It's Heating Up

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

New York City teachers I know best, and here teachers are well above the 
citywide proportions of Democratic registration in a city which is about 3/4 
Democratic. My best guess is that this generally holds true throughout the 
state in that teachers will be a number of steps more to the left than the 
local population. Now, NYC is not New York State, and in suburban or upstate 
areas where the parties have parity or a Republican edge, you are not going 
to find a 80 to 90% Democratic registration among teachers, but something 
much more akin to a 60% edge. There are also many teaches registered as 
independent, although not as much as one might think, since primaries are 
very crucial battlegrounds in NY State. Like social work, education as a 
profession is generally attractive to those who are more liberal than the 
population as a whole. And education is also, of course, the most heavily 
unionized "industry" in this country.

I think that Max is right about the Democratic Party not being a classical 
class based party along the lines of a Social Democratic or Labor party, and 
so there may be some slippage. But since the New Deal realignment, and 
especially since the triumph of Reaganism, any notion of a liberal 
Republicanism that could compete with the Democrats for liberal-left voters 
has collapsed entirely; the only outreach to poor and working class voters 
from Republicans is to the socially conservative segments, the so-called 
Catholic ethnics and the Protestant fundamentalists. Moreover, since the New 
Deal until its demise, liberal Republicanism was clearly country club, old 
Northeastern wealth Republicanism, which is why it was named after Nelson 
Rockefeller. Its liberalism was a patrician liberal, noblese oblige concern 
for the downtrodden. 

No NYC teacher who is going to vote for Nader would ever, in their wildest 
dreams, imagine voting for Bush if Nader were not on the ballot. When I make 
telephone calls for the UFT COPE phone banks, all the members who indicate 
that they will vote for Nader are concentrated in left liberal, white, 
heavily Jewish middle strata communities, such as the Upper West Side. Nader 
is clearly taking those votes from Gore. Now in New York, that is not very 
critical, as Gore has a very healthy statewide lead. But in other states, it 
is very critical. And believe me, the minority of NYC teachers, mostly living 
in the suburbs, who would vote Bush are not about to even contemplate Nader. 
[Teachers living in communities of color are voting a straight Democratic 
ticket.] 

I wouldn't generalize very far about the union vote using teachers as the 
sample, for teachers are not very susceptible to appeals to social 
conservatism in the way other segments of the working class might be. And 
teachers are most certainly not about to led down the garden path by the NRA. 
But I still just don't get how any would think that a strong Nader vote helps 
Gore, or that a 'protest' vote would go to Bush if Nader were not an option. 
It is completely counter-intuitive to me.

<< Really, Leo.  In New York state what's your best guess on the percent of

 unionized teachers who are registered Republicans, registered Democrats or

 registered Independents/other?

 

 Tom Lehman >>

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --