Vivian Wang

The proposal from the chairman, Jay Jacobs, would quintuple the number of votes that a political party needs to guarantee a spot on the ballot in the next election. A party currently needs 50,000 votes for its candidate for governor to secure a spot for the next four years.

Jacobs, in a private email to a group of state commissioners reviewing parts of New York election law, proposed raising the number to roughly 250,000.

At first glance, it might seem a strange position for any Democrat, let alone the head of the state’s Democratic Party, to take.

Nearly every minor party has fallen short of collecting 250,000 votes, including, and perhaps especially, the Working Families Party, a progressive group that shares many Democratic Party ideals yet has been one of the most reliable antagonists of Jacobs and his close ally Cuomo.

Only the Conservative Party has been able to surpass the 250,000-vote mark in recent years. If just that party survived, a candidate could then run on both the Conservative and Republican lines — New York election law allows candidates to run on multiple lines — while a liberal candidate would have no such advantage.

“Conservatives have an awful lot of support,” Jacobs said when asked about the idea. “There’s no question that they will have an easier time meeting these thresholds.

“I can see that that could be problematic,” he added.

Jacobs, whom Cuomo appointed to the state commission, insisted that his proposal was aimed at reducing voter confusion and rooting out corruption among “sham” parties that he said trade their ballot lines for political favors. He did not specify which parties he was referring to.

“A lot of people have been getting away with an awful lot for a long time,” Jacobs said. “In my mind, it will be better overall if elections are run with only really credible parties.”

For the WFP and its supporters, the proposal is the latest attempt by Jacobs and Cuomo to silence one of their most prominent political rivals. For the past few months, Jacobs has all but declared war on third parties, advancing multiple proposals to ban them. Cuomo, though he has not explicitly sought to ban the WFP, has said that he knew Jacobs’ stance when he chose him for the commission.

The dispute is also the most recent front in the feud between Cuomo and an increasingly emboldened mass of left-wing activists and politicians who have cast Cuomo and his allies as centrists bent on obstruction.

Jacobs made the proposal in an email Oct. 16, soon after a meeting of the commission. It was created by the Legislature in April to design a small-donor matching system for state elections, but in the months since, much to the angst of the WFP, the commission also turned to the question of third parties.

In the email, Jacobs asked a lawyer for the group, as well as the other eight commissioners, whether it had the power to raise the threshold for a guaranteed ballot line.

Traditionally, the WFP and other minor parties had been able to meet the 50,000-vote threshold relatively easily, in part because candidates are allowed to run on multiple lines, known as fusion voting. Progressives can, for example, choose to vote for the Democratic candidate on the WFP line to send a message about their political priorities without worrying about wasting a vote.

Jacobs asked the lawyer if the commission could require parties to achieve “an amount equal to 2% of all registered voters in the state” in races for president and governor.

Two percent of New York’s 12,695,762 registered voters is 253,915 votes. In the last election for governor, the Conservative Party collected 253,624 votes. The WFP, the next highest vote-getter, collected about 114,000.

Jacobs said the details of the proposal were not final. He said he had not yet discussed it with his fellow commissioners, who must vote to approve it.

But he reaffirmed his commitment to a 250,000-vote benchmark, arguing that allowing too many parties — especially if the state were to adopt a public matching funds program — could spiral out of financial control.

The commission will make its recommendations in November. They will have the force of law unless they are changed by the Legislature within three weeks.

A 250,000-vote threshold — roughly 4% of turnout in the 2018 governor’s election or 6% of the 2014 turnout — would be almost unmatched in its difficulty, said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, a publication that covers laws affecting minor parties.

“It would be in the company of Alabama; I don’t think New York has considered that state a model,” Winger said. Alabama requires parties to collect a number of petitions equal to 3% of the last vote for governor.

Texas this year lowered its threshold from 5% of the vote in a statewide contest to 2%.

Jacobs also pointed to Virginia and New Jersey as states that require parties to win 10% of turnout in the last governor’s race. But independent candidates there can also qualify by collecting a certain number of petition signatures — in the case of New Jersey, just 100 signatures for a candidate for the House of Representatives.

