One teachers union could decide who wins the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary.
With 17,000 members, the New Hampshire branch of the National Education Association is a political force to be reckoned with. Its membership is equivalent to more than 5 percent of the 2008 turnout in the Democratic presidential primary. That year, the NEA endorsed President Obama, but the NEA-NH pushed for Hillary Clinton through its own recommendation process.
Clinton eventually won the New Hampshire primary by fewer than 8,000 votes — votes that may have been swayed by NEA — NH’s recommendation.
While pundits have long thought Clinton will be winner of the New Hampshire primary, recent polls suggest a closer competition than expected. Three months ago, Clinton garnered 50 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average, with Bernie Sanders at 13 percent. Today, Clinton has dropped to 41 percent, just one point ahead of Sanders. If those margins hold until Election Day, the NEA-NH recommendation could make the difference.
This election cycle, the union’s recommendation may come as early as Sept. 11. Afterward, the union actively campaigns for its chosen candidate. “We’ll be doing phone banks, we plug our members into the candidate’s offices, and we’re working very closely with them,” NEA-NH President Scott McGilvray told the Washington Examiner.
McGilvray emphasized that the union is focused on two key issues: Higher education and early childhood education.
“Degrees, not debt,” he said. “In the state of New Hampshire, our college graduates are graduating with the highest debt of any other state in America.” He said both Sanders’ free public college plan and Clinton’s debt-free college plan were good proposals.
On early childhood education, McGilvray said, “The whole push from the Democratic platform on pre-K education and focusing in on kids as young as three years old is a real positive step in the right direction.”
Specifically on K-12 education, the union is looking at how candidates would fix No Child Left Behind. “No Child Left Behind was a huge failure,” McGilvray said. He added that the union is looking for reforms to include “the ability of states to develop their own set of assessments. New Hampshire is the only state that was granted a waiver for that.”
A large recommendation committee of teachers, support professionals and retired professionals was formed before the candidates launched their campaigns. The committee invited each candidate to an interview, asking them identical questions. “They all had some really good things to say,” McGilvray said. “Secretary Clinton and Bernie Sanders really resonated with us.” Only education issues are included in the process.
The union offered to include Republicans in its process, but none of them responded to the union’s invitations. (In 2008, it recommended Mike Huckabee to members choosing to vote in the Republican primary.)
Still, the union is making its presence known in the Republican primary. As six GOP candidates gathered at the New Hampshire Education Forum Wednesday, the union held a rally elsewhere on the same high school campus. About 450 people attended the GOP forum, while roughly 100 attended the union rally. But McGilvray said he wasn’t disappointed. “We weren’t looking to get, you know, 500 people here, we just wanted to get actual classroom educators and school support personnel, you know, get them out and push back on what’s being said in the building over there,” McGilvray said, referring to the GOP rally.
