Dana Kennedy, communications director for the Arizona AFL-CIO, describes the tremendous grassroots effort behind the state’s Nov. 7 ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $6.75 an hour. Kennedy will follow up on the action in Ohio with a blog Nov. 8.

It is amazing to think that after all of our work to raise the minimum wage in Congress and then in the Arizona Legislature, voters in Arizona finally will get to decide.

We started discussing a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage three years ago. A coalition was formed one year ago and then the hard work began. We took to the street and union halls gathering signatures. We gathered more than 200,000—and it was the most popular petition on the street. We only needed 122,000 signatures to qualify so we met our goal. Once qualified, we started the earned media campaign, we did TV, radio and print.

Since June, the minimum wage has been mentioned in papers weekly and in some cases daily and Arizona AFL-CIO President Rebekah Friend is quoted more times than not.  The poll numbers show that it is the most popular ballot initiative. The highest poll rating has been 83 percent and the lowest has been 74 percent. The most exciting item with the minimum wage is its popularity with all the voters. It really is a moral issue, and it is simply the right thing to do.

The last couple of months we have been hit with issues pertaining to privacy and how an enforcement mechanism would lead to identity theft, now are they grasping or what?  It is a fabricated argument and has no validity, none! Will having raised the minimum wage increase voter turnout? That is the question and that answer is not yet known. We do have a turn-out mechanism in place with the Arizona’s Working Families and educating voters at their door on minimum wage. The Arizona AFL-CIO has done a great job getting press on this issue, and we are optimistic that it will continue to highlight all the positive accomplishments the union movement has done on behalf of Arizona’s working families. We’ve talked with our members on the phone as well as at the door about this issue. It polls at 94 percent with union members in Arizona. Union members are excited to go to the polls to vote to give their hard-working neighbors a raise. 

We have other races that are exciting voters which we hope we will win. They include: the re-election of Gov. Janet Napolitano, who is running against the conservative Len Munsil, and Jim Pederson, who is running for U.S. Senate against the conservative Jon Kyl. Yeah, Kyl is the guy who had retirees arrested from his office rather than agree to do a town hall meeting on Medicare and the one who wrote most of the language so the pharmaceutical companies couldn’t negotiate lower prices. In Congressional District (CD) 5, we have the oh-so-famous Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who the Arizona Republic called a “Bully” when the paper endorsed Harry Mitchell, a former teacher who turned mayor and then state senator. You couldn’t find a person to say a negative word about Mitchell, that is until J.D. felt threatened and took negative campaigning to a new low. 

Then there is CD 8—the wonderful gracious, Gabrielle Giffords, who is running against Randy Graf, an ultraconservative. The union movement got into this race early on, and luckily we did, because she will be a great member of Congress and a great friend to labor and this is a pick-up from retiring Jim Kolbe.

Then there is CD 1—slicky Rick Renzi, who has not bothered showing up to a debate. I guess he is too busy hiring an attorney to figure out how to get around an investigation regarding land swapping. It would be great if Ellen Simon, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney, kicked him out of that seat. Simon got in late but has done a great job making this race competitive. We have some wonderful state legislative candidates who have great ground campaigns. 

We hope that all the work we are doing with union members helps to increase voter turnout, and with all the great candidates and Prop. 202 to raise the minimum wage, we may just have created a perfect storm—and who knows, maybe we will turn Arizona blue!  If not, we are certainly more purple than red!

We certainly did our job with leaving no union member untouched. We have called every single union member that we have a phone number for, we have knocked on doors, left literature, we have sent e-mails and mailings, not to mention worksite fliers. This year may be what they call an off-year election, but we believe it is just as important as a presidential election. 

We must change the direction of this country we must elect candidates who support working families and we are confident that on Jan. 1, 145,000 Arizonans will receive a raise. 

This portion of this website is paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, 815 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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