That disparity has worried the WFP and other minor parties, even among those who acknowledge that 50,000 might be too low of a threshold. And it has fueled already-rampant speculation in certain quarters about Jacobs’ — and the governor’s — true intentions.

Some have accused Cuomo, through Jacobs, of seeking to undermine the WFP, even at the cost of fellow Democrats’ electoral victories, in order to maintain his grip on power in an increasingly blue Albany.

“I honestly have never understood why it is that, electorally, the governor cannot seem and act as interested as we are in having as many Democrats in the state Legislature as possible,” Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Democrat who won her seat with WFP support last year, said.

She acknowledged that it was Jacobs, not Cuomo, who put the proposal forward. But, she said, “there is no question that the two work very closely.”

Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, denied the connection. “Per usual, we don’t know what Sen. Ramos is talking about,” he said. “It’s not our proposal, but ultimately legislators would have the option to weigh in on what the commission ultimately decides.”

Cuomo’s long, tortured history with the WFP, which has consistently sought to nudge him to the left, has led to some unusual moments.

In 2014, Cuomo created a new third party, the Women’s Equality Party, that was widely seen as an attempt to draw voters away from its similarly initialed counterpart, the WFP.

Jacobs’ proposal would exclude the Women’s Equality Party as well — a prospect that Jacobs, in a rare divergence from Cuomo, seemed to welcome.

“The Women’s Equality Party, they just support Democrats,” he said Monday. “These are sham parties.”

Jacobs, asked if he had spoken to the governor about the proposal, parried.

“What I would only say is — this is not going to sound like the answer you want — but I never discuss what I discuss with the governor,” he said. “I wouldn’t assume that because I’m not answering it, it’s an answer you won’t like. It’s just, if I begin to say on the one hand one thing, and another time I don’t answer, it gives a different implication than I want.”

Still, he insisted on his independence: “What I do and what I say on this commission have nothing to do with anyone else’s views: not the governor, not anyone.”

This article originally appeared in

Democrats' Secret Plan to Kill Third Parties in New York

The chairman of the New York state Democratic Party is pushing a proposal that would essentially neuter almost all third parties, crippling one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s biggest political nemeses but also potentially helping conservatives.

But that hasn’t stopped people — lots of them — from trying to unseat her.

So far, eight Republicans and three Democrats have filed to run for Ocasio-Cortez’s seat in the Bronx and Queens. Two of the Republicans have each raised more than $420,000, even though no Republican has represented the Bronx in Congress in at least 50 years.

The moonshot nature of these candidacies, and the fervor for them regardless — the candidates, in both parties, have made the rounds on Fox News and become darlings of conservative media — underscores the fame and rancor that have surrounded Ocasio-Cortez.

The campaigns also highlight a broader strategy by the Republican Party: turning voters’ resentment toward Ocasio-Cortez into a conduit for the party’s other electoral goals. By encouraging attacks on Ocasio-Cortez, Republicans hope to inspire a trickle-down effect onto lower-profile, but much more vulnerable, Democrats.

“When she’s forced to explain what she stands for and what she has pushed the Democratic Party to embrace from a policy standpoint, that is an electoral boon for Republicans,” said Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

A spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment.

The chances of an upset remain slim, despite the national attention to the race.

Ocasio-Cortez, with her social media savvy and outspoken advocacy for left-wing policies, has cultivated 5.5 million Twitter followers and a worshipful base of supporters who donated $1.4 million to her reelection bid between July and September alone. She has $1.91 million on hand.

Progressive candidates covet her political blessing; her decision to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for president in Queens on Saturday was seen as a major victory for his campaign.

But for the challengers, running — even with a near-guarantee of defeat — has few downsides. They can raise thousands off Ocasio-Cortez’s name alone; earn exposure for future campaigns; and bask in the attention, even if only for a short time.

For her part, Ocasio-Cortez has used the swell of challengers as fundraising fodder.

In an email to supporters soon after the Republican candidates’ contribution numbers were reported, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign announced an “emergency goal” of nearly $850,000 — the sum of the Republicans’ hauls — for October. If met, Ocasio-Cortez would be on track to raise more than $2.5 million in the next quarter.

By contrast, in New York’s 15th Congressional District, which borders Ocasio-Cortez’s, only one candidate has raised more than $400,000 in a quarter, even though the race is considered competitive: The incumbent, Rep. José Serrano, a Democrat, has announced his retirement.

