The No New Tax Party is a new party local to Rotterdam and Schenectady Counties in New York State.  The party is running four candidates in elections on November 3.  One of them is Michael O’Connor, who also won the Republican primary on September 15 (New York allows candidates to run on more than one parties’ ballot line, a practice known as fusion).  He said that he views his Republican victory as more of a way to give the No New Tax Party credibility than to propel himself to victory.  In a blog post, he recounts the campaign so far (read the full thing here):

Our third party involvement in this election has already impacted policy and actions of the other candidates. The current administration originally sought to unilaterally impose a new town-wide tax district. The No New Tax Party candidates were the only ones to take an early position against it and publicly oppose it. Our outspokenness contributed to sending the issue to a future public referendum to decide the matter. The No New Tax Party candidates advocate a 0% tax levy increase for the next 2 years. That entire notion was originally dismissed by the current administration that said that approach was both impossible and irresponsible, yet they eventually followed that with a tentative budget proposal that yields no tax increase. (Isn’t it funny how it suddenly becomes possible in an election year?) Our other opposition adopted a campaign flyer banner of the Tax Cut Team. It seems like the major parties want to be more like us all of a sudden. That tells me we’ve been listening to the voters better than they have because we were there first and we were there early. Win or lose, we’ve definitely been successful in shaping the discussion. But we were never in it to simply have influence on the dialogue. We’ve always been in it to win and affect the change people want. In 3 weeks, we’ll find out.

H/T to d.eris.