ONE DOORBELL AT A TIME — PEF activists Herb Hennings and Dave VanDeusen pound the pavement in Concord, NH in September to tell union members there why they should vote on November 2.
— Photo by Tim Raab
PEF activists forging new national power base
By SHERRY HALBROOK
With the November 2nd election coming up fast, PEF activists throughout New York got a hard workout in September and October as they worked to register voters and get out the vote for endorsed candidates in some of the toughest races.
Nearly every PEF region mobilized members for one or more campaigns.
“At the same time we have members and retirees working on the presidential election in neighboring swing (not dominated by one party) states, we are also building support for New York candidates in congressional and state legislative races,” said PEF Vice President and Political Action Chair Ken Brynien.
PEF President Roger Benson, Secretary-Treasurer Jane Hallum and Vice Presidents Joe Fox and Pat Baker led scores of activists and PEF staff in supporting the unprecedented political efforts.
PEF Legislative Director Brian Curran said the union is focusing its PEF convention delegates’ power this year by giving them the opportunity to call union voters in swing states from the Lake Placid convention hall in October.
MEMBER TO MEMBER — PEF Secretary-Treasurer Jane Hallum and Region 8 retiree Mary Mahoney talk to a union voter in New Hampshire in late September.
Top o’ the ballot
“We should be very proud of all of our members and retirees who are coming forward to help educate voters in swing states about the important issues at stake for all of us in the presidential race,” Benson said. “They are building a new base of political skills, contacts and respect for PEF that is putting this union on the national political map as a player for the first time.”
Baker was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, along with PEF Region 7 activist Sam Burns and Region 11 activist Booker Ingram, now a PEF retiree.
If anyone imagines political campaigning is a “walk in the park,” Hallum can set them straight.
“Mary Mahoney (a PEF Region 8 retiree) and I walked 50 blocks in 80 degree heat,” Hallum said of her campaign experience in Concord, New Hampshire on a Saturday in late September.
The summer-like weather worked against their efforts to reach out to union households in the Concord area.
“It was such a beautiful day, most people were out enjoying it. We only found people at home at a few of the houses on our list,” Hallum said, “but we left literature about the issues at every house on our list.”
PEF Executive Board Member Richard Collins of Region 9 was another one of the 46 activists on that PEF bus trip to New Hampshire. He reported finding 14 voters at home, but making many more stops to drop off election material.
Fox was also on that September trip to New Hampshire, and he worked with one of PEF’s international affiliates, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in Minnesota for two weeks in September.
“We put in 12- to 14-hour days for 14 days with no break,” said Fox, who slept on a couch every night at a friend’s house to save money.
“I led the effort to mobilize 565 union members in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to distribute 15,000 pieces of election material,” Fox said. “And I helped organize a labor picnic where Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke to a crowd of up to 20,000 people.
“The result we get depends on how much work we put in. So, I’m going back to Minnesota, which has 10 electoral votes, to work the last five days of the election,” Fox said.
“Luckily, New York is pretty much a labor state, so we have to win the Electoral College votes in the swing states. And doing that makes you really feel you are in the battle.”
Other PEF activists traveled to Pennsylvania to work, including a group of Region 1 members who traveled to Erie and Region 8 members who went to the Philadelphia area.
Two Region 8 activists — regional Political Action Chair Tom Comanzo and Greg McBride — gave up two Saturdays to campaign outside New York state, and Region 8 member Ed Lucas got home late Saturday night from a Pennsylvania campaign trip in August and jumped on another bus from Albany a few hours later to put in another long, hot day demonstrating at the Republican National Convention on Sunday in New York City.
Region 1 Political Action Chair Kevin Hintz said a PEF retiree from the Buffalo area worked with AFT for two weeks in Pittsburgh on the voter education campaign there.
And six other members, retirees and the daughter of a PEF member have been working long days for PEF’s other international affiliate, the Service Employees International Union, in the greater Philadelphia area for several months.
The four eastern counties where three of them are working make up a swing area that could tip Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes into either the Kerry or Bush column on election night.
Congressional power
While PEF is backing U.S. Senate incumbent Charles Schumer for re-election, along with many other members of the New York Congressional delegation, a couple of non-incumbents are getting extra help from PEF this year.
Hintz said Region 1 is working hard for Democrat Brian Higgins in his bid to fill a vacant seat in the 27th Congressional District that was held by Republican Jack Quinn who is retiring.
PEF is organizing phone banks and door-to-door canvassing for Higgins, and the union is writing to its members in that Buffalo-area district to tell them why they should support him.
“Brian has represented us well in the state Assembly,” Hintz said. “He scored 100 percent on our voting scorecard.”
According to Curran, who helped develop the PEF scorecard for state legislators, it scores their votes on 10 pieces of important legislation for 2003 and 2004, including the override of key budget vetoes.
“The candidates from the state Legislature who are getting the greatest support from PEF have perfect or nearly perfect scores,” Curran said.
Frank Barbaro left the state Assembly in 1997, too long ago to be measured by the 2003-04 PEF scorecard. But the Brooklyn Democrat racked up plenty of points with PEF members and other union families during his years as chair of the Assembly Labor Committee.
So, PEF Region 11 is mobilizing support for Barbaro in his bid to unseat incumbent Republican Vito Fosella in the 13th Congressional District, who has one of the worst voting records on union issues of any member of Congress.
The district includes Staten Island, which is heavily Republican. Region 11 political activist Ed Wlody and PEF retiree Charlie Davis led the union’s efforts for Barbaro in the early months, with the region putting its full muscle into the campaign in October.
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