line. What evidence do we have? During the June primary, the Lawler campaign sent two mail pieces to WFP registrants, highlighting a political disagreement between the Working Families Party and Mondaire Jones. The attack mail that Lawler’s campaign paid for copied the WFP visual style to imply they were WFP communications. It is extremely unusual for a Republican candidate to spend money sending expensive mailers to Working Families Party registrants. This was done to discourage real WFP voters from voting for Mondaire in the primary. It seems like Lawler’s team is not confident that he can win a fair election, so they’re resorting to dirty tricks to confuse voters!

Yes. In NY senate district 38, WFP endorsed Elijah Reichlin-Melnick also had the WFP line stolen from him in a rogue primary, by Barbara Francis. Francis is simply there to take votes away from Reichlin-Melnick, so be extra sure to vote on the Democratic line!

You can help us protect the WFP ballot line from dirty tricks by registering as a Working Families Party registrant! We know lots of progressive want to maintain Democratic Party registration so they can vote in primaries. But in districts like yours, where there is an organized conservative effort to “ballot-raid” and steal the line, we need voters like you to change their voter registration to the Working Families Party and then come out and vote in every primary!