The candidates are former Bill de Blasio aide Jessica Ramos, former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer Alessandra Biaggi, and Syracuse University administrator Rachel May. | Facebook Working Families Party endorses 3 IDC primary challengers

ALBANY — The Working Families Party is endorsing three Democrats who are planning to challenge incumbent members of the state Senate’s Independent Democratic Conference, the party announced Thursday.

The candidates are former Bill de Blasio aide Jessica Ramos, former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer Alessandra Biaggi, and Syracuse University administrator Rachel May. They’re running, respectively, against Sens. Jose Peralta of Queens, Jeff Klein of the Bronx and David Valesky of Oneida in central New York.


“The IDC is a breakaway conference of State Senators who were elected as Democrats but who have formed an alliance with Trump Republicans in the State Senate, preventing progress for all of us for years,” the WFP’s Ava Benezra said in a release. “We’re proud to support these courageous women as our first three endorsements for State Senate in 2018.”

IDC spokeswoman Candice Giove dismissed the endorsements.

"Since its creation in 1998 the Working Families Party has become a travesty whose objective is to destroy the Democratic Party for its sole political interests,” she said in a statement. “The [IDC] is happy to put its record of accomplishments — a $15 minimum wage, a $10 million dollar immigrant legal defense fund and the strongest paid family leave program in the nation — against the do-nothing Working Families Party."

An early endorsement doesn’t necessarily mean the candidates will receive the party’s line in this fall's general election. In 2014, the WFP rescinded its backing of two IDC challengers after the conference entered into a never-materialized reunification deal with mainline Democrats, saying it had “decided to focus its resources on beating Republicans.”

This year, the two conferences have tentatively embraced a reunification deal that could potentially take effect a couple of months before ballot lines are awarded.

Also on Thursday, the IDC’s Peralta picked up a separate labor endorsement, receiving the backing of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

“My progressive ideals will always go hand in hand with working families, and my legislative record speaks for itself,” Peralta said in a statement.