Call To Action!

The Washington Post said today:

Surveys taken for the AFL-CIO found that . . .

* 76 percent of the workers who remembered receiving a flyer from
their union supported the endorsed candidates; and,
* Those who had a conversation about the election with a union
volunteer at the workplace or on the doorstep were 81 percent in support of
the union choices."

You need a strategy:

* Register your employees to vote;
* Get them the information they need to make informed decisions; and,
* Tell them these decisions impact their lives, their jobs and their
industry.

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We have the tools. Click here www.politikit.com (create your own user name
and password).

The complete article follows . . . .

Democrats Tuning Up for Turnout
By David S. Broder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 21, 2000; Page A01
LOS ANGELES -- Now that the hoopla of the Democratic National Convention is
past, it's time for Michael Whouley and his team to go to work.
Whouley is the Gore campaign consultant supervising the Democratic Party's
ground war--the man in charge of identifying voters who are likely to
support the vice president and other Democratic candidates and getting them
to the polls on Election Day.
With Democrats hoping for--and anticipating--a close battle for the White
House and both houses of Congress, the margin of victory could, they
believe, turn on the turnout operations run by the "coordinated campaign"
teams Whouley and his partners have been recruiting in the last few weeks.
As if there were not enough motivation in arming for battle at every level
from the legislatures up, the Republicans have raised the stakes by
announcing two weeks ago that they will funnel most of a $100 million
"Victory 2000 Fund" through their national and state parties into a similar
operation, targeted on ticket-splitters and weak partisans.
Democratic officials are not certain how seriously to take the threat and
are skeptical Republicans can match them in manpower--even if they spend
much more on the ground war than they have in the past.
But as Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew said, "Since we
don't know what the test will be, we are presuming it will be the toughest."
The job of getting people to the polls is harder than ever for both parties,
because of the shortage of high-intensity issues in a time of general
prosperity and the growing public cynicism about politics and elections. But
Republicans have an easier task. For months, more than 90 percent of their
self-identified partisans have been telling pollsters they support Texas
Gov. George W. Bush.
With those "base" voters highly motivated by the prospect of recapturing the
White House, Republicans plan to pour their resources into swing suburban
areas, find out which ticket-splitters are leaning to Bush, and deluge them
with mail and phone calls supporting the entire Republican ticket.
The counterpart Democratic effort or "coordinated campaign" will, according
to Andrew and Whouley, focus more on turning out the urban "base" of the
party, with a secondary push in selected ticket-splitting suburbs, in
districts and states where key House and Senate races are likely to be
decided.
Democrats have more experience than Republicans in running these turnout
efforts for their whole ticket. They have been using this model since 1988,
when the late Paul Tully, working at the DNC, convinced statewide candidates
and the unions supporting them in several key states that, rather than
working individually, they should pool funds and hire staff to register and
mobilize voters for all their races.
The Democrats have been expanding and improving their operation in every
cycle since then, and turnout programs employing targeted mailings, phone
calls and literature distribution, as well as "soft money"-financed "issue
ads," all aimed at African American voters, are credited with powering 1998
upset victories, especially in gubernatorial races in Alabama, Georgia and
South Carolina.
But this year, they face special challenges in the black and Latino
constituencies, and there is some nervousness about the pace of preparations
for the battle ahead.
New Jersey Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee, said: "The coordinated campaign is late starting this
year. In 1996, we did a good ad program for our base during the summer, and
I haven't seen anything like it so far."
Others, including some labor officials who have been critical in the past of
the youth and inexperience of the coordinated campaign directors dispatched
from Washington to the states, say that this year the DNC has a seasoned
corps of people heading the field operations.
The three top DNC staffers for the coordinated campaigns, Laurie Moskowitz,
John Giesser and Fred Humphreys, all were working states in 1988, when Tully
began setting up the model.
Andrew began prodding states to develop their game plans for this fall as
soon as he became party chairman in March 1999, having been convinced of the
value of direct voter contact during his previous job as Indiana Democratic
chairman.
With Democrats and Republicans tied in the Indiana state House going into
the 1998 election, Andrew targeted 15 districts for intensive voter contact
work and won 10 of them, giving the Democrats control.
With that experience as his talking point, Andrew has persuaded all 50 state
parties to submit their own coordinated campaign plans and budgets. At the
end of last week, 42 states had their coordinators chosen--if not always in
place.
Democrats declined to disclose their budget, but Andrew said they will be
outspent "at least 2 to 1" if Republicans actually put $100 million into
Victory 2000, as they have advertised.
But Andrew's figure does not include what labor unions supporting Gore and
other Democrats spend from their own treasuries mobilizing members and their
families. And it is that union effort which Republicans say is their biggest
worry.
After spending millions on issue ads in the 1996 campaign, AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney decided to switch those resources to a voter contact program,
with dramatic results. The union household share of the actual electorate
rose from 14 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 1998, according to exit polls.
Surveys taken for the AFL-CIO found that 76 percent of the workers who
remembered receiving a flyer from their union supported the endorsed
candidates; those who had a conversation about the election with a union
volunteer at the workplace or on the doorstep were 81 percent in support of
the union choices.
With control of the House as important a target as Gore's victory, the
AFL-CIO has mobilized 5,000 "local coordinators" in 71 targeted
congressional districts. Unions that are part of the labor federation now
are dispatching staff members to coordinate the coordinators.
Sweeney, for one, argues that "without the machinery and the people we can
deploy, the Republicans' talk of a $100 million ground campaign is really
just a public relations ploy."
That may or may not prove to be true. Meanwhile, there were some complaints
at the convention from African American and Latino elected officials and
organizers about the planning--or lack of planning--for turnout programs in
their communities. One key California labor official, for example, charged
that a half-million-dollar program targeted on Latino voters had been
canceled after Tony Coelho, a former California congressman, left his post
as chairman of the Gore campaign.
Despite the static, Democrats are clearly serious about trying to win the
ground war. Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, a central figure in the national
network of Democratic mayors whose political organizations will be competing
with those of the Republican governors in their states, said, "Winning this
election is not just Al Gore's job. We're taking the responsibility on
ourselves to get the message out about the stark differences between the
parties this year."
And then he noted, with a smile, "You know, the Auto Workers' new contract
makes Election Day a holiday for their members. Just watch 'em vote."
, 2000 The Washington Post Company