"We have a chance to do both," Steve Rosenthal, director of the AFL-CIO Political Department, told reporters during an impromptu press briefing.

While admitting that the polls show Bush with a lead in what he called the "battleground states of the Midwest," Rosenthal said the polls tell only half the story because they fail to factor in the vote of union households.

"Union members provided 23 percent of the presidential vote last time and we are working to increase that to 25 percent this year. If we succeed, Al Gore will win," Rosenthal said, inviting reporters to view the numbers in his computer.

"If we can increase union turnout in Michigan to 40 percent of the total vote and if they vote this year as they did in 1996, then Gore wins. If we can do the same in Ohio, Gore wins there, too. And we did both in 1996."

By any measure, this Labor 2000 campaign is much more aggressive than a similar campaign during 1996. The effort began much earlier with the assignment of 500 full-time coordinators on the ground by Labor Day, compared with only 400 at the height of Labor 96. "We are building on what we had in ‘96 and ‘98 when we said we were ‘building to win, building to last,’" Rosenthal explained.

Major emphasis of Labor 2000 is focused on races in 71 congressional districts in 25 states. In addition to the full-time staff, some 5,000 rank-and-file coordinators have been organized in these districts to carry out the grass-roots activity necessary to win this year’s electoral wars. Rosenthal said that when workers receive a flyer from their union – and especially when it comes during a work site distribution – 71 percent of them vote for the endorsed candidate.

"The trouble is," he added, "only 11 percent of union members got leaflets last time. We expect to change that and those grass-roots committees are key to that effort." As part of this year’s election activity, the AFL-CIO has developed a sophisticated web site that allows workers to download custom-tailored flyers for local congressional races.

"The day after Bush announced that Cheney would be his vice president, we had a leaflet exposing his record in the system with distributions arranged in places all across the country," Rosenthal said. "That’s how effective it is and can be."

Rosenthal’s confidence was shared by other executive council members. Bill Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, said his organization, in coalition with others, had spent a lot of effort registering African-American voters in 29 congressional districts where their vote could determine the outcome.

Lucy said Bush’s "outreach" to the African-American community was doomed.

"We are going to remember the years of Reagan-Bush and compare that with the last seven-and-a-half when we go vote. That won’t help [George W.]."

Lucy said that although many African Americans see Ralph Nader as a good man committed to his cause, he didn’t think that Nader would draw many African-American votes. "It might be different," he said, if the race were between candidates with little difference between them. "But that’s not the situation this year where there are substantial differences between Gore and Bush."