New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has done a great job representing his real constituents — the finance, real-estate, and fossil-fuel industries. The rest of us haven’t had the same luck: workers in New York have seen cutbacks in hospitals and classrooms and promises of more hardship to come.

I agreed to be the Green Party’s 2014 candidate for lieutenant governor of New York because I deeply believe we need our own political representation.

Everything about this election points to widespread dissatisfaction with a rightward-moving Democratic Party. Democratic voters stayed home. The turnout was a record low in New York State, with Cuomo receiving nearly a million fewer votes than he did in 2010. The Working Families Party (WFP) deployed all their resources to maintain their ballot line, but their campaign literature didn’t mention their candidate for governor: Cuomo. Only the Green Party significantly increased their vote.