It is unclear how much support the challengers to Ocasio-Cortez will receive from their party establishments. Traditionally, state and local parties back incumbents, but Ocasio-Cortez has rankled fellow Democrats with her and her supporters’ unabashed willingness to back primary challenges against longtime officeholders.

In a recent fundraising email, Ocasio-Cortez’s team wrote that ever since her victory, “corporate Democrats have been waiting for their chance to strike back.”

The Queens County Democratic Party — the longtime power base of former Rep. Joe Crowley, whom Ocasio-Cortez defeated — did not return a request for comment on Ocasio-Cortez’s primary challengers.

One of the Democratic challengers, Fernando Cabrera, a New York City councilman, said he consulted the Bronx County Democratic Party’s chairman, Assemblyman Marcos Crespo, before announcing his campaign.

“He said, ‘Go ahead and run,’ but I don’t take that as an endorsement,” Cabrera said. “We’re still in dialogue regarding support.”

Crespo, in an interview, said the county party traditionally supported incumbents. “I can’t envision why we would necessarily think differently about the 14th,” he said, referring to Ocasio-Cortez’s district.

On the Republican side, resources may also be scarce, even as party leaders plan to highlight the challengers. In an opinion piece in The Washington Examiner, a conservative outlet, one writer said the national party would be “insane” to put “one ounce of support” into the race, urging donors to focus on winnable districts instead.

McAdams, of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, said it was too early to say where the committee would focus its spending, but that the district would not be on its list of top targets. Still, he said the group was “constantly monitoring” the race.

Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the New York Republican Party, said he had not done any polling on Ocasio-Cortez’s district and had not recruited any of the candidates.

The 11 challengers to Ocasio-Cortez are mostly unknown, and many have no political experience. Some, after filing their candidacies, have raised no money.

But a few have clearly capitalized on conservatives’ fervent hatred of Ocasio-Cortez. John Cummings, a teacher and former police officer, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on “Fox &amp; Friends”; he raised $425,000 in 10 weeks, outpacing many sitting members of Congress.

Scherie Murray, a Republican businesswoman and Jamaican immigrant who voted twice for Barack Obama, gave her first interview to Sean Hannity, also on Fox. She raised $424,000, and has more than 140,000 Twitter followers.

Cabrera and another Democratic candidate, Badrun Khan, a self-described activist, have also appeared on Fox News.

The challengers, from both parties, share largely the same criticisms of Ocasio-Cortez. They slam her opposition to bringing an Amazon headquarters to New York City, blaming her for 25,000 lost jobs; they call her too radical to represent the district; and they accuse her of being too focused on building her national profile.

“Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has done an excellent job establishing a national persona for herself,” Cummings said. “But most of the people who live in the district, even Democrats I’ve spoken to, feel that she’s just not concerned with what goes on here.”

At times, it can seem the candidates are running against Ocasio-Cortez more than they are running for any particular message.

In emails from Cummings’ campaign to reporters, the subject lines do not include his name, describing him only as “AOC opponent.” Murray, in the Twitter post announcing her candidacy, explained her decision succinctly: “There’s a crisis in Queens and it’s called AOC.”

A spokeswoman for Khan said in an email that Khan was not available for any phone interviews for almost a week. (Khan later sent written responses to a few questions.) “Her unusual situation — running against AOC — makes her more visible obviously than other candidates,” the spokeswoman wrote.

“I can state with certainty that this notoriety is not what Ms. Khan is looking for,” she added.

Of course, that sudden visibility, coupled with the low likelihood of success, has only fueled speculation of alternate motives.

Cabrera, who does not live in the district, is barred by term limits from seeking reelection to the City Council, and is rumored to want to run for Bronx borough president in 2021. Congressional candidates are not required to live in the district they represent.

“This is a way to establish relationships with funders, to try to craft a message,” Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, said of the benefits of running against Ocasio-Cortez.

“This may be a failed mission, but it sets them up to be a known quantity.”

Cabrera denied that he was running to raise his profile. “This is really for the soul of America, and I just couldn’t stand by,” he said.

Of course, Ocasio-Cortez, who just turned 30 and had never run for office before, is prime evidence that conventional political wisdom and party support does not always matter on Election Day.

Langworthy said he could not think of another first-term member of Congress with such a high profile — and that her profile was drawing undue amounts of Republican attention.

“Especially when they see an outsider like AOC running and winning,” Langworthy said of the challengers, “they think, ‘Hey, maybe I can do that, too.’”

Ocasio-Cortez Is a Shoo-In, but 11 Other Hats Are in the Ring

NEW YORK — It is hard to imagine a scenario where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez loses her seat next year. She has raised more than $3.4 million, is better known than some presidential candidates and handily won a district that is among the bluest in the nation.

Ocasio-Cortez Will Be Very Tough to Beat. Why Are 11 People Trying?

Chris Collins, a Republican House member from western New York, should have been in his element. He had shot to fame the year before as the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for president. He had since channeled that fame into a spot on Trump’s transition team and frequent appearances on cable news.

But on that early summer evening in 2017, Collins seemed distracted. Standing apart from the festivities, he paced back and forth on the White House lawn, his cellphone pressed to his ear. When Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, strode by, Collins did not seem to notice.

On the other end of the call was Collins’ son. And the six-minute exchange that transpired would form the basis of an insider trading investigation that led to Collins’ indictment and to his resignation and guilty plea last week. His son has also pleaded guilty.

The story of Collins’ rise and fall — businessman to congressional backbencher, then presidential cheerleader to felon — is a tale of money, politics, family ties and murky ethics.

It is also the story of a man who rose to prominence by hitching himself to Trump — and whose star then plummeted as quickly as it rose.

Long before Collins emerged as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders, the two shared some similarities.

In 2007, Collins, a wealthy entrepreneur who had never held elected office, pulled off an upset win in the county executive race in Erie County, which includes Buffalo, New York. (An earlier bid for Congress in 1998 was unsuccessful.)

Collins, who made his fortune by turning around struggling companies, had campaigned on a promise to put his business know-how to work in county government. He succeeded, slashing debt and pulling Erie County back from near bankruptcy.

But he also developed a reputation as arrogant, ambitious and prone to offensive comments. In 2009, he called the Democratic Assembly speaker the “Antichrist,” a move that many credited with dashing his hopes of a 2010 run for governor. He was overheard at a governor’s speech telling a woman that she could find a seat in exchange for a “lap dance.”

He lost his reelection for county executive in 2011. “The guy is about as cuddly as a cactus,” a columnist for The Buffalo News wrote.

Still, the next year, Collins ran for Congress and won, aided by newly redrawn borders for the 27th District as well as his personal wealth, which financial disclosures showed included investment assets of as much as $112 million. Yet his reputation for self-aggrandizement followed him to Washington.

“I think he brought an attitude of, ‘I am not a regular freshman,’ ” Tom Reynolds, a former Republican congressman who had represented parts of Collins’ district, said. “Most would put it down that he started with a pretty good arrogant streak.”

He took a similar approach to separating his political life from his finances. During his first term, he said he saw “no compelling reason” to put his assets in a blind trust. Over the next few years, he continued to invest heavily in health care companies — even after he earned a seat on the influential House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees that industry.

Still, for his first few years in Congress, Collins attracted little attention outside New York. That changed in 2016, when Collins endorsed Trump, holding up their shared business backgrounds as the reason.

“We need a chief executive, not a chief politician,” Collins said, recycling one of his own campaign slogans.

Some saw yet more self-promotion. Carl Paladino, another businessman-turned-politician who ran as the Republican candidate for New York governor in 2010, pointed out that Collins had first endorsed Jeb Bush. But Bush fizzled, and Paladino — an early supporter of Trump — urged the state’s Republican delegation to get behind his favored candidate.

At first, Collins resisted, Paladino said.

“It wasn’t until I struck a chord by saying, ‘You could be the first congressman to come on board, and you could take that notoriety’ — that’s when he saw that as an opportunity,” Paladino said.

Collins has tried to deflect Paladino’s claim that he was coaxed into the endorsement. But he clearly had no qualms about the national profile that followed.

He bragged to his eye doctor about receiving direct phone calls from Trump and touted his invitation to a private lunch after the inauguration. He earned parodies on late-night comedy shows.

