Labor unions are running an unprecedented get-out-the-vote effort that could push D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray into the mayor’s chair.
Throughout the summer, the city’s unions have steadily marched in lockstep behind Gray’s mayoral run. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s campaign has tried to minimize their impact, noting that union support for Fenty challenger Linda Cropp in 2006 didn’t get her elected.
But back then the unions didn’t know Fenty. Now, like those District residents who have turned against the most popularly elected mayor in the city’s history, they say they’ve been left out of the governing process. In 2010, the unions are fired up, and with same day registration available for this first time this year, they’re hoping they can bring their estimated 40,000 members to the polls to support the council chairman’s bid.
Unions in Montgomery County are ratcheting up their efforts as well. Some political observers there expect endorsements by Montgomery County’s powerful teachers union to produce at least one new face on the County Council.
“I’ve never seen a union effort in D.C. that’s this well-funded or better organized,” political consultant Chuck Thies said.
Since Aug. 31, the AFL-CIO Washington D.C. Metro Council has sent three separate mailings to its 30,000 members who live in the District, according to the union’s Web site.
According to two sources with knowledge of local union activities, the metro council and the American Federation of Teachers plan to spend well into six figures mobilizing their more than 32,000 members by the time Tuesday’s Democratic primary arrives.
The teachers union has live callers dialing up members on a nightly basis and has sent out two mailings, the sources said. The metro council has been handing out pro-Gray literature during citywide canvassing expeditions four nights a week for the past three weeks.
The unions declined to comment, saying they didn’t want to discuss their strategies.
One of the metro council mailings blasts Fenty for being “out of touch with our hard-working families” — a boost to Gray’s message that he’s the candidate who better represents the city’s working class.
“The unions’ support of the Gray campaign has been very important,” said Gray’s chief political consultant, Mo Elleithee. “They’ve put much needed boots on the ground.”
The Fenty campaign has shelled out big dollars to get-out-the-vote organizer Tom Lindenfeld — at least $394,000 so far, finance reports show — for him to do the same job for Fenty that he did in 2006. Lindenfeld has kept vans packed with Fenty supporters rolling to the early polling sites, where Team Fenty hopes it can get an early lead.
“We’ve been building the most aggressive get-out-the-vote effort that probably the city has ever seen,” Fenty spokesman Sean Madigan said.
“Our focus is on getting people we know support the mayor to the polls,” Madigan said. “We don’t want to be distracted by what other people are doing.”
