Pennsylvania House Turns Democratic

William George, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, reports that a final vote count in a legislative race yesterday gave Democrats control of the state House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years.

In state legislative races across the United States, Democrats picked up roughly 323 more seats, giving them new majorities in 10 chambers in eight states, including the Iowa House and Senate, the Indiana House, the Minnesota House, the Michigan House, the New Hampshire House and Senate, the Oregon House and the Wisconsin Senate. The Iowa Senate was previously tied.

Democrat Barbara McIlvaine Smith won the formerly Republican 156th District in Chester County, giving Democrats a one-vote majority (102–101) in the Pennsylvania House. The final tally was 11,614 to 11,591 in favor of Smith—giving her a 23-vote victory.

The real story behind Smith’s win is that the union movement has 4,118 active, household and retired members in the 156th District.

Working families ran a relentless program to persuade union members, retirees and their households to vote. Each union family received three state House fliers at their doors, a persuasion call, a get-out-the-vote call, two targeted paid live calls, mail from the state and national AFL-CIO, as well as three additional knocks on their doors on Election Day.

In the past, we knew even all this was not enough to win.

So, this year we partnered with Working America. Of the 300,000 Working America members in Pennsylvania, 2,959 live in the 156th District. These new members of the Pennsylvania union movement also received state House materials at their doors, persuasion phone calls, three door knocks on Election Day and mail from the AFL-CIO.

This was just part of an incredible get-out-the-vote effort by Pennsylvania union members this election:

• Union members distributed 2.3 million leaflets at worksites across the state.
• Some 4,100 union members walked door to door to talk with other union members about key issues affecting working families.
• An average of 600 union volunteers walked every week from Sept. 1 to Election Day.
• More than 3,500 volunteers worked in phone banks, making 100,000 calls weekly with an average of 250 phone bankers daily in 30 locations.
• On the weekend before the election, 1,164 union volunteers canvassed in the most targeted areas (where we had tough congressional races, state House targets or key areas for successful U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey and winning gubernatorial candidate Ed Rendell).

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