There were more tangible political rewards, too. In November 2016, Paul Ryan, then the House speaker, asked Collins to second his renomination to the speakership, as a sign of goodwill toward Trump.

“Obviously the Trump election highlighted his profile,” Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican whose district borders Collins’ former one, said. “And I think it was clear he enjoyed that role.”

But with visibility came scrutiny of a kind that Collins had until then largely avoided.

In January 2017, when Trump nominated Rep. Tom Price, another outspoken supporter — and a friend of Collins — to serve as secretary of health and human services, that friendship became a key focus of Price’s Senate confirmation hearings.

After The Wall Street Journal reported that Price had significant holdings in health care companies, Democrats homed in on one investment in particular: Innate Immunotherapeutics, a little-known Australian drug company that had several congressional investors.

By far the largest investor was Collins, who owned almost one-fifth of the company’s stock and also sat on its board of directors. His son and daughter were also among the company’s top 20 shareholders.

But Collins’ ties to Innate went far beyond a title or even mere trading. Not long after meeting Innate’s chief executive, Simon Wilkinson, in 2005, Collins raised $6 million for his company in 96 hours, he told congressional investigators in 2017. Several times, when the company couldn’t make payroll, he provided loans.

He was also perhaps its most fervent evangelist, openly boasting at the Capitol that he had persuaded friends and acquaintances to buy into Innate. “Do you know how many millionaires I’ve made in Buffalo the past few months?” a reporter once overheard him say.

Reed said some of the promotion seemed to stem from genuine passion for the company’s work. “At times, it came across as he was very excited about what this was going to do for patients,” he said.

“But then, obviously, some members, myself included, were a little bit uncomfortable with some of the commentary.”

At Price’s confirmation hearing, Democrats, noting that Price had bought between $60,000 and $110,000 of Innate stock, demanded to know how he had come by the investment. They asked whether he had been given inside information by Collins.

Both men denied any impropriety. But the accusations quickly turned into a sprawling ethics inquiry.

Government watchdog groups and a Democratic congresswoman wrote letters asking for investigations to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of Congressional Ethics and federal prosecutors in Manhattan. They noted that Collins had written bill language to speed up drug trials — a change that could benefit Innate — shortly before buying more Innate stock.

Collins had also visited the National Institutes of Health soon after being elected, where he pressed a researcher to help Innate with a drug trial, a complaint said.

In response to the accusations, Collins often echoed the president who had brought him into the limelight in the first place. He called The Buffalo News, which broke the story of the congressional ethics investigation, “fake news,” and he attacked the investigations as a “witch hunt.” He called the Democratic congresswoman, Louise Slaughter, a “despicable human being.”

But Collins’ eventual downfall was ultimately related not to political entanglements, but to his family.

Barely two weeks after the congressional ethics interview June 5, 2017, Collins was at the congressional picnic, when he received an email from the chief executive of Innate. The email said that Innate’s drug trial for its only product, a much-anticipated drug to cure multiple sclerosis, had failed.

In a panic, Collins called his son, Cameron Collins, to share the news — a violation of federal securities law, which prohibits sharing a company’s confidential information for personal gain. Within days, Cameron Collins sold more than 1 million shares of Innate stock, allowing him to avoid more than $570,000 in losses.

About a year later, in August 2018, Collins and his son were indicted, along with the father of Cameron Collins’ fiancee.

Even then, Chris Collins remained defiant. After suspending his reelection campaign briefly after his indictment, he restarted it weeks later, going on to defeat the Democratic challenger, Nate McMurray, by less than half a percentage point. Some Republican leaders urged him to not run again in 2020, but Collins offered no hints of stepping down.

So when a court filing suddenly appeared last week with the news that Collins planned to change his “not guilty plea,” it caught his allies by surprise. Within hours, he had resigned.

After the hearing, Collins and his lawyers refused to say why he had agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to federal investigators. He faces up to 10 years in prison, but prosecutors and defense lawyers have agreed to seek a sentence between 46 months and 57 months.

But Collins had seemingly predicted the effect Innate would have on his legacy — if not in the way he imagined.

