With the urgency of Paul Revere galloping through the night of April 18, 1775, Independence Party Chairman-elect Frank MacKay drove furiously across the state to ensure that the heavy hand of political corruption would be resisted and overcome. His battle cry: Local control! His story: the stuff of heroes – the democratic impulse that is sweeping the state of New York through the organizing efforts of hundreds of ordinary Independence Party members. The fight that won local control for the Independence Party (the power of members from a county to democratically run their own party, including who they want to appear on their ballot line) is nothing less than extraordinary.

Under the rules adopted by the State Committee, upheld last fall by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, members of the Independence Party in each county now have the right to organize an Interim County Organization, elect officers, adopt their own rules and conduct local Party business. Previously this power had been held by the nine-member State Executive Committee. The rules changes – supported by 74% of the State Committee – effectively transferred power from the Party's Executive Committee to county organizations elected by local State Committee members.

MacKay's drive for local control was borne out of his frustrations in Suffolk County where he felt the integrity of the party's members compromised by its particular rules and corrupt leadership. "I hadn't expected to get so involved," recalls MacKay. "I began to see the corruption in the elections in 1997 while I was volunteering as a foot soldier for the party." He continues: "A now incarcerated major party official dictated who would run on the party's line. But who was he speaking for? My plate was already full managing bands but when I saw that kind of corruption ... I began to think more seriously about doing something about it."

Posing as a student writing a paper for a class, MacKay quietly contacted the commissioners of various boards of elections to find out how to organize a county committee. The last party to have been organized in Suffolk County, the Conservative party, had done so some thirty years ago. But the Conservative Party, like the Liberal Party and the Right to Life Party, in New York serve as adjuncts to the major parties, paying no regard for the wishes of their party's rank and file.

"The big fight in Suffolk was that [Jack] Essenberg (the ousted State Chairman of the Independence Party) wanted things to be run like the Liberal party where the chair dictates everything. He wanted to use the party to cut deals with the Democrats and Republicans." MacKay took it upon himself to fight for local control in Suffolk County. "We were told it was impossible to reorganize the party, especially given that there were all of five active members in the county that we knew of. But I also knew that there were plenty of people out there, on the outside, certainly more than just five, who had more to say on the matter."

MacKay proceeded to register hundreds of new people into the Independence Party."Most of the people we registered were younger people, artists, musicians, many of whom we signed up at Dr. Shay's and a couple of other nightclubs I used to own and run ... We'd call up new registrants to welcome them into IP and ask them why they joined." The hard work over the summer months in 1998 paid off. On the evening of September 15th, primary day, MacKay and his fellow activists, with the brilliant assistance of attorney Tom Whelan, had fully established a 721-person elected Suffolk County Committee. The newly established County Committee successfully gave Suffolk Independnece Party members autonomy and local grassroots democracy.

After leading the fight for local control in Suffolk County MacKay hopped back into his car to spread the word across the rest of New York. He drove up and down the state, slept at rest stops, showered in truck stops, and met with fellow members of the Independence Party in nearly each of the sixty-two state counties about the fight for local control.

At the age of thirty-three, Mackay is the youngest State Chair of any ballot status electoral party in the history of New York. The son of a retired school teacher and a registered nurse, Mackay grew up in Long Island where he went to Suffolk County Community College and later received a B.A. from Empire State College in marketing management and business administration. Upon graduation he turned his full attention to the music management business (he taught classical guitar throughout college). His longtime business partner, Bill Bogardt, also a partner in democracy, currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Suffolk County Independence Party.

Many in the party credit Mackay for bringing together Upstate and Downstate forces together into a democracy coalition that won the fight for grassroots democracy inside the party. Laureen Oliver, Independence Party founder; Cathy Stewart, Manhattan County Chair; Jeff Graham, current candidate for U.S. Senate and former Mayor of Watertown; Charlie Flynn, Erie County Chair; Brian Kaiser, Onondaga County Chair; Ben Curtis, Tompkins County Chair; and Kipp Pells, Dutchess County Chair were among those who MacKay brought into dialogue. In February of this year, with local control won, MacKay was elected Chair of the Independence Party.

"There is no one single heroic figure in the Independence Party," says MacKay. "What we've created is a completely different kind of party, a grassroots movement that repudiates the top-down politics of the two major parties. Our success comes not from me or any other particular member of the State Executive Committee but from the broad coalition that was forged between upstate and downstate and across different factions of the party ... The State Committee fought to change the rules of our party in favor of local control. They demanded it and took the fight all the way. They're the heroes."

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