BALLOT BATTLE: As Democrats are beginning to process their vast losses across the country this week, a left-flank third party had a different grievance to air today. Working Families Party leadership took direct aim at the state Democratic Party during the Somos conference, lambasting the establishment over its role in a ballot proposal that ended up passing by a large margin Tuesday. Ana María Archila, the co-director of the Working Families Party, accused the state party of ›withholding support for the New Yorkers for Equal Rights Campaign, the organization behind the effort to pass the constitutional amendment that enshrines reproductive rights in the state. It was the latest in the internecine feud that POLITICO’s Bill Mahoney exposed last month. “Prop 1 is a huge, huge deal,” said an animated Archila, standing on a chair in front of a packed room of New York politicos at her party’s gathering at Fogo De Chao, a block away from the conference’s main hotel. Just steps from Archila stood Sasha Ahuja, the executive director for the New Yorkers for Equal Rights Campaign. “And Sasha, who led that fight, endured really backhanded attacks by the party that — I’m just going to fucking say it, the gloves come off — the state Democratic Party showed up quite late to the fight for Prop 1,” Archila continued. “And instead of showing up on time for a prop that they put on the ballot, they showed up late and started blaming the women that were running that campaign. Because the campaign didn’t have as much money as the opposition. Fuck that.” The candid comments come after POLITICO’s report found the New Yorkers For Equal Rights campaign had been using the bulk of their cash on consulting and polling firms — not on direct voter outreach. Meanwhile, the campaign mobilizing against the amendment was raising millions of dollars and had spent heavily to attack the measure, arguing it would endanger girls’ sports by safeguarding the rights of trans athletes to participate on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The state party spent $2 million on the campaign in its final days after the reporting on its disproportionate spending. New Yorkers For Equal Rights leaders also said they were waiting to spend heavily on direct voter outreach until the final days before the election. “The campaign we put together and ran — despite the opposition — outperformed every other race in the state,” Ahuja said in a statement, when asked to comment on Archila’s remarks. She also told The New York Times on Thursday the campaign to pass the ballot proposal was meant to be nonpartisan. “The important thing we tried to emphasize from the beginning was that we should keep this fight about rights out of the partisan framework,” Ahuja told the outlet. “The more this is thought of as a Democratic thing, the worse it is.” In a statement, the state party responded to Archila’s attack. “That’s a lot of whining for something that passed by over 20 points,” said Jen Goodman, a spokesperson for the state party. “Governor Hochul and the New York State Democratic Party are proud to have been the single-largest funder of direct voter contact efforts to pass Prop 1, and we’re grateful that New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly to enshrine abortion rights in our constitution as a result.” — Jason Beeferman | 
