Despite Tough Election Night, Some Bright Spots in District One

There's no sugar coating this one.  The massive loss of House seats, and the seeming ratification of right-wing, anti-government, trickle-down rhetoric represents a huge setback for working families and their unions.

There will be plenty of time to analyze what went wrong, and we do need to figure out how our movement must adapt to the changing political climate.  But clearly, the horrific state of the economy—with incomes stagnant and unemployment at historically high levels—was the single most important factor gutting support for Obama and the Democrats.  Since 2007, Americans have lost $10.7 trillion in net worth, including the value of their homes and whatever is left of their investments. Median working family income fell 8% from 2000 to 2009.  Those kinds of losses don't predispose voters to joyous embrace of their incumbent representatives.

Many other factors contributed to the toxic political environment which produced last night's debacle.  The vicious Fox message machine, the gusher of corporate cash unleashed by Citizens United, Obama’s failures to communicate effectively, his commitment to bi-partisanship in the face of a Republican minority determined to destroy him, the Administration's unwillingness to take on Wall Street and the banks in a real way, the stunning rise of the Tea Party movement.....all this created fertile ground for the right-wing backlash. 

But despite these setbacks, CWA activists across the northeast played a role in several races which offered a ray of hope at a very difficult time.  A summary of some of the good things that did take place follows:

•In New Jersey, Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein decisively won the special election for State Senate in the 14th District, adjacent to Trenton, by 8%.  CWA mobilized tremendously with phone banks, labor walks, Election Day volunteers and mailings to turn out our vote. Public employees and teachers, nearly 10,000 of whom live in the district, played a critical role in her victory and Linda very generously acknowledged our efforts on election night.

District One VP Chris Shelton (center) joins New Jersey CWA members on a labor walk for Linda Geenstein (second from left).

•Both Rush Holt and Frank Pallone held their Congressional seats in NJ.  Pallone won by 11% and Holt won by 7%, which was great considering that both were considered in danger and around the country, many of our friends in Congress were being wiped out.  John Adler did lose narrowly in South Jersey, though that district had been held by Republicans for a century before he won it two years ago.

•In Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal defeated Linda McMahon decisively and both Jim Himes (narrowly) and Chris Murphy (comfortably) held on to their House seats.  In the Governor’s race, Dan Malloy appears to have eked out a 1,000 vote victory while getting 40,000 votes on the relatively new CT WFP line.

•In Vermont, Local 1400 endorsed State Senate President Peter Shumlin for Governor, and he won by about 1.5% or 3,500 votes.  (Not to mention they signed up a boatload of COPE cards in the last week of the COPE contest.)  We didn't fare so well in New Hampshire, where Paul Hodes, Annie Kuster and Carol Shea-Porter all lost.  We held our own in Massachusetts, where the Democrats held all their Congressional seats and Deval Patrick was re-elected Governor.

•In New York, Andrew Cuomo, Tom DiNapoli and Eric Schneiderman, our statewide candidates won, in Cuomo’s and Schneiderman’s cases, by very big margins.  DiNapoli won despite widespread editorial board opposition in the state, and labor got huge credit for his win.

•The Working Families Party did get its 50,000 votes—in fact, we believe we’re on track to get about 135,000 votes or so.  This is obviously way more than enough to maintain ballot status, and possibly enough to surpass the Independence Party and become Row D.  It appears almost certain that the Conservatives, who did extremely well upstate for Paladino, will become Row C.  We are still waiting for final returns from all counties.  Given what the Party went through over the last year and half, this showing was a tremendous victory

•The Schneiderman victory is particularly sweet.  The last pre-election Siena poll said the race was dead even at 44%.  But Schneiderman ended up with a 55-44% margin of victory.  He is no doubt one of the most pro-labor, progressive statewide elected officials in the nation, and has always been a great, great friend of CWA’s.  He ran an unabashedly economic populist, pro-labor campaign and we can expect him to be a terrific leader in New York for years to come.

•Tim Bishop narrowly won re-election to Congress in Suffolk, winning by just under 2% of the vote.  Dan Maffei eked out a victory by little more than 1% in Syracuse and Bill Owens, somewhat amazingly, won a little more comfortably in the North Country.  But sadly, John Hall did not fare as well, losing in the Hudson Valley to a right-wing, Tea Party candidate by 6%. Mike Arcuri lost by a similar margin in the Utica area.  We lost the old Eric Massa seat, which is an overwhelmingly Republican district, and Mike McMahon was defeated on Staten Island.

•We won big in State Senate races in Queens, where Tony Avella trounced Frank Padavan 53 to 47%, and in Rockland, where David Carlucci won a surprising 53 to 47% victory over Scott Vanderhoef.  In addition, Tim Kennedy, long championed by our Western NY locals, hung on for a 42-40% win over Jack Quinn, Jr. in Erie County, despite Bill Stachowski receiving 17% on the WFP line (we wanted to get him off but Senate Democratic leadership insisted he stay on during the summer).

•But Brian Foley lost badly in Suffolk and Darrel Aubertine lost in the North Country.  Future control of the State Senate hangs on the outcome of three seats where there will be recounts:  Craig Johnson in Nassau is about 415 votes behind in his race; Antoine Thompson trails his challenger by just under 400 votes in his western NY district; and Suzi Oppenheimer is narrowly ahead in her race in Westchester, but nearly 20% of returns are still not in.  Lengthy recounts are anticipated in at least Johnson and Thompson, and possibly Oppenheimer as well.  We need to win all three to retain the Senate majority, win 2 to pull even at 31.  We won’t know the outcome of these races for a while.

All in all, on what was a horrible night across the country, all of our commitment and hard work paid off in a few very important victories that contradicted the national trends.  We did more work than ever before—more phone calls, more state level labor walks, more mail, more workplace lit.  Our legislative and political coordinators deserve enormous credit for their incredible dedication and skill, and everything they did over the last six months.

We have lived through difficult election nights before.  But we survived those elections and we’ll survive this one as well.  And we can take some comfort in the continuing development of our political effectiveness as we prepare for what will no doubt be many difficult battles in the months and years to come.