Fusion Party is a name for multiple political parties in United States history and more recently a Federal political party established in Australia. The different parties that used the name don't share any particular political positions; instead, confederations of people from disparate political backgrounds united around a common cause individual to their situation—often opposition to a common enemy—and used the name Fusion Party to reflect the aggregate nature of their new party.
The City Fusion Party in New York City was the vehicle that Republican Fiorello La Guardia used to defeat the Democrats of Tammany Hall and be elected mayor of New York in 1933, and reelected in 1937 and 1941. [1] [2] It formed part of the New Deal coalition and worked closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who provided the federal patronage.
The Fusion Party was the original name of the Republican Party in the state of Ohio. In 1854, anti-slavery parties were forming in many northern states in opposition to the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854. While many of these state parties adopted the name "Republican", the Ohio convention adopted the name "Fusionist" or "Fusion Party", which they felt more accurately described the fusion of persons from a variety of political backgrounds, including members of the Free Soil Party, the Conscience Whig Party, and the Know-Nothing Party along with members of the Democratic Party who were opposed to slavery.
Similarly, in Indiana, the Know-Nothings were not strong enough to run candidates on their own, and so combined with Republicans and other interest groups to run candidates on the Fusion or People's Party tickets in opposition to the Anti-Nebraska movement. [3] [4]
In South Dakota, the Fusion Party was a short-lived political party that existed in the late 19th and early 20th century. The party was formed in 1896 from an alliance of Democrats, Free Silver Republicans, and Populists who were opposed to the platform of the state Republican Party. [5] A total of 56 Fusion Party representatives were elected to the state legislature during its brief existence. [6] In addition, Senator Richard F. Pettigrew, who served from 1889–1901, was the Fusion Party candidate for Senate in 1900, having left the Republican Party to join the Silver Republicans in 1896. [7] South Dakota Governor Andrew E. Lee was also an elected to his second term as a Fusionist. [8]
In the very early 20th century, a coalition of Nevada Democrats and Silverites called themselves the Fusion Party upon the insistence of Francis G. Newlands, who wanted to emphasize the need for fusion between the two groups if he wanted to hope for victory in the 1902 election. Fusion clubs were established in a number of counties throughout Nevada, and, despite a few temporary setbacks, a successful fusion of the two parties in the state did occur, and Newlands was elected Senator. [9]
Established in January 2022, the Fusion Party [10] is an amalgamation of five political parties. The Climate Change Justice Party, Pirate Party, Science Party, Secular Party of Australia, and Vote Planet. The merger was initiated by a change in the Australian Electrical Commission legislative change [11] to require a minimum of 1500 active members. Concerned that each of the five parties would not be able to meet the minimum criteria, they joined together under the Fusion Party.
The 1852 United States presidential election was the 17th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1852. Democrat Franklin Pierce defeated Whig nominee General Winfield Scott. A third party candidate from the Free Soil party, John P. Hale, also ran and came in third place, but got no electoral votes.
The 1856 United States presidential election was the 18th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 1856. In a three-way election, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican nominee John C. Frémont and Know Nothing nominee Millard Fillmore. The main issue was the expansion of slavery as facilitated by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Buchanan defeated President Franklin Pierce at the 1856 Democratic National Convention for the nomination. Pierce had become widely unpopular in the North because of his support for the pro-slavery faction in the ongoing civil war in territorial Kansas, and Buchanan, a former Secretary of State, had avoided the divisive debates over the Kansas–Nebraska Act by being in Europe as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The 1892 United States presidential election was the 27th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1892. In the fourth rematch in American history, the Democratic nominee, former president Grover Cleveland, defeated the Republican incumbent, President Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland's victory made him the first and, to date, the only person in American history to be elected to a non-consecutive second presidential term. It was also the first of two occasions that incumbents were defeated in consecutive elections—the second being Gerald Ford's loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976, followed by Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The 1896 United States presidential election was the 28th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1896. Former Governor William McKinley, the Republican nominee, defeated former Representative William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee. The 1896 campaign, which took place during an economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, was a political realignment that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System.
The 1908 United States presidential election was the 31st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1908. Republican Party nominee William Howard Taft defeated three-time Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan.
The People's Party, also known as the Populist Party or simply the Populists, was an agrarian populist political party in the United States in the late 19th century. The Populist Party emerged in the early 1890s as an important force in the Southern and Western United States, but declined rapidly after the 1896 United States presidential election in which most of its natural constituency was absorbed by the Bryan wing of the Democratic Party. A rump faction of the party continued to operate into the first decade of the 20th century, but never matched the popularity of the party in the early 1890s.
The Free Soil Party was a political party in the United States from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was focused on opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States.
Political party strength in U.S. states is the level of representation of the various political parties in the United States in each statewide elective office providing legislators to the state and to the U.S. Congress and electing the executives at the state and national level.
The Anti-Nebraska movement was a political alignment in the United States formed in opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 and to its repeal of the Missouri Compromise provision forbidding slavery in U.S. territories north of latitude 36° 30' N. At the time, the name "Nebraska" could loosely refer to areas west of the Missouri River. The Republican Party grew out of the Anti-Nebraska movement.
The 1854–55 United States House of Representatives elections were held in 31 states for all 234 seats between August 4, 1854, and November 6, 1855, during President Franklin Pierce's term. Each state legislature separately set a date to elect representatives to the House of Representatives before the 34th Congress convened its first session on December 3, 1855.
John W. Dawson was Governor of Utah Territory in 1861.
The Opposition Party was a third party in the South in the years just before the American Civil War.
The Know Nothings were a nativist political movement in the United States in the 1850s, officially known as the Native American Party before 1855, and afterwards simply the American Party. Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its colloquial name.
The following table indicates the party of elected officials in the U.S. state of Nevada:
This is the electoral history of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln served one term in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois (1847–1849). He later served as the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865).
The Opposition Party was a party identification under which Northern anti-slavery politicians, formerly members of the Democratic and the Whig Parties, briefly ran in the 1850s in response to the expansion of slavery into the new territories. It was one of the movements that arose from the political chaos in the decade before the American Civil War in the wake of the Compromise of 1850. The movement had arisen before and was quickly subsumed by the coalescence of the Republican Party in 1856.
In the 1856 Chicago mayoral election, Thomas Dyer defeated former mayor Francis Cornwall Sherman. The race was shaped by the divisive national political debate surrounding the issue of slavery, particularly debate surrounding the controversial Kansas–Nebraska Act, and the election was treated by many as a referendum on it. Dyer vocally supported the act, while Sherman stood in opposition to it.
The 1854 Massachusetts gubernatorial election was held on November 15. American Party candidate Henry J. Gardner was elected to his first term as governor, defeating incumbent Whig Governor Emory Washburn.
From December 3, 1855, to February 2, 1856, the incoming House of Representatives held an election for speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. After one hundred and thirty-two inconclusive ballots, Nathaniel Prentiss Banks of Massachusetts was elected over William Aiken Jr. of South Carolina pursuant to a temporary rule permitting a candidate to be elected with a plurality of the vote. The election was dominated by debate over slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and contemporary reaction recognized Banks's victory as the first "Northern victory" in the events leading to the American Civil War.
In Indiana as elsewhere there was a movement for a Fusion or People's party. The Know Nothings, perhaps the strongest of all the elements of the opposition but not strong enough to run a ticket of their own, determined to act with the Fusionists, to control the whole movement and to direct it in their own interests
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