special election for the Connecticut State Senate, became the first candidate in the nation to win a state legislative office running solely as a nominee for the Working Families Party. On May 5, 2015, Diana Richardson won a special election for a seat in the New York State Assembly, running only on the Working Families ticket. NY WFP ran 111 candidates in 2015, winning 71 local offices. In December 2015, the WFP endorsed Bernie Sanders in his 2016 campaign for U.S. president; this was the WFP's first national endorsement. In 2016, after Hillary Clinton became the Democratic nominee, the WFP endorsed her for president. 2016 In the fall of 2015, the Working Families Party conducted a combined membership-drive and open poll among its enrolled members on whom to endorse for President in 2016; the result being Bernie Sanders. Official numbers were not disclosed but party spokesman and co-founder Dan Cantor said the results were "overwhelmingly" in favor of Sanders, with some sources stating it was an 87 to 12 to 1 percent vote with Sanders over Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley respectively. The South Carolina Working Families Party cross- endorsed Democratic nominee Dimitri Cherry in his effort to unseat incumbent Congressman Mark Sanford in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District; Cherry also garnered the endorsement of South Carolina's Green Party but lost to Sanford in the general election. 2017 In 2017, Joshua M. Hall, running in an April 2017 special election for the Connecticut House of Representatives, became the second candidate in the nation to win a state legislative office running solely as a nominee for the Working Families Party. On October 3, 2017, a runoff election for Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, resulted in the election of Randall Woodfin, who had been backed by the Working Families Party. 2018 In April 2018 an endorsement of Cynthia Nixon over incumbent Andrew Cuomo in Cuomo's bid for a third term as New York governor caused a schism in the party in which labor unions including New York's biggest union Service Employees International Union and Communications Workers of America to indicate they would not support the party in the election. The withdrawal was believed would significantly hurt the party's finances which in 2018 was $1.7 million and statewide staff of about 15 people. The battle received considerable attention since there were concerns that Nixon might have drained enough votes from Cuomo in the general