The Insurgency.("Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party 1962-2002")

Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party 1962-2002, by George J. Marlin (St. Augustine's Press, 400 pp., $28)

Third parties have often served a useful purpose in American politics, but they are expected to fold their tents and fade away once that purpose has been served. Ordinarily they are born out of concern about some particular issue -- Abolition, Free Silver, Prohibition -- and disappear when one or the other of the two major parties co-opts the issue, or it simply dies. Even when the parties are founded with some grander notion, either the Republicans or the Democrats tend to be the ultimate beneficiary -- as when the Democrats sucked the juice out of the Progressive party, and the GOP allowed itself to become the vehicle of the modern conservative movement.

The election laws of most states, moreover, are carefully designed to encourage this state of affairs, making it difficult for a new party to get on the ballot and almost impossible for it to stay there. Candidates, what's more, are ordinarily not permitted to combine votes they receive on separate lines.

For various historical reasons, the state of New York is an exception to these rules. A new party must get on the ballot by the petition process, but if its candidate for governor receives more than 50,000 votes it becomes an "official" party in the state. Thereafter its nominees will appear on the ballot automatically -- unless, of course, it sinks below 50,000 on some future gubernatorial line. Moreover, parties may "cross-endorse," meaning that two or more parties can nominate the same candidate and combine their totals.

These rules were extremely useful to Franklin Roosevelt, many of whose leftist supporters were deeply reluctant to cast their votes for a Democratic party dominated by the Irish Catholics of Tammany Hall. The American Labor party was founded for their benefit, and they voted for Roosevelt and other liberals on its line. When the ALP was infiltrated and taken over by the Communists, union leader David Dubinsky co- founded the Liberal party, which outlived the ALP and served the same purpose.