Josh
Minimum-Wage Fight Alters Dynamics of State Politics
JACK NEWFIELD
If everything goes according to plan in Albany, the Republican-controlled state Senate will pass a law raising the minimum wage to $7.10 an hour as early as tomorrow - or the first week in August.
This will mark the culmination of a four-year crusade by the 6-year-old Working Families Party to better the living conditions of 700,000 New York State residents trapped in the lowwage world. Never before has a new political party made such an impact on statewide public policy.
If would also be a triumph for the Daily News, its editor, Martin Dunn, and reporter Heidi Evans. In the last five months, the News has published seven editorials urging a raise in the minimum wage, and a dozen stories by Ms. Evans, including a front-page feature reporting what it is like to live on $206 a week with her daughter, Alex.
This uncoordinated institutional commitment by the News and the WFP made the difference. It moved the state Senate, which had failed to vote on the minimum wage bill the last three years, after the Assembly had passed it.
Today's special session of the Legislature comes four days after a new study showed that the hourly wages of service workers fell 1.1% in June, and that take-home pay for workers is failing to keep up with inflation. The national minimum wage has been frozen at $5.15 an hour since 1997.
Twelve states have raised their minimum wage above $5.15 and have not suffered any loss of jobs.
This five-year fight for a living wage has changed the dynamics of state politics. It created a new template for change.
By planting its flag in the solid rock of ideas, and policy, the WFP has made itself the most influential third party in the state. It pointedly rejected the Liberal Party's path of patronage.
The Liberal Party is now defunct, after failing to receive 50,000 votes statewide in 2002. The Conservative Party is declining as a consequence of internal splits, and has a frayed alliance with the Republican Party over Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's decision to let the minimum wage bill come to a vote on the Senate floor.
For a month, the Conservative Party chairman, Michael Long, issued public threats to Mr. Bruno. Last Friday, when it seemed inevitable that the bill would come up today, Mr. Long withdrew his party's endorsement of Mr. Bruno, and of Stephen Kaufman, who is running on the Republican line in Guy Velella's Bronx-Westchester district.
The Conservative Party's decision to withdraw its endorsement form the GOP's Senate leader has only symbolic meaning. Mr. Bruno is unbeatable in his rural upstate district.
But this will hurt Assemblyman Kaufman, who had been promised the Conservative Party ballot line by the party's local leaders in his district. Because his district covers two counties, party rules say the vote of the longdominated statewide executive committee will supercede the decision of the local party chairmen in the Bronx and Westchester.
Mr. Kaufman has run with both Conservative and Democratic endorsements.This year he is running in a Democratic Senate primary against Assemblyman Jeff Klein, and, at the same time, as the Republican nominee.
Losing the Conservative Party line will damage Mr. Kaufman's prospects in the general election.
The right's anger at Mr. Bruno has been building for two years, over his alliance and friendship with Dennis Rivera and Local 1199/SEIU; his grudging support for a gay rights bill; his alliance with Democrat Sheldon Silver in last year's budget fight; and his apparent blessing for the minimum wage increase.
By snubbing Messrs. Bruno and Kaufman, Mr. Long has cast his lot with the fringe, and isolated himself from the Republican mainstream. Some observers suspect he has taken this divisive step because he fears an internal Conservative Party challenge from his right - from the Business for Growth PAC, and George Marlin, the 1993 Conservative Party candidate for mayor against Rudolph Giuliani.
The issue-oriented Minimum Wage Campaign that has energized the WFP, and unions like CWA and 1199 has brought to the surface this important fracture among conservatives.
The WFP conducted an authentic, old-fashioned grassroots organizing campaign on behalf of raising the minimum wage. Last Thursday night, party activists visited 5,000 homes in swing districts on this issue. The WFP invested almost all of the $220,000 it raised at a spring fund-raiser in hiring organizers.
This is the secret of the WFP's rise in New York politics. The Liberal Party died because it became a hollow shell, a patronage party without ideas or committed members. The Conservative Party has also become a lazy patronage operation.
Over the weekend, Mark McDonald, the Conservative Party chairman of Rensselear Country (Mr. Bruno's home district) suggested Mike Long step down as head of the Conservative Party.
A political party and a newspaper helped make a living wage irresistible. Mike Long then chose to draw a line in the sand against every honorable tradition in this city's history - economic opportunity, fair wages, unions, new immigrants, a chance to rise from humble origins, through sweat and hard work.
Now the WFP has emerged as a new force in state politics, the Conservative Party has marginalized itself, and 700,000 working stiffs will have a slightly better life.
To the egalitarians, this is the equivalent of a triple play.