Labor to Labor Program in New Hampshire Leads to Victories Across the Board for Working Families

Labor to Labor Program in New Hampshire Leads to Victories Across the Board for Working Families

Union volunteers helped to usher in victories for Barack Obama and other pro-worker candidates across the country on Tuesday, November 4th, with many victories coming in states that have traditionally elected anti-worker Republican candidates to the Congress and Presidency. The face of the electoral map looks significantly different than it did in 2000 and 2004, and nowhere is this change more apparent or drastic than in New Hampshire. It is thanks to union members working to elect labor-endorsed candidates that New Hampshire is now a solidly blue state with pro-worker representatives on Capitol Hill. Many of these union volunteers came from Massachusetts by the hundreds each weekend.

Union members played a major role in transforming New Hampshire from a state that in 2000 had an all-Republican delegation to the U.S. House and Senate and provided George W. Bush with a narrow 7,000-vote victory over Al Gore that allowed him to assume the Presidency, to a state that in 2008 provided resounding victories for its Democratic delegation to the U.S. House, for newly elected Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen who defeated anti-worker incumbent John Sununu, and for Barack Obama, who won the state by nearly 65,000 votes. Democratic Governor John Lynch also won reelection on Tuesday, and both houses of New Hampshire's state legislature remained under Democratic control after gaining the majority for the first time in more than a century in 2006.

Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert J. Haynes reflected on the historic election of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States, stating:

"Wednesday Americans woke up in a new country. An unprecedented majority of Americans decided to take this country in a new direction, and thank goodness they did. After a long struggle, Americans finally chose a new direction that will make work pay again and rebuild the middle class and this country in the process. Barack Obama's victory on Tuesday was a victory for all working families."

 

Mark MacKenzie, President of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, stated:

"In January, we will band together and work with our new President and Congress in order to restore America's standing in the world.  We will repair our global competitiveness by rebuilding our manufacturing capacity, standing up for workers' rights and reforming our health care system.  With only 76 days left until George Bush leaves office, there is much to un-do, but if we learned anything last night, it is that when we come together as a nation anything is possible."


In electoral terms, over the past eight years New Hampshire has gone from red to purple to blue. It took a tremendous amount of work to achieve that transition and it will take even more work to preserve the resultant victories. In upcoming election cycles, the efforts of organized labor will be measured against the historic efforts of 2008:

Massachusetts union members joined their Granite State brothers and sisters in knocking on over 97,000 doors, making 273,000 phone calls, distributing 250,000 leaflets at worksites and through the mail, and handwriting more than 13,000 postcards to reach more than 39,000 union members and community affiliates in New Hampshire. This effort resulted in each union member in the state, on average, receiving 15 contacts from their union and fellow union members about the election. Many undecided voters received even more contact with specific information about the candidates' positions and policy proposals on issues that matter most to working families.

Efforts by union members in other states resulted in contact with over 13 million voters nationwide, with some undecided voters receiving contact from fellow union members more than 25 times.

It is clear that the extraordinary efforts of union members have been vindicated by the election results, both in New Hampshire and throughout the nation. In important battleground states, the margins by which union members voted for Barack Obama and other labor endorsed candidates were significant enough to shift the results in their favor.

Exit polling showed that union members not only voted in much higher numbers than those who did not belong to a union, but that union members also voted for Barack Obama in much higher numbers than the general public. While only 12 percent of the American population belongs to a union, union households represented 21 percent of all voters in the nation on Tuesday, and in some important battlegrounds, more than a quarter of all voters. And because of the intense effort to educate union families on the candidates' positions on labor and economic issues, union members voted by a margin of 67 percent for Barack Obama to 30 percent for John McCain, while non-union voters favored Obama by a narrower margin of 51 percent to 47 percent. In battleground states such as Ohio, where Barack Obama's margin of victory was within a just a couple of percentage points, his level of support from union members represented the margin of victory.

The success of the Labor to Labor program in New Hampshire is a testament to what can happen when unions join together for the well being of all working families. As a state whose electoral votes are always considered up for grabs and whose seats in the U.S. Congress are always tightly contested, the state of New Hampshire carries the burden and holds the opportunity to turn our country around each election year. The New Hampshire AFL-CIO has embraced this important role, and their officers and staff deserve tremendous credit for their leadership.

President Mark MacKenzie, Assistant to the President and State Director Jessica Clark, and Secretary-Treasurer William Stetson began planning the Labor 2008 program more than a year ago, and throughout that time have still worked tirelessly on behalf of their affiliate unions. As the year progressed, unions and labor organizations began releasing staff to work with the New Hampshire AFL-CIO on the political program, and by the week leading up to the election, unions from around the region had released more than ninety political activists to work with the state federation.

The Massachusetts AFL-CIO has been a longstanding partner with the New Hampshire AFL-CIO and began working early this year with local unions in Massachusetts that have members living in New Hampshire. Over 10,000 union members who live in New Hampshire are represented by Massachusetts locals, and they began receiving mail with information about the candidates from their unions in March. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) soon followed by releasing two full time coordinators to work with New Hampshire unions, and Bricklayers Local 3 released a full time coordinator to work with Building Trades unions in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The impressive organization built up by the New Hampshire AFL-CIO with their affiliate unions, the many Massachusetts unions that have members living in New Hampshire, and labor leaders and activists from both states, rivals any organization in the country in getting working families out to vote for candidates who will fight for them. The New Hampshire and Massachusetts AFL-CIO should be proud of the work that was accomplished in electing Barack Obama, Jeanne Shaheen, Paul Hodes, Carol Shea-Porter and John Lynch-but there is much work still to be done. We must now work with all of our elected representatives to help the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress advance their pro-labor agenda. And every day from here on out we must work to preserve our hard-fought political gains, continue electing pro-worker candidates to state houses, the Congress and the White House, and hold them accountable once they get there.


Click here to see photos from the final weeks of the Labor 2008 campaign in New Hampshire.

Click here to read a press release from the NH AFL-CIO on the historic election victories.

Click here to read a post-election statement from NH AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie.

Click here to read a press release from the AFL-CIO about the nationwide Labor to Labor effort with exit poll results.