During the 2014 election, Mr. Cuomo drove around the state in a bus called the Women’s Equality Express, which had a pink stripe adorning its side. Some found the entire enterprise craven and patronizing — and an obvious effort to peel off votes from the W.F.P., which had been fighting for paid sick leave and other causes vital to women’s lives for many years. Others found it duplicitous, given the rampant culture of sexual harassment that had been permitted to fester for so long in the state capital.

During that race, Mr. Cuomo was challenged by an unknown law professor, Zephyr Teachout, who wound up, to great surprise, receiving a third of the vote. In the wake of former Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s downfall over allegations that he had physically abused four women he had been dating, Ms. Teachout announced this week that she will be running to replace him. But given the history, she is as likely to receive the backing of the W.E.P. as Noam Chomsky is of getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump. It seems a lot like a political shell company.

When it was founded, the W.E.P. was financed largely through a loan from Mr. Cuomo’s 2014 campaign. A second loan, from his current campaign, came several months ago, according to Rachel Gold, the state’s former deputy commissioner of labor and the party’s treasurer. “We don’t have the bandwidth to do fund-raising,’’ she said. “We don’t really have a website or a coffee mug.”

That might explain why we aren’t seeing W.E.P. placards championing Liuba Grechen Shirley, a young mother running for Congress on the South Shore of Long Island in an effort to unseat the longtime Republican incumbent Peter King, who a decade ago complained that “there are too many mosques in this country.” But in actuality, there is no signage because the W.E.P. isn’t endorsing her either, an especially curious omission, given that Ms. Shirley successfully requested that the Federal Election Commission grant approval for her to use campaign funds for child care, the first female candidate to petition on the matter. Despite that, the party is supporting her opponent in the Democratic primary, DuWayne Gregory, who lost to Mr. King by more than 20 percentage points two years ago.

“I see that Liuba is running a pretty remarkable campaign; I admire her,’’ Ms. Zimet told me. “But DuWayne came as a recommendation through our state committee person.” This statement has all the passion of someone telling you that she chose her husband because of the prudent manner in which he managed his 401(k). Mr. Gregory had stood by the party for a long while.