The attached article notes that the AFL-CIO learned that its massive 1996 buy of TV commercials is the wrong way to spend its political dollars. Instead, it plans to spend $40 million on grassroots mobilization, voter registration and door knocking. Part of the change stems from the defeat of the anti-union Prop 226 in California in 1998 where money spent at the grassroots turned polls showing certain passage into a rousing defeat of the measure.
Folks will of course bemoan the fact that the spending will be going to help Democrats, but even you should be happy it's going into one-on-one mobilization and voter registration, which encourages active participation and the kind of grassroots activity that encourages more "talk back" to union leaders, especially compared to passive TV ads.
It would be interesting to see how these plans intersect with the reorganization of the CLC program. Is this program going to create its own structures or work through reconstituted CLCs?
--Nathan Newman ---------
October 11, 1999 AFL-CIO Shifting Political Focus By The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The slide-show presentation for AFL-CIO state directors darkly dubbed it ``the Trifecta that would dust off the 'Contract With America''' -- Republican George W. Bush in the White House, Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Trying to spoil this GOP dream for 2000, the 13-million-member labor federation will spend about $40 million on voter education and a grass-roots mobilization bearing little resemblance to its $35 million ad campaign in 1996, which many AFL-CIO officials now concede was a mistake.
``Our biggest resources are people and power,'' federation President John Sweeney said in an interview as some 1,000 union activists gathered for the biennial AFL-CIO convention opening today.
The new focus is on mobilization -- leafleting, voter registration, issues education, phone banks and door-to-door campaigning. Underlying it are the problems of 1996, a challenge to use of union dues in politics, the wide popularity of Bush and a belief that a GOP White House and Congress would be disastrous for workers.
Hence the slide show, in which AFL-CIO officials claim that Republicans want to ``gut'' workplace safety regulations, the right to collective bargaining and more.
In 1996, Republicans filed a federal complaint accusing ``big labor bosses'' of colluding with the Democratic Party and trying to buy control of Congress with their TV ads against GOP House incumbents. Democrats lost most of the targeted races.
Union leaders don't deny their Democratic sympathies, although Washington state federation president Rick Bender noted his group recently named GOP state Rep. Tom Campbell ``Legislator of the Year.''
``It sends a message to Democrats that they can't take us for granted. It tells Republicans if they support our issues, we'll support them,'' Bender said.
The 1996 campaign left one lasting lesson. ``We paid a big price for giving Republicans the opportunity to attack us as big labor union bosses with a silver platter,'' said Gerry Shea, governmental affairs assistant to Sweeney.
``Now we know we can't win that game,'' Shea added, referring to television. ``We need to de-emphasize that kind of media.''
Republicans had retaliated with initiatives requiring unions to get permission from individual members before using dues money for political activities. In California, this took the form of a ballot measure, Proposition 226.
It was the defeat of 226 last year that gave labor an even more instructive lesson for the 2000 election, said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Instead of a massive TV campaign, ``we did so much better spending our money on grass-roots mobilizing,'' McEntee said. ``We had 25,000 walking the streets, walking the barrios. We started 70-30 (percent) behind, then waltzed in to kill the thing.''
Several AFL-CIO officials said focus groups validated an aggressive issues-education strategy as the only way to beat Bush, the Texas governor and GOP presidential front-runner.
``The focus groups start off where they think George Bush is a good candidate and would make a good president,'' said McEntee. ``When you unveil and unfold his record at these focus groups it's only like 25 minutes and they go, whoop! I mean, they just move to the other side.''
Stewart Acuff of the Atlanta Labor Council already plans to make the election a regular topic of union meetings and dispatch hundreds of volunteers to hand out leaflets at shopping malls and churches starting next September. ``We need to talk to our people on the shop floor, in the workplaces,'' he said.
Unions are better equipped to battle their foes on this more manpower-intensive front than in the crowded TV ad game, where they risk being drowned out.
``Unless we're willing to saturate the airwaves, which we could never afford to do, we can't compete on that level -- and they can't compete with us and the rank-and-file that we have,'' said Bender.
On top of whatever political activity an individual union plans, each affiliated union is contributing $2 per member between this year and next for the AFL-CIO's political drive, said McEntee, who chairs the federation's political committee.
``We'll spend more dollars in the year 2000 election than we've ever spent,'' he said.
But, he added: ``Even though we'll have $40 million, we will still be outspent by the right-wing, conservative and business forces in this country probably by 16 to 1. They kill us with all that money.''