By SHERRY HALBROOK
It takes patience and perseverance to get past all of the twists, turns, hills, potholes and dead ends on the road to a delegate seat at a national party convention.
But three of the six PEF members who made it to the Democratic ballot as Al Gore supporters on New York’s Primary Day in March are still on the road and picking up speed.
PEF Vice President Ken Brynien and members Booker Ingram and Dick Collins were each elected in their congressional districts.

Originally it appeared that Vice President Jean DeBow and member Antonia Estrada were elected in their respective districts, and that Ingram had lost in his.
However, complex rules of the Democratic Party for proportioning delegates between Gore and Bradley, who both appeared on the March 7 Democratic Primary ballot, and also for assuring gender balance, shifted the outcome.
Brynien said he expects the state Democratic Party to make final national-convention-delegate selections at its convention in May.

“The Democrats want to make sure they have balanced representation of men and women and all of the regional and ethnic groups that make up the party and American voters,” said Brynien, who chairs PEF’s Statewide Political Action Committee. “So, they are reviewing all of the potential delegates after the primaries are finished and making final delegate selections to achieve that broad representative sample.”
In addition, the party appoints some “at-large” delegates, who did not go through the ballot process. And that could open the door to other PEF members, such as Region 10 Coordinator Jennifer Faucher who hopes she might be selected to represent Arab-American women.

Faucher was a delegate to the 1992 and 1996 Democratic National Conventions.
She especially wants to attend this year because she believes PEF has a good chance of getting strong support for a plank in the party’s platform expressing support for public services and restraint for privatization.
“This time, for the first time, I think it’s finally being embraced by the Democratic state committee,” Faucher said. Faucher bases her optimism on comments made at the PEF Region 10 Leadership Conference in March by guest speaker Denise Caldwell, political director for the NYS Democratic Committee.

Caldwell said she has been working with members of the state and national party committees on platform issues and sees support building for a plank on public services, such as the one approved by the PEF Executive Board for recommendation to the Democrats.
Some years back, another PEF delegate serving on the platform committee at the national Democratic Party Convention succeeded in getting some pro-public-services language into the platform.
Brynien and Faucher said they are “very excited” about the possibility of expanding the party’s commitment to protecting public services.

PEF activist, retiree help launch Working Families Party in New York state

By MEL HYMAN
This spring, when the New York State Working Families Party held its founding convention in New York City, PEF activist Ed Wlody and PEF retiree Charlie Davis were there to help get it off on a sound footing.
For Davis, a former investigator for the state Division of Human Rights, getting involved with the Working Families Party was mostly a result of disenchantment with the party he had supported for years.
“The Democratic Party couldn’t be relied upon to effect changes,” he said.

Davis turned to the fledgling political party that seemed to appear out of nowhere in 1998, when more than 50,000 votes were cast in New York state on the Working Families ballot line for Charles Schumer in his successful bid for the US Senate.
As a result of that showing, the party gained an automatic ballot line and has continued to gain strength, according to Wlody, a resource agent for the state Office of Substance Abuse and Alcohol Services and council leader of PEF Division 326.

The Working Families Party was “organized primarily by the labor movement,” Wlody said.
“The Communications Workers of America, United Auto Workers, Amalgamated Transit Workers Union, Service Employees International Union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the (International Brotherhood of) Teamsters were all in on the party’s formation,” he said.

Like Davis, who has been politically active since his days as a shop steward and treasurer of PEF Division 329, Wlody’s political roots go back many years.
“I was the chair of a local Labor Party chapter on Long Island,” Wlody said. But “it wasn’t running candidates anywhere in the state, and it wasn’t living up to its potential.
“I read an article in The New York Times about the Working Families Party running candidates for governor and lieutenant governor (in 1998), and ended up being one of the people in charge of their petition drive on Staten Island,” he said.

After its successful debut, Wlody said he changed his political enrollment to the Working Families Party. “I hope to eventually be appointed to a position in the party,” he said.
Even though the Working Families Party isn’t a major player on the state political scene yet, Wlody couldn’t be more optimistic about its prospects.
After its relatively strong showing in ’98, the party pulled in more than 100,000 votes in 1999 for candidates running on its line in local elections.
“This year, we hope to get as many as 200,000 votes for US Senate candidate Hillary Clinton, whom we’ve already endorsed,” he said. “In 2002, which is a gubernatorial year, I strongly believe we can get enough votes to become the third largest party in the state.”

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