Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana — three states where the Democrats usually can not compete at the national level when it comes to elections, yet recent polls show very tight races, some even giving Obama the lead, especially in Virginia. There are obviously a number of factors in any election, but one element may be the role that unions are playing in registering, informing and mobilizing voters in each of these states. Unions have been the bane of electoral mobilization for Republicans. While they can always match, and usually exceed, Democrats when it comes to money, they do not have the same volunteer and networking resource that unions provide Democrats.

This year, Change to Win is coordinating the largest member-to-member program in the history of their member unions. The project includes: Canvassing where there is high union density; Work site programs; Phone and Mail strategies, and of course, Get Out The Vote (GOTV) work near and on election day. They have also set up a website, Worse than Bush, along with the CTW Truth Squad in order to keep union members up to date on the McCain record.

Tom Snyder, Political Director for UNITE HERE, explained that for unions this is an incredibly important election. When it comes to the issues of health care affordability, fair trade and free choice for unions, there were many issues that could be used to get union members involved and to convince them that supporting Barack Obama is critical at this point in time. Snyder’s union coalition has 450 thousand members and is working with the Change to Win group of unions to persuade members to both vote and to support Barack Obama. UNITE HERE’s primary targets in their assignments from Change to Win are where they have high membership — Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin. In those states they have taken over 300 members off the job for the last two months before the election to work on member to member contacts and persuasion.

In Nevada, Snyder said that they were doing more than anywhere, in part due to the high number of members residing there. They are focused on the service industry in Las Vegas, and to a lesser degree in Reno. And compared to 2004, Snyder says that they are “More sophisticated, more targeted and more tech savvy.” There goal there is to get the Latino vote up to 70% up from 60% in 2004. And despite concern after the primary, Snyder reports great response from Nevada’s Latino community.

But the groundwork for this campaign was being developed for years. Jeffrey Lerner, Change to Win’s Political Director, described what he called one of the largest member-to-member operations in union history. The strategy is to reach as many union members as possible by:

1. Canvassing with union members in areas with high union density in order to have members themselves explain the importance of electing Obama;
2. The worksite program, with a National Talk Change at Work Week, will reach 1 million union members;
3. Get the faces and voices of union members on television and radio to talk about how bad a McCain Administration would be for workers and how good for workers Obama would be;
4. Phone and Mail operations to contact and stay in contact with even more members;
5. Get Out The Vote operations to make sure that members can vote early if they want, have time off to vote on election day, and have rides to the polls.

We could guess that virtually all of the Change to Win coalition’s 7 million members have been contacted by this operation, and they expect 30-40 thousand members will participate in GOTV operations this upcoming last weekend before the elections.

Lerner emphasizes that especially in North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana, these unions are playing a strategic role in putting these states in play for Obama. One of the reasons he mentions that Obama has salience with their members is that they endorsed Obama back in February, during the primaries, so that members can see that the endorsement isn’t merely because Obama is a Democrat, but from the beginning the unions recognized he was the best candidate for American workers. Lerner described it as a nine month conversation with members about Obama.

One of the Change to Win unions, SEIU, is putting a lot of money and effort into the cause. SEIU and other unions have helped give Obama the edge in independent expenditures and feet on the ground:

[SEIU] poured more than $4.8 million into door-to-door canvassing since the conventions, FEC records show. Anna Burger, SEIU’s secretary-treasurer, said the union has “thousands of members (knocking) on the doors.”

The AFL-CIO, the other, larger union coalition, is doing its share as well:

This year, AFL-CIO leaders aren’t drawing as much attention to their efforts, yet the federation’s unions are spending a combined record amount of $250 million to target 13 million union households in 21 states, the group’s broadest mobilization effort.

And if Obama does carry West Virginia, the AFL-CIO’s efforts there this week may be the difference as they have decided to shift resources and manpower in order to contact 30 thousand union members in that state. Other union efforts include:

• The American Federation of Government Employees is airing radio ads in six battleground states telling listeners to “Vote Issues, not Race or Gender.”
• United Steelworkers is pushing hard for the Democratic ticket in Pennsylvania and Ohio where they have enlisted 10 thousand volunteers to help get Obama elected. They are in the final week of a four week two-state bus tour called “Steel Blitz for Barack” which includes Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, former pro-football greats, ad ending up in Pittsburgh with a huge rally this coming Saturday.
• The American Federation of Teachers is running pro-Obama education ads on radio in eight battleground states, plus they will be using a “Your Voice, Your Vote” bus tour through Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

And smaller unions are doing their share too. Boston’s Local 12 Plumbers and Gasfitters union decided that they didn’t want “Joe the Plumber” speaking for them, so about 100 of them went up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire last weekend to knock on doors for Obama.

While the Obama ground game may be the most impressive field operation in presidential campaign history, it may be the union network that ensures victories in expanding the battleground states, increases voter turnout in union areas, and provide potential coattails for Obama that gets more Democrats elected down ticket.

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