[lbo-talk] a teacher in trouble, reply to Nathan

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Mar 5 10:59:49 PST 2006


Nathan Newman wrote:


>So I'm hardly alone in seeing it as one of the most significant victories
>for progressives in 2005. That you think the story is "obscure" reflects
>how detached LBO is from social movements with any base in real politics.
>Go to any meeting of groups doing state politics and TABOR is one of the
>number one topics of discussion.
>
>See other coverage as well:
>http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1297115
>http://www.oraflcio.unions-america.com/2005_WU/7-44.htm
>http://www.afscme.org/press/2005/pr051102b.htm
>http://www.aft.org/presscenter/releases/2005/110205a.htm
>http://www.ohiosfuture.org/

With the exception of the CAP, these are all short election-day press releases. That's hardly broad coverage.

At the CAP site, we learn:


>Here's some context to understand how we won this election. The two
>referenda were companion measures that came out of our legislature
>as a result of a much touted bipartisan budget compromise between
>the Republican governor and the Democratic majority legislature. All
>the Democrats and 40 percent of the Republicans voted to refer
>Colorado's Economic Recovery Plan (C&D) to the electorate, which was
>significant because past attempts to address Colorado's budget
>crisis had failed. The fact that C&D had bipartisan support with a
>surreally broad coalition of over 1,100 endorsing organizations was
>critical for a win. At the same time, such a coalition proved to be
>occasionally problematic as the campaign leadership decided early
>that their way to win was through TV ads and talking-head messaging
>meant to appeal to the so-called political center and mainstream
>Republicans.
>As a result, there was no messaging directed to low-income and
>people of color communities and less emphasis on grassroots field
>work - going door to door and speaking to voters from the heart
>about why C&D mattered and how they and their families would
>benefit. Therefore, it was critical that groups like the Colorado
>Progressive Coalition (CPC) were active in the campaign's steering
>committee and coalition structures to raise these issues - with
>support from allies - and get the campaign on board. The campaign
>eventually prioritized a get out the vote effort and implemented a
>door to door field campaign led by groups like CPC and relying on
>volunteers that came from the coalition organizations. Reaching
>voters in targeted precincts in a neighbor to neighbor fashion was
>critical. Helpfully, the campaign did allow organizations to create
>their own literature with constituency specific messaging.

So while it's wonderful that the forces of good won this one, the coalition behind it was very broad. An American Prospect pre-election piece <http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10411> reports broad support from business groups & moderate Republicans. So thanks to Colorado's unions for whatever they did in this fight, but they were hardly alone, and not taking any political risks.

Doug



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