POLITICAL REPLAY
A stop-action review of some of the ideas that touched voters this campaign season

As Campaign 2000 turns into Decision 2000, we will finish the last political season of a passing millennium. Yet some of the ideas raised this year will surely get kicked around through much of the next century. Who's waging old-style campaigns in a high-tech era? How hard should it be for third parties to make it into the lineup? What's the proper role of religion in politics? For coverage of the legislative races, see our September issue. See October for our coverage of congressional and judicial races, and for an assessment of the rise of the Latino voter and the value of polling, television advertising and candidate debates

POLITICS OLD-STYLE
Unions still wage face-to-face campaigns
by Jennifer Davis

Dan Stefanski predicted the trash would pile up in Chicago on Election Day, mostly because about half of that city's garbage workers would take the day off to ring door bells and get out the vote.

Meanwhile, he expected to show up at 5 a.m. at some candidate's headquarters, ready and willing to work. "I'll bring 30, 40, 50 guys with me," he estimated last September. "'Here we are.' Then we'll run down and get voters out or do whatever they need." Stefanski is secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 726 in Chicago, which boasts 5,000 members. Those members work for the city, the county or the state, so they, more than other union members, feel the impact of their election efforts. "By their votes, they can elect their bosses. That's power," Stefanski said.

It's a power organized labor had begun to take for granted, but that they've now reclaimed.

"The Newt Gingrich revolution of 1994 was a wake-up call for a lot of unions," says Robin Rich of United Steel Workers of America District 7, which encompasses Illinois and Indiana. There are about 30,000 active Illinois members in her union.

By the "Newt Gingrich revolution" she's referring to the Republican sweep that enabled that party to win

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control of Congress for the first time since 1952. Just over 10 million union members voted that year — about half as many as voted in 1992. But in 1996, after two years of GOP (often anti-union) control, organized labor woke up. Not only did twice as many union members vote — 22 million — but that number represents more than half of the additional votes cast nationwide in that election, according to the AFL-CIO.

In other words, unions learned not to take for granted their best asset — hundreds of thousands of members nationwide who can vote and serve as campaign volunteers. Indeed, in an era when campaigns are dominated by mass market television advertising, unions are, along with the surviving remnants of the Chicago Democratic Machine, a last bastion of large-scale, old-fashioned face-to-face campaigning.

House Speaker Michael Madigan, who came up in Chicago politics, knows the value of a personal message. As the state Democratic Party chairman, he's worked closely with unions, reminding their members why they should be out there together knocking on doors and asking for votes.

"We in Illinois have had some experience with an all-Republican government," Madigan told about 200 party faithful at a late-September Democratic fundraiser in the East Peoria Carpenters Local 183 union hall, referring to the election of 1994. "For the sake of good memory, let's do a quick review of what they did in Illinois because it tells us the type of things [Republicans] will do in Washington if they take control."

Madigan then ticked off a list of wounds inflicted as he sees them, including attempts to reduce worker's compensation. "For a few months in Illinois, we actually had eavesdropping at the job site. That was the law in Illinois." He was purposefully spreading fear, motivating and contagious terror, "In politics, the party wins that gets its people out to vote."

And unions have been working to do just that. "We've been unbelievably successful," says Rich. "We continually amaze ourselves. We have members who are active who never were before. That's real. We have a whole new layer of grass roots."

Kim Austin is one convert. "I was a single mom on welfare and then I finally got a good job" as a welder at Butler Manufacturing in Galesburg, making prefabricated buildings. But four years ago, on a whim, she went to a rally at the Indy 500 to protest, strangely enough, Firestone tires. Standing in that sea of 5,000-some steelworkers, Austin felt powerful. "All of a sudden, my union was more interesting to me."

Political action committee contributions to federal candidates between January 1,1999 and June 30,2000     Corporate:....................................$56,548,140     Labor:..........................................$33,083,162     Other:...........................................$68,205,928     Total:............................................$157,837,230 These nationwide figures reflect direct contributions to all candidates/or president, the U.S. Senate and the US. House. SOURCE: Federal Election Commission

This election, Austin went on temporary leave from her job so she could concentrate full-time on organizing union election efforts in the 17th Congressional District, where longtime incumbent Rep. Lane Evans, a liberal Rock Island Democrat with strong labor ties, faced his third challenge from Quincy Republican Mark Baker. Evans has a history of supporting workers' rights, union officials say.

Rather than walk precincts, Austin spent much of her time trying to teach other unions about the steel-workers' successful Rapid Response program, which enables unions to tap a large base of volunteers at a moment's notice. That involves a lot of faxing and conference calls, explains Rich.

"The strategy, the hard work, that's all from 40 years ago," says Illinois AFL-CIO President Margaret Blackshere. "The literature improves. The technology changes."

Unions learned not to take for granted their best asset — hundreds of thousands of members nationwide who can vote and serve as campaign volunteers.

Corporations have deeper pockets, certainly. Even at that, unions aren't far behind. In 1997-98, unions made up 10 of the top 20 contributors nationwide, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance research group. Heading the list of union contributors was the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which nationwide divvied up $3.9 million, 97 percent of which went to Democrats.

But foot soldiers remain organized labor's biggest contribution to any campaign battle. "We can elect every single friend we want to. Remember that," says AFL-CIO member Mike McNally of Peoria.

Of the AFL-CIO's 985,000 Illinois members, Blackshere guesses only about 10 percent actively help out with campaigns. Still, that's close to 100,000 election workers.

The low participation rate is troubling, but illustrates that unions have an untapped army. Blackshere recalls a Chicago electricians union, IBEW Local 134, where, in the early '90s when technology allowed them to match up their membership with the voters list, officials discovered only 46 percent of their members were even registered.

"In less than 10 years, they've literally doubled that number. They now have 92 percent of their members registered," she says. "That one local has 18,000 members, but that's really about 50,000 or 60,000 when you factor in retirees and family.

That's a lot of clout, even in the city of Chicago.

Jennifer Davis, a political writer at the Peoria Journal Star, is a former Statehouse bureau chief for Illinois Issues.

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