“Of all the things I will accomplish in my life,” he told congressional investigators of his investments in Innate, “this will be No. 1 on my tombstone.”

He Was Trump's First Fan in Congress. Now He's a Felon.

The South Lawn of the White House was decked out in New York City paraphernalia for President Donald Trump’s first congressional picnic: food carts, boat racing and a Central Park-like carousel, all in honor of the president’s hometown.

“One of the things was, ‘Who in Congress have you talked with about Innate?’” Collins said of the company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, in a 2017 interview. “The bigger question would be: Who haven’t I talked to?”

A version of that question became Collins’ undoing. On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to federal investigators, after admitting passing private information about Innate to his son to help him avoid financial losses. Collins faces a prison sentence of up to 10 years; his son and the father of his son’s fiancée are expected to plead guilty to related charges later this week.

“I regret these actions beyond anything,” Collins, 69, told the judge, Vernon Broderick, in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

In his speech, Collins apologized to his son, “who I’ve spent my life supporting,” and to his constituents.

“I have tried to be a model citizen to them,” he said. “The actions I took are anything but.”

The charges stemmed from Collins’ significant financial ties to Innate; he owned nearly 17% of the company’s total stock, making him one of its largest shareholders. He was also a member of its board of directors.

According to prosecutors, Collins — who rose to prominence as the first sitting member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump in the 2016 election — was at a congressional picnic in June 2017 when he learned, through a private company email, that Innate had failed a critical trial for a drug to cure multiple sclerosis. The drug, prosecutors said, was the company’s only significant product.

Immediately, Collins called his son, Cameron Collins, to encourage him to sell his shares before the test results became public.

“I was in a very emotional state,” Collins said Tuesday of that moment, adding that he knew the news “would have devastating effect” on Innate’s stock price.

The congressman called his son several times in quick succession before they finally connected on the seventh try, according to call logs.

The tip helped Cameron Collins avoid more than $570,000 in losses when the company’s stock price later plummeted, prosecutors said.

“Collins admitted to, among other things, illegally tipping his son while standing on the White House lawn,” the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, said in a news conference shortly after the plea.

Cameron Collins, as well as Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron Collins’ fiancée, are expected to plead guilty on Thursday. Cameron Collins had advised Zarsky and Zarsky’s daughter to sell their shares, prosecutors said, and Zarsky also passed the tip to others.

The younger Collins’ fiancée was not charged.

The congressman himself, who was ranked as one of the wealthiest members of Congress, was not accused of making any trades. But just the act of passing along information can, under some circumstances, constitute an insider-trading violation.

Collins is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 17. Though the maximum sentence for the two charges is 10 years, prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed to seek a sentence between 46 and 57 months.

Collins’ plea capped a political career that had been remarkable to that point for its resilience. Last year, Collins, who was first elected in 2012, narrowly won reelection even after being indicted on the insider trading charges to which he pleaded guilty on Tuesday. Until this week, he had offered hints that he planned to run again, despite pleas from fellow Republicans to step aside.

That all changed on Monday, when lawyers for Collins — who was staring down a trial scheduled for February, before a judge who had denied many of his pretrial motions — announced in a court filing that the congressman planned to change his not-guilty plea.

Within hours, Collins resigned his seat.

A lawyer for Collins did not respond to questions about what prompted the change in plea.

Congressional investigators had raised ethical questions before about Collins’ relationship to Innate. Collins’ 2017 interview about the company was part of a probe by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which later concluded that Collins had potentially violated federal law as well as House ethics rules.

In that interview, Collins said that his son and daughter owned shares in Innate, as did “most” members of his congressional staff. At least five Republican lawmakers also owned Innate stock at the time of the failed drug trial.

Last August, after Collins was indicted, then House Speaker Paul Ryan stripped Collins of his seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees health care companies. Ryan also asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate the allegations.

Collins’ resignation jolted the already-brewing race to replace him. Last year, campaigning under the shadow of the indictment, Collins defeated his Democratic challenger, Nate McMurray, by less than half a percentage point — even though his district voted for Trump by a margin of nearly 25 points.

But with the taint of Collins’ legal troubles gone, political pundits predicted that the district would remain safely Republican. Soon after Collins’ resignation, two Republican candidates, state Sens. Chris Jacobs and Robert Ortt, each declared their commitment to advancing Trump’s agenda.

