IBEW
Join Us

Sign up for the lastest information from the IBEW!

Related ArticlesRelated Articles

Visit Our Media Department

Print This Page       Text Size:
News Publications

IBEW Members Make Final Election Push

 

November 6, 2012

As election 2012 comes to a close, IBEW locals in crucial swing states are doing the hard, detailed work getting union voters to the polls.

 

Joe Nardella, a journeyman inside wireman and Youngstown, Ohio, Local 64 registrar, has been working full-time to turn out Eastern Ohio for President Barack Obama and Sen. Sherrod Brown. Working through the local AFL-CIO, Nardella and a regular contingent of members have been knocking on doors, putting up signs, stuffing envelopes with information and phone-banking.

Nardella says that union members support for Obama and Brown is strong. For example on the Thursday before Election Day, he was walking the streets of Warren, Ohio, north of Youngstown. Says Nardella:

They’re all on board.  We’re pretty true blue.

Nonunion households have been more of a mixed bag.  When he meets Romney supporters, often times they are moved by social issues. And some people have been convinced by blatantly false Romney commercials about Chrysler sending jobs to China. Says Nardella:

I spoke with a gentleman last night.  He came out with the baloney about Jeep moving to China. What the commercial says he repeated exactly.

In the final push, Nardella is sending out one more mailing to every member of the local, but he says that political organizing in Locals needs to start long before Election Day. Nardella:

We make sure very member registers to vote.  If you’re a Local 64 guy, I pound them.  I go to each apprentice and make sure they get registered and know why they have to vote.

West of Cleveland, along Lake Erie, things look a little different.  David Shaffer is running the election organizing for Lorain Local 129, where support for Obama is mixed.

Every Wednesday night for the past two months, half a dozen members from Local 129 have manned the phones and called labor households throughout the state.  Shaffer estimates they’ve called more than 1,000. Says Shaffer:

As Election Day approaches, Shaffer will be working closely with the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2012 campaign, to plan canvasing and phone banks.  At the same time, Business Manager Jeffrey Bommer has been putting in a call to each member, urging them to vote for the candidates that best represent the interests of working families.

 

Pete Vaughan is keeping busy.  Registrar and political director of Huntington, W.Va., Local 317, Vaughan has been released to work full-time on Labor 2012, marshaling his local’s efforts in a challenging jurisdiction that stretches into southern Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia.

Specialized mailings have been sent to members in all four states, but Vaughan has spent most of his time in the important electoral battleground of rural Southern Ohio. The grassroots work is tough in coal country where the Romney campaign has attacked the Obama administration for abandoning workers in that sector.

After knocking on doors, Vaughan asks union members if they plan to vote “Yes” on Issue 2, which calls for the establishment of a nonpartisan commission to keep the drawing of congressional districts out of the hands of politicians who stack the deck for their own party.

Stacking the electoral deck isn’t a vague notion to union members in Southern Ohio. Former Gov. Ted Strickland, a popular labor-supporting Democrat, previously served as a member of Congress from Ohio 6, a district that was drawn by Republicans to block his chance of winning. Strickland won despite the gerrymandering.   Charlie Wilson, a labor-friendly Democrat replaced Strickland but was defeated by Tea Party Republican Bill Johnson in 2010.  Wilson is running to reclaim his seat and Vaughan’s discussions at the front door often move from the importance of passing Issue 2 to re-electing Wilson. Says Vaughan:

If the members talk about Issue 2, that’s a start at discussing who they will vote for on Nov. 6.

Vaughan is ready to refute the charge that President Obama is responsible for the decline of the coal industry. He explains that most of the coal-fired power plant closings are the result of market forces—the falling price of natural gas.  And Vaughan underscores that most of the legislation affecting coal-fired plants was passed during Republican administrations.  And he reminds members that, as governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney held a press conference outside an IBEW-organized power plant where he said: “I will not support an industry that kills people.”

Newport News, Va., is home to some of the most important swing voters in one of the most important swing states. Home to Newport News Shipbuilding and many other important employers of union workers, it’s also home to Local 1340, Jeffrey Rowe is coordinating its effort to turn Virginia blue. Says Rowe:

Virginia will be within 1 percent, either way it goes.  If it’s more, I’ll be very surprised.

Election outreach began in mid-August.  Dozens of members have volunteered for precinct walks and phone banking.  Rowe says they’ve sent mailers to members five times, including a letter from their business manager and fliers from the IBEW and AFL-CIO. 

In recent days Rowe has been visiting job sites, talking to between 300 and 400 members before and after work.

“Anywhere we get an audience, we tell them to get out and vote,” said Rowe.

Local 1340 also reached out to its National Electrical Contractor Association partners to give workers some leeway to get in late or knock off early to exercise their civic duty.  One of his biggest challenges will be overcoming ad nausea. Says Rowe:

Even for a political junkie like me, good god, another ad? We are saturated.

Votes have been cast in Nevada since Oct. 20.  James Halsey, Assistant Business Manager for Las Vegas Local 357, has made extensive use of new tools to make sure the union voice is heard.

Halsey gets a print out of who has already voted from the registrar and then calls all the brothers and sisters who haven’t voted yet. Says Halsey:

When we call them, we tell them where their polling place is and we give them the endorsement list we drew up after interviewing a lot of local candidates.

Halsey is also the chairman of Local 357’s political action committee.  The PAC has interviewed 90 percent of the candidates they’ve endorsed, from U.S. Senate down to the races for state board of education. Before early voting started, they gave members the list at meetings.  They showed up at job sites at 5:30 a.m. to hand out fliers and answer questions. During early voting, they offered free rides to the polls to every apprentice.

In 2010, the PAC adopted an e-mail system that allows them to target e-mails to members by zip code so they can send specific endorsements for each member’s congressional and state election races.


We ’ve sent that list out at least three times. You know how email gets, so we wanted that at the top of the list.

Come Nov. 6, Halsey expects that 80 percent of the registered voters in the local will cast their vote.

“If we had to fight this battle in the last two weeks, we’d lose,” Halsey said. “It is a constant education.”