TRUMKA TO ACTIVISTS: ‘WORK
LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW’
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
WASHINGTON (PAI)--Casting the 2010 election in even starker terms than other union leaders have before, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka is urging union activists to “work like there’s no tomorrow” between now and Nov. 2, “because given what we lose if we lose this election, there may not be.”
In an Aug. 3 keynote address to a conference of state and local union leaders, who came to D.C. in advance of the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting, Trumka drew sharp contrasts between the policies of the labor-backed Obama administration -- despite disappointments -- and those of the prior GOP Bush administration.
And Trumka reminded the crowd that the GOP wants to return to those Bush policies should it retake control. He called the election “a choice between the wrecking crew and the cleanup crew.”
"Let's be clear-eyed about what's going on. The Party of No” -- the GOP -- doesn't want the union vote, the working family vote. They want us all to stay at home out of frustration. They figure that if they can mobilize the Right-Wing radicals, the corporate conservatives, the Tea Party fanatics and the talk show fans, and if they can thoroughly disgust the rest of us, then they can win this election in a walk."
Political analysts across the spectrum forecast congressional Democrats could lose dozens of U.S. House seats -- thus endangering their current 255-178 lead -- and possibly enough Senate seats to lose control there, too. Democrats hold a 57-41 Senate edge, with two Democratic-leaning independents. But 37 Senate seats are up.
Conference participants were given exit poll data and current samplings that show union members now favor Democrats by 13 percentage points, unlike the almost-2-to-1 Democratic leads among unionists in 2006 and 2008.
If that ratio is unchanged on Nov. 2 and other voting patterns stay the same -- where non-unionists vote majority-Republican -- Democrats would lose 43-45 House seats and their majority, the analysis said. If unionists stay Democratic by the 64%-36% edge of the last off-year election, 2006, the Democrats maintain House control.
Losing Congress would be dire, Trumka said.
Another speaker called many of the GOP candidates “nutcases,” and “dangerous, dangerous people,” backing that with specific examples: GOP candidates stands for cutting Social Security, embracing BP despite the oil spill, repealing health insurance reform and “more outsourcing and more union-busting.”
“If you want an America with good jobs and good schools and Social Security and Medicare and the possibility that the American ream is for all of us, not just a privileged few, then you have to make it happen,” Trumka warned.
But Trumka admitted that motivating the troops -- and the voters -- would be a problem. He told conference participants that despite the disappointments, which he did not list by name, “after eight years of Bush-Cheney, we have an administration that works for us” and for workers.
That’s a message to take out into the field, while promising more administration work for workers if the Democrats retain congressional control, he added.
Delegates from the 21 battleground states spent the rest of their 1-day conference discussing mobilization and motivation strategies, designed to reach the labor movement’s turnout goal and to educate unionists on the differences between the two parties on workers’ issues, the economy, health care, education and other topics.
Deputy AFL-CIO Political Director Mike Podhorzer told reporters the fed would spend at least $53 million on its political drive this year, separate from what member unions spend. The goal is to overcome demoralization AFL-CIO staffers and union presidents report from the field. Features of the mobilization include:
* Putting a priority on worksite contacts. AFL-CIO polling shows unionists trust information from their union, presented at the worksite, more than any other information source -- and three-fourths vote for the pro-union candidate.
* Increasing the number of contacts with individual voters, in the three months between now and the election, to up to 25 per voter. The initial target is a minimum of 11 personal contacts, AFL-CIO political staffers told the Utility Workers earlier this year.
* Direct mail, both from local and international unions, and phone-banking --primarily just before Election Day -- will augment the individual contacts. Those methods will add at least 15 other contacts to the individual contacts.
* Mass mobilization of union staffers in the get-out-the-vote effort.
The results appeared in past exit polls the AFL-CIO previously released: A wide variety of voter groups -- such as gun owners, weekly churchgoers and white men -- went Republican if they were non-union, and Democratic if they were union.
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