To stay afloat, Oregon Working Families Party needs more voters by August

The Oregon Working Families Party was so committed to Bernie Sanders that its staff called and emailed the party’s own members asking them to re-register as Democrats — so they could vote for him in the May 17 primary. Sanders won Oregon, 56 to 44 percent. Now the union-backed minor party needs those former members to return.

Under Oregon law, minor parties can maintain their ballot status (the right to run candidates in the general election) in two ways. They can show that at least half a percent of the electorate is registered as members. Or they can field a candidate who wins at least 1 percent of the vote in a statewide election. Oregon Working Families Party hasn’t run a statewide candidate in the last two general election cycles, so if it wants to be on the ballot this November, it has to have at least 10,825 registered voters by Aug. 10.

The party had well more than that before Sanders came along. From January to September 2015, its membership grew from about 9,000 to 11,817, thanks to a paid canvass. But by the May 2016 primary, it had dropped to fewer than 9,600 registered voters.

Now the party is scrambling to re-recruit its lapsed members, and reaching out to unaffiliated voters who became Democrats for Bernie. It helps that Oregon makes it easy to change party registration: Voters can do so online here.

The party is holding caucus meetings, and will decide at a July 23 meeting who to endorse and whether to run its own candidates in the November election. For example, Shanti Lewallen — a union longshore worker who earned a law degree — is campaigning to be an Oregon Working Families Party candidate to challenge Democratic U.S. Senator Ron Wyden. But the party’s ability to endorse or run its own candidates in the general election depends on whether it can get to 10,825.

Oregon Working Families Party? What’s that?

Oregon Working Families Party is the little party that could. Though it has never elected a candidate on its own ballot line in Oregon, it has endorsed and helped to elect major party candidates who commit to its working families agenda, and it was a big part of the coalition that passed the state paid sick leave law. It’s backed by a number of labor organizations, including UFCW Local 555, Operating Engineers Local 701, Teamsters Local 206, CWA Local 7901, ILWU, Laborers Local 483, IBEW Local 48, and UNITE HERE Local 8. It’s also part of a national organization with active chapters in New York and other states.