New York's Conservative Party Loses Row C: The Working Families Party Takes the Third Line on the State Ballot
The third line on New York's ballot is changing hands. With near-final results in, the Conservative Party's line drew 3.88 percent of the vote for Bruce Blakeman, behind the 4.17 percent Gov. Kathy Hochul drew on the Working Families Party line — so Working Families takes Row C in the elections ahead, and the Conservatives fall to Row D.
New York's fusion ballot has produced its quietest result of the week. Because ballot positions for smaller parties are set by their gubernatorial totals, the Working Families Party — whose extra line delivered 4.17 percent of the vote for the winning Democrat, Gov. Kathy Hochul — will occupy the third line, Row C, in subsequent elections. The Conservative Party, whose cross-endorsement line delivered 3.88 percent for Republican Bruce Blakeman, drops to the fourth line, Row D, according to the near-final results reported this run.
The Conservative chairman put the cause in one name. 'We lost Row C before, and we got it back,' Jerry Kassar told Newsmax on Wednesday night. 'The problem we had was that Mamdani was urging votes for Hochul on the Working Families line.' Kassar added that Mayor Zohran Mamdani's campaigning 'was probably the key to Working Families getting more than 400,000 votes statewide and 65,000 in Brooklyn alone' — a city mayor's ground game, in this reading, reordering the state ballot.
The line matters because New York is one of five states where smaller parties can lend their ballot lines to major-party candidates, with the votes on the extra lines counted in the candidates' totals — a cross-endorsement that has often provided the difference in close elections. The Conservative Party, founded in 1962 by Republicans resisting Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, sent James Buckley to the U.S. Senate in 1970 — still the last third-party Senate win — and Gov. George Pataki credited its line with his 1994 margin over Mario Cuomo.
Row order is not a trophy; it is position on every ballot in the state, in every race where the lines appear, until the next gubernatorial count resets it. The Conservatives have lost the third line before and regained it, as their chairman noted. What they have not faced before is losing it to a mayor of New York City campaigning for the other party's line — which is the part of Tuesday's result that will still be printed on ballots years from now.
