Senate Candidates Join Working Families to Get Out the Vote

by Seth Michaels, Nov 3, 2008

Senate candidates in Kentucky, Alaska, Minnesota, Mississippi and Georgia are working alongside union volunteers in the Labor 2008 political program.

In Kentucky, Bruce Lunsford has earned strong union support that has brought him close to unseating Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader who’s been a Bush clone and has obstructed every sort of positive change for working families.

Lunsford is taking his cues from working families, not McