The liberal Connecticut Working Families Party and the conservative Independent Party of Connecticut probably don’t share a lot of ideological common ground.
But they agree on one issue: ending the practice of cross-endorsements would be a bad idea. The two parties were part of a loose coalition of disparate political groups that spoke out at a public hearing at the legislative office building Monday on Senate Bill 1146, which would ban the practice.
Former Secretary of the State Miles Rapoport, now president of Demos, a New York-based public policy group, agreed. The bill “is about parties trying to scope out how to gain advantage or not lose advantage,” he said.
“Connecticut has made tremendous strives in opening up the process and giving voters more choices,” Rapoport said. “And this is a major step backward. This is an attempt to cut minor parties off at the knees by forcing them into irrelevancy or spoiler mode and i think thats a shame.”
