On Monday, Gloria Steinem, still feminism’s leading oracle, sent an email to 200,000 New Yorkers urging them to vote for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other candidates seeking election on the Working Families Party line. Her note pointed to the organization’s work on paid sick leave (she mentioned it twice), on raising wages for the underclass, on fighting for tax increases on the wealthy and for expanded rights for domestic workers.
“New York should be a beacon to the nation by telling the truth,” Ms. Steinem wrote. “Our society is more unequal than ever. Things are toughest for low-income women, people of color and the children who depend on them.”
In his four years in office, Governor Cuomo has appeared as a champion of the invisible roughly as often as the brokers on “Million Dollar Listing” have shilled for small, modest apartments. But the more votes the Democratic governor receives on the Working Families line, the more — one might presume — he will feel bound to honor progressive promises that narrowly secured him the party’s endorsement in the first place.
What threatens a robust count is the sudden formation, announced by Governor Cuomo’s running mate, Kathy Hochul, over the summer, of the Women’s Equality Party, a component of a branding effort on the part of the governor to appeal to female voters.
The campaign has the governor and his running mate touring the state on a bus called the Women’s Equality Express, holding rallies on abortion rights and other aspects of the governor’s Women’s Equality Act, which languished in the State Legislature. In one significant sense, the marketing would seem to have been successful. Although recent polling data from the Siena Research Institute reveals the governor’s favorability ratings at a relatively low 54 percent, the gender gap is significant, with 65 percent of women surveyed saying they have a favorable opinion of him, and only 41 percent of men.
Noticeably absent from Ms. Steinem’s email is any reference to abortion at all. Mr. Cuomo has talked about the issue repeatedly in the course of the campaign, reminding voters during a televised debate on Wednesday night, for instance, that he would stand up for a woman’s right to choose as if it were truly imperiled in a state that has one of the strongest laws protecting abortion in the country, and some of the richest and most liberal women on earth.
The Women’s Equality Act, which includes a welcome strengthening of laws on sexual harassment and discrimination, stalled on a proposition that would have altered language around restrictions to abortions occurring after 24 weeks. As the law currently stands, these third-trimester abortions are permissible when a woman’s life is in danger; under the rewording they would also be allowed when a woman’s health was jeopardized. On the one hand, this is no small distinction. But on the other hand, even staunch advocates of revising the law cannot recall the last time — or possibly any time — since abortion was legalized that a patient or physician in New York was prosecuted for terminating a third-trimester pregnancy.
The Cuomo campaign has arguably resurrected a longstanding divide in the women’s movement between those more singularly concerned about issues of sexuality and reproductive rights, and those focused on the grittier economic issues that affect women’s lives more broadly if not always as dramatically. The Women’s Equality Party has a number of celebrities who have lent their names in support, including Lena Dunham, the creator of “Girls,” Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, and leaders of Planned Parenthood and Naral. The face of the movement belongs to Christine C. Quinn, former speaker of the New York City Council who has spoken often about the importance of reproductive choice, but who opposed paid sick leave for a long time during her tenure on the Council.
On Thursday, Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke on behalf of the governor’s feminist credentials, invoking her own past struggles as a young lawyer and mother. The same day, the Working Families Party released a video featuring prominent female politicians and activists urging voters to cast their ballots on the Working Families line, and by implication, to spurn the Women’s Equality Party. The women — among them the Manhattan borough president, Gale A. Brewer, and Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, both Democrats who had initially lent their names to the women’s party and found themselves quickly disillusioned — are essentially arguing that progressive economic policies are what will ultimately bring women closer to parity.
“The Working Families Party to me represents, since its creation, all the progressive ideals that are important to women and families — paid family leave, choice — to women and low-income women working two and three jobs,” Ms. Velázquez told me, explaining that she hadn’t participated in any events for the Women’s Equality Party.
Also appearing in the video is Ai-jen Poo, a recent recipient of a MacArthur grant for her advocacy around rights for domestic workers. Earlier in the month, State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, declined offers to attend events for the Women’s Equality Party. In an email that she wrote to Ms. Quinn and that was published on the website Capital New York, Ms. Krueger wrote: “Women are 54 percent of the voters in this state. When they vote on the Democratic line, Democrats win. I do not wish women to be relegated to some ‘non party.’ ”
There’s another matter on the minds of some political women as well. So many ballot lines are simply too confusing. “People understand Republicans and Democrats,” Zenaida Mendez, the leader of New York State’s chapter of the National Organization for Women, told me. “It took me a half an hour to explain all of this to someone.”