McMurray, for his part, said in a statement that Collins as well as Republican Party insiders had wronged residents of the district, which falls between Buffalo and Rochester.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, must call a special election to fill Collins’ seat before next November’s general election, though the timing of that election is flexible. In a radio interview on Tuesday, Cuomo said he wanted to call it “sooner rather than later.”

Collins is not the first elected official to face federal charges intertwined with a son’s behavior. Last year, the former majority leader of the New York state Senate, Dean Skelos, was convicted of public corruption after prosecutors said he pressured business executives to pay his son about $300,000, through various no-show or low-show jobs. His son, Adam, was also convicted.

Skelos’ deputy, state Sen. Thomas Libous, was separately accused of lying to federal authorities about the circumstances of his own son’s employment. He was convicted but the conviction was later vacated after his death; his son, Matthew Libous, was convicted of federal tax charges.

After the hearing, Collins, flanked by his lawyers, exited the courthouse directly into a black sport utility vehicle idling nearby. He ignored shouted questions from reporters.

A Day After Resigning, Collins Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading

It was an opportunity that Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from western New York, believed was too good to pass up. He was so confident of his investment in an Australian drug company that he hawked it to his children, his staffers, even other members of Congress.

A version of that question became Collins’ undoing. He pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to federal investigators, and faced the expected guilty pleas by his son and the father of his son’s fiancée later this week.

The charges revolved around Collins’ significant financial ties to Innate; he owned nearly 17% of the company’s total stock, making him one of the largest shareholders. He was also a member of its board of directors.

According to prosecutors, Collins, who was first elected in 2012, was at a congressional picnic in June 2017 when he learned, through a private company email, that Innate had failed a critical trial for its only product, a drug to cure multiple sclerosis. Immediately, Collins called his son, Cameron Collins, to encourage him to sell his shares before the test results became public, prosecutors said.

Cameron Collins, as well as Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron Collins’ fiancée, are expected to plead guilty on Thursday. Cameron Collins had advised Zarsky and his daughter to sell their shares, prosecutors said, and Zarsky also passed the tip to others.

Collins is not the first elected official to face federal charges intertwined with a son. Last year, the former majority leader of the New York state Senate, Dean Skelos, was convicted of public corruption after prosecutors said he pressured business executives to pay his son about $300,000, through various no-show or low-show jobs. His son, Adam, was also convicted.

Ex-Rep. Chris Collins Pleads Guilty to Securities Fraud

The potential target was not an entrenched politician, or the local county party. It was a much closer ally: labor unions, including the one that was hosting the activists’ meeting earlier this year.

The plan did not go over well. The union, a branch of the Communications Workers of America, kicked the activists out. Labor leaders accused the activists of plotting infiltration. The activists, in turn, recently warned of union spies.

The dispute makes clear the growing ambition of New York’s activist left, which over the past year has notched a string of high-profile successes, from propelling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election to scuttling Amazon’s plans to build headquarters in New York City.

On the national stage, progressive forces are trying to push the Democratic agenda to the left, and challenge how party leaders respond to President Donald Trump.

Emboldened by their successes, they are now preparing to take additional steps toward political and economic transformation — including by challenging groups that have long been in the populist vanguard of the Democratic Party.

The unions, in turn, have been forced to reckon with the shifting political landscape, and to decide what position they want to occupy within it.

While unions in New York and nationwide have often championed progressive policies, some have also opposed marquee issues for the left, including the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. No union endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in her insurgent congressional campaign last year.

Even as grass-roots labor activism has swelled in new sectors — including among video game makers and Uber drivers — established unions have often kept their distance because of funding shortages or reluctance to engage with workers outside of their formal membership.

At its heart, the debate is one between pragmatism and idealism, working within the system versus burning it down.

It is the same debate dogging the Democratic Party at large, but amplified by an only-in-New-York mix of vibrant activism, impenetrably blue politics and — unlike in the rest of the country — still-mighty unions eager to quell perceived threats to their clout.

“Given the political moment we find ourselves in, the idea that a leftist political organization would launch disruptive attacks on their ostensible allies in the labor movement is the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face,” said Peter Ward, the president of the Hotel Trades Council, a union of hotel workers.

Activists countered that the labor movement had fallen out of step. Jeremy Saunders, the co-executive director of VOCAL-NY, a progressive activism group, said many union leaders seemed dismissive of the energy on the left.

“This growing left sees labor as its natural allies,” he said, “but is frustrated by some unions who too often side with those same politics and politicians who refuse to fight for justice.”

The current dispute involves the New York City branch of the Democratic Socialists of America and the plan it crafted at that basement meeting. The socialists, deeming the city’s unions overly reliant on insider relationships, prepared a “rank-and-file strategy” for their members to join unions and remake them from within.

The group also later published a blog post encouraging other chapters nationwide to follow suit.

Some backlash was immediate. But it exploded recently, after the group’s 37-page memo about its plan was reported by Politico, leading union leaders to accuse DSA of sowing division.

In response, DSA members — including state Sen. Julia Salazar, the first member of the group to serve in the Legislature — said the union leaders were “red-baiting.”

Tensions escalated when DSA issued a statement accusing the Hotel Trades Council of sending members to spy on DSA meetings in order to “thwart HTC members’ self-organization and full exercise of their democratic union rights.” (The union denied spying; DSA meetings are public.)

In interviews, activists — both involved with DSA and not — said the unions’ reactions affirmed their critique.

Bianca Cunningham, a leader of the New York City DSA, said unions’ entanglement in political relationships “prohibits them from being able to take real chances.”

“We’re not surprised that conservative unions come out and say they don’t support this kind of strategy,” she said, “because they see it as a threat to their own power.”

To be sure, the labor movement is large and diverse. Some unions have aggressively backed progressive priorities. Activists and organized labor in New York have successfully pushed together for a $15 minimum wage and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. DSA still borrows meeting space from some unions.

Attempts to remake the unions are also not limited to outside activists: Internal factions within several unions have publicly challenged leadership. Still, even avowedly left-leaning labor leaders bristled at what they perceived as the activists’ naïveté or arrogance.

John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, said activists were “welcome to join the fight,” adding that he endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. But he emphasized the historical power of unions, pointing to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s leftward tilt in recent years.

“It wasn’t the DSA that did that. The DSA is incapable of doing that,” Samuelsen said. “It’s the institution of organized labor in New York that drove Cuomo to the left.”

Michael Mulgrew, the head of the city’s teacher union, said the activists’ disillusionment was misplaced.

“Our track record on being progressive is pretty solid to say the least,” he said, adding, “You don’t need to push us. We’re pretty far out there in terms of how we’re trying to change society in terms of the betterment of all.”

Even Salazar said she understood the unions’ defensiveness: “There’s a little bit of, ‘We’ve been doing this for a long time. You just got here.’”

The skirmish in many ways encapsulates the challenges left-wing activists face as they strive to take their message mainstream.

They have struggled to shed the label of interloper: Many activists only turned to politics after the 2016 presidential election. DSA in particular has seen membership skyrocket, from 5,000 in 2016 to more than 50,000.

The activists have also often been painted as white and well-off — a fact even DSA acknowledged in its memo, writing, “DSA has described itself as committed to maintaining an active and diverse membership but is primarily composed of middle-class white people.”

Ward, of the hotel union, seemed to allude to that when he said that his union was “made up mostly of women, immigrants and people of color,” who would meet DSA with “very aggressive and overwhelming pushback” if the activists did not share their goals.

But the rift also underscores how influential the newcomers are becoming.

Grass-roots activist groups have shown that they can run formidable get-out-the-vote operations, akin to those that make unions such appealing political allies. DSA volunteers played a key role in Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory, as well as in the candidacy of Tiffany Cabán, a former public defender who last month lost her bid for Queens district attorney by just 55 votes, despite earning just one labor backer.

Labor leaders will need to adapt, said Shaun Richman, the program director at SUNY Empire State College’s center for labor studies. He said he expected to see unions taking more political risks and endorsing more challengers.

NEW YORK — A group of far-left activists huddled in the basement of a labor union in Manhattan, aiming to upend a Democratic institution that they felt had grown stale.

Vivian Wang

Articles written by the author

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