PROGRESSIVE, LABOR GROUPS TO
SPEND AT LEAST $150M ON ELECTION

Progressive groups nationwide, including the AFL-CIO, plan to spend at least $150 million--and could spend double that--on voter education and get-out-the-vote activities for this year’s election, news reports say.

And that may be underestimating labor’s contribution.

Quoting leaders at the Take Back America conference in Washington--a confab of 2,000 activists--news reports put the minimum spending at $150 million and range up to $400 million.

Their objective is not only to elect a progressive Democrat to the White House but to increase the progressive majority in the House and to get the 60 Senate votes needed to halt GOP filibusters against the Employee Free Choice Act and other progressive legislation, said conference members, including Change to Win Executive Director Greg Tarpinian.

Labor will be a key part of the effort. “We cannot take back America politically or in any other way unless workers are in motion, in the workplace and politically,” Tarpinian told delegates. Organizing, he added, was the key, since the 2004 election showed labor and its allies “were too small” to beat GOPer George W. Bush.

The groups involved in the education, registration and get-out-the-vote drives include People for the American Way, the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, Rock the Vote and MoveOn.org. The AFL-CIO budgeted $53.4 million for such action for this year.

But the progressives also made clear that the sole goal is not electing Democrats, but holding candidates--of any party--to a progressive agenda. Robert Borosage of Campaign for America’s Future warned of a “window of opportunity” for progressives to push workers’ rights, universal national health care and other causes.

Donna Edwards, an African-American woman activist who with progressive and SEIU support defeated an incumbent African-American pro-business Democratic U.S. representative in the Maryland primary the month before, warned that “in 2006, we thought the incoming Democratic majority had a mandate to end the war in Iraq.

“But some of them forgot and it became politics as usual back in D.C.,” Edwards added. “That’s just bunk. The voters get it. The Democrats better get it, too.”

Unionists at the conference said that figure does not count the grass-roots volunteerism they expect from their members. “There’ll be a lot of in-kind contributions,” said Marco Trbovich of Steel Workers, referring to donated time and effort.

Tarpinian forecast that Change to Win’s unions “will have tens of thousands” of members out on the streets, contacting friends, families and neighbors this fall on behalf of pro-worker candidates and causes. “We’ll be involved in the entire labor-progressive effort,” he told PAI. He told Associated Press it would be the largest ever. The CTW board voted last year for a special 10-cents-per-member assessment for politics.

And part of the AFL-CIO’s budget will go to educate its members, their families and allies about the anti-worker record of the GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Meanwhile, the Fund for America, an independent group partially financed by the Service Employees, plans its own ad campaign against McCain.

SEIU, a Change to Win member, plans to spend $75 million on education, mobilization and getting out the vote, Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger has said. AFSCME, the AFL-CIO’S largest union, plans to spend $60 million on similar efforts, adds its president, Geraid McEntee. And while the groups cannot coordinate their efforts with candidates, they can, under federal rules, coordinate with each other.