Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 11:20:53 -0800 (PST) From: Adam Glickman <aglickman at igc.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk Sender: owner-np-build at igc.apc.org Subject: New York/Working Families Party Election Results To: np-build at igc.org X-Sender: aglickman at pop.igc.org
This is a combined message to New Party and some other relevant lists about the election in New York. A report on the NP's Fall elections outside New York will follow next week (7 for 7 in Little Rock!!). -------------------------------------------------
TO: Friends and Supporters of the Working Families Party, the New Party, ACORN, Citizen Action, the labor movement, consumers, farmers, seniors.... FR: Daniel Cantor
RE: THE RESULTS IN NEW YORK
It looks like the Working Families Party will end up just shy of 46,000 votes, or maybe a shade over (absentees get counted next week), but barring a miracle we won't make it across the 50,000 vote threshold.
Obviously it's disappointing. A lot of us were pretty crushed on Tuesday night. But whether or not it's a fatal disappointment is up to us.
Here's why. The difference between being "qualified" and not being qualified is as much psychological as anything else. Establishing a ballot line party in New York would have been a big morale boost. Plus -- and this is perhaps its greatest value -- it provides a focal point for organization-building. It helps supporters and leaders feel like they have a political home, which has all sorts of benefits in terms of capturing energy, developing relationships, training staff, and raising money.
But it's not a magic bullet. Regardless of whether you have a ballot line, the actual work required to build political power is identical. With OR without the line, the WFP has to identify its target races for 2000 and 2001; develop and publicize its platform; build Organizing Committees in the target districts; recruit candidates pledged to its program; build relationships with reporters; raise money; run signature issue campaigns to keep its name in the news; take the key Organizing Committee activists off for weekend workshops on precinct networks, volunteer coordination, policy debates and the like; publish interesting and unusual policy pieces; make sure the data base is working properly; find additional staff organizers; have some fun.
Also, not getting 50,000 votes means we don't have a "permanent" or automatic line for the next 4 years. But we can still petition our way on in the target races. So in any given race we can run an independent WFP candidate or a fusion WFP-Democrat or WFP-Greens or whatever.
I'm not trying to sugar coat the outcome. Victory is better than defeat. It would have been far preferable to have won outright, but it's important to not lose sight of both the political and arithmetic achievements. The difference between 46,000 and 50,000 may be real, but it should not be exaggerated. In a money- and media-drenched age, we proved that we have a base, and now we have to prove that we don't fold at the first sign of adversity.
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Now, I also thought people might be interested in an analysis of how we got what we did get, and why we didn't make it all the way.
The central factors in our failure to get 50,000 votes are as follows:
1) BALLOT PLACEMENT WAS UNBELIEVABLY BAD. You had to not just want to vote WFP, you had to know HOW. We had some totally non-scientific (but definitely real) exit polling in this regard -- not infrequently, a voter leaving would say to one our poll workers that "I wanted to vote for you but couldn't find it." So we lost the votes of our less-well informed supporters, and (as we knew all along) picked up ZERO votes of people just wandering around the ballot. All of this was brought home hard at the Brooklyn poll I was assigned to when the very nice guy who stood next to me for hours for a judicial candidate said (and I quote), "Listen, I'm really sorry. I didn't know about you guys when I voted this morning, and I really would have voted for you..." I don't know which one of us was going to cry first.
2) THIS WAS A PURELY TACTICAL VOTE, AND TACTICAL VOTES ARE TOUGH TO GET. It means that people have to be able to think not just about this election, but about future elections. That's a complicated conversation, and when we had it we converted people one-by-one. But we ran out of time and simply didn't have it with enough people. The "Committee of 1000" chain-letter approach almost overcame this obstacle, and with another week we would have done it, so that's a very positive lesson.
3) NO VISIBLE LEADER OR CANDIDATE. We did this entirely through on-the-ground work, and had no sustained press coverage. One notes that the biggest campaign events of the entire Gubernatorial in terms of numbers of people attending were all WFP (700 at the Haitian Church, 750 at the union-ACORN, hundreds at the Latino Caravan, 300 at CWA, etc.), but we received zero television and almost no print coverage. The relevant contrast is to the Greens, who got substantial and repeated media exposure through the "Grampa" gimmick. There's no question that half the Greens votes would have been ours (but of course they could say the same about us).
4) THE RACE WAS A BLOW-OUT. So to the extent that we were shifting votes from Vallone's Democratic column to ours, we were swimming in a MUCH shallower-than-normal pool. Also, in such a blowout, the "we're not spoilers" argument loses its power. It was easy for people who wanted to cast a "protest" vote, AND who hadn't heard of us, to do so by voting for the Greens. A lot did so -- the Greens are at 48,000-plus, and should get enough from the absentees to get to 50,000. If we had been able to run Albanese or Dinkins (meaning had Vallone lost the Democratic Primary), this would have been much easier.
5) WE DIDN'T WORK HARD ENOUGH, THOUGH OF COURSE EVERYONE BASICALLY KILLED THEMSELVES. You can do one of those "1 more vote per Election District" deals, and it's not hard to identify lots of small things that might have gotten us the rest of the way there: better training of election day workers, one more mailing to a targeted list, two more nights of phone banking, more internal union mobilization, whatever.
45,000-plus votes leaves us with our heads high (if our backs slightly bowed). There's a Steering Committee meeting at the end of next week, so there should be some clarity on where we go from here soon.
Thanks for helping us as much as you did. It made a real difference.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
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On a bureaucratic note, this message is being sent to everyone in New York who indicated any interest at all in the WFP, or who we were told might be interested, as well as to NP supporters across the nation.
For the New Yorkers, if you don't want to receive any future messages, please tell us so in a return note. Also, we're very curious about the political efficiency of e-mail. So if you could take a minute to fill out the survey below, we'd be extremely grateful.
1. First of all, did you find it useful and/or interesting to receive WFP information via e-mail?
Yes No
2. Had you heard about the WFP prior to receiving the e-mail?
Yes No
3. If so, how?
mail phone friend union other (please elaborate)
4. Did the messages help persuade you to vote on our line?
Yes No
5. Did you tell anyone else about the WFP, or forward the message on?
Yes, verbally Yes, electronically No
6. The messages were a good idea, but could have been improved by:
a. shortening b. lengthening c. other (please describe)
Many thanks! Adam Glickman, Communications Director aglickman at igc.org 88 3rd Avenue, Suite 313 Brooklyn, NY 11217