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Everybody figured it would be Hillary.
Last year at this time, the pundits, the pollsters, the politicians and the television talking heads all placed U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton at the head of the pack for the Democratic presidential nomination. And with the polls continually saddling Republican President George W. Bush with some of the lowest approval ratings of any president in history and no Democratic candidate showing signs of posing a threat, there was lots of talk about a second Clinton administration.
Then a young U.S. senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, entered the spotlight and surprised everyone — Clinton included — with a January victory in the Iowa Democrat caucus. Five months and 54 primaries later, the longest Democratic primary in party history, Obama won enough delegates to snare the nomination.
Obama’s victory was embraced by the American Federation of Teachers, New York State United Teachers and UUP, which closed ranks at the urging of Clinton, who unequivocally supported Obama in a convincing speech to AFT members at the federation’s annual convention in Chicago.
“The only way we can realize the promise of (the American dream) is to elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States of America,” Clinton told convention delegates.
“Now, let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s get to work. Let’s do everything we can to make this election the watershed it deserves to be.”
With the Nov. 4 election just weeks away, thousands of union members from UUP, NYSUT, the AFT and the AFL-CIO have heeded the call. The unions have rallied their forces and launched numerous campaign efforts to reach out to members to get out and vote for union-supported candidates.
From UUPers passionately working with students to sign up new voters on SUNY campuses statewide through a “Rock the Vote” initiative, to setting up NYSUT phone banks, to wearing out shoe leather with AFT and AFL-CIO members meeting face-to-face with undecided voters in “battleground” states, union activists are aggressively working to get their message heard.
Convention delegates
“I think this is an historical moment,” said Ashok Malhotra of SUNY Oneonta, an elected Clinton delegate who attended the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver in August. “Obama has shown in the last 12 months that he can bring people together.”
And with polls showing Obama and U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in a tight race for the White House, now is no time to be complacent or to let Clinton’s primary defeat cloud what’s at stake.
“I was a Hillary Clinton delegate, but Barack Obama is my candidate now,” said Patricia Bentley of SUNY Plattsburgh, an elected Clinton delegate who was also at the DNC and posted her experiences in her blog, “Patty Does Denver” (http://pattyatdnc.
blog spot.com). “Now we need not only registered Democrats, but Independents and others to support Obama and other (union-endorsed candidates). People simply cannot think that this is a done deal.”
Reaching Out
The AFL-CIO certainly doesn’t think that. The union has mobilized its members nationwide to staff phone banks, talk to co-workers and go door-to-door to talk with union members about Obama’s promise of change. The union is hoping to reach as many as 13 million voters before Nov. 4, said Suzy Ballantyne, assistant to the president for the New York AFL-CIO.
“This year will be the most important election of our lifetime,” she said. “You never know what state will be the key state, which votes will be the magic ones that will decide who wins and who loses. That’s why you have to go out and get the vote out.”
Here in New York, where Obama holds a healthy lead in the polls, the AFL-CIO is also focusing more on key congressional and state races, she said.
UUP Treasurer Rowena Blackman-Stroud, a member of the New York AFL-CIO’s Executive Committee, worked to re-elect Democratic state
Sen. Kevin Parker in a primary contest for the 21st District Senate seat. She and members of the Brooklyn HSC Chapter worked phone banks to get the vote out to keep Parker in the state Senate.
“It is important to become involved in the political arena,” she said.
And UUPers are doing just that.
Several UUPers from SUNY Stony Brook and Stony Brook HSC staffed NYSUT phone banks at the Suffolk regional office to make calls for Assemblyman Phil Ramos (D-Central Islip) in his primary race in the 6th Assembly District. NYSUT members, along with UUPers, began operating NYSUT-sponsored phone banks for local and national candidates Sept. 2 and will do so through the election.
In Syracuse, the Upstate Medical University Chapter staged a candidate open forum Sept. 16 for the 25th Congressional District race. The chapter invited Democrat Dan Maffei and Republican Dale Sweetland to speak to union members and the public on health care and higher education.
Get Out The Vote
Getting young voters registered to vote is another way UUPers are involved.
UUP, along with NYSUT, the SUNY Student Assembly, Rock the Vote an the New York Public Interest Research Group, kicked off a nonpartisan voter registration competition among the SUNY campuses.
The month-long event, which started Sept. 5, is geared to get students registered to vote for the November election. In the 2006 mid-term election, the campaign registered more than 11,000 students to vote.
“It’s an important initiative,” said UUP President Phillip Smith. “Young voters do not realize how much clout one vote carries.”
Labor On The Move
AFT and NYSUT members do. Both organizations expect to have hundreds of people on the ground — including some UUPers — campaigning for Obama, union officials said.
AFT’s “road warriors” — union members who volunteered for the AFT-sponsored organizing events — began campaigning Sept. 3 in battleground states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. They plan on doing that right up to Election Day, AFT officials said.
“I hope that, after two very close presidential elections, we understand how important one phone conversation might be to help us turn the corner,” Bentley said.
— Michael Lisi