AFL-CIO launches grassroots election work

By Fred Gaboury

NEW ORLEANS, La. - Spearheaded by 1,600 union coordinators in 35 states, the AFL-CIO has launched its most massive election year effort ever aimed at breaking the right-wing stranglehold on the U.S. House and Senate.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told a news briefing, here, that the labor movement is committing four times as many grassroots organizers to this years election effort as it did in 1998 and will spend $40 million in 71 key congressional districts to end Republican control of the House. The goal is to mobilize an army of union election workers in targeted precincts across the nation.

"We are now in the era of people-powered politics and union families are at the heart of that power," he said, adding that the 2000 elections were at the top of the agenda of the Feb. 15-17 meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council here.

"We have moved into a new period where money is no longer the most powerful ingredient in elections," Sweeney told reporters during a press briefing outlining the federation's "People Powered Politics: The AFL-CIO Labor 2000 Program."

Although the AFL-CIO will concentrate its electoral efforts in 71 congressional districts in an effort to send a "worker-friendly" majority to Congress and prevent a right-wing takeover of the White House, a key AFL-CIO goal is to field 2,000 members of union families as candidates in this year's elections.

Sweeney called this year's elections an opportunity to solidify the successes won in the elections of 1996 and 1998, which left the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his "Contract on America" but a dim footnote in the history of the decade of the 1990s.

He called "2,000 in 2000" the broadest and most intensive program ever adopted by the 13-million-member labor organization. In part spurred by the early primary elections in key states, the AFL-CIO began putting its electoral infrastructure in place in early February with kick-off meetings in 35 states.

Sweeney called results in Iowa, where union families provided a third of Vice President Al Gore's caucus votes, and in New Hampshire, where they provided 28 percent of his primary election votes, proof that the strategy is working.

Gerald McEntee, chair of the AFL-CIO political action committee, said the fundamental components of this year's electoral activity ranged from conducting an issue survey this spring to voter registration and issue advocacy this summer, with a massive get-out-the-vote campaign in November.

McEntee told reporters that business groups had also learned that money isn't everything in elections. "But that won't stop them from outspending us 11 or 12 or 15 to one," he said.

He quoted David Hanson, political director of the National Senatorial Committee, who said the group had a bottomless source of funds and can raise as much money as it can spend. The Chamber of Commerce brags that it will send at least $100,00 in each of what it calls "targeted races."

McIntee said the key to victory lies in the ability to broaden the coalition of the labor movement and the African American and Latino communities that provided the winning margin in the last two election campaigns.

According to AFL-CIO Political Action Director Steve Rosenthal , 420 of the 626 union members who ran for public office in 1998 were elected. The process continued in 1999 with 473 union members running for public office, resulting in:

46 union members elected to public office in Connecticut.

Indiana voters electing 30 members of 25 unions to public office.

A Teamster becoming mayor of the largest city in New Hampshire.

Eight Massachusetts union members in elected to city councils and school boards.

New Jersey voters electing 24 union members to city councils, county boards and boards of aldermen.

Forty-eight union members winning public office in New York.

Twenty-one of 30 union candidates winning election to public offices in Cleveland, Ohio and an African-American member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists elected mayor of Cincinnati.

Voters in Pennsylvania, electing four union members elected to the Allegheny County Council, bringing the total of union members holding public office in that state to 45.

Rosenthal said that at least 1,900 union members holding elected office across the country with at least one union member holding public office in all 50 states.

"That's not many, when you consider that there are more than a half-million elected officials in the United Sates," Rosenthal said. "But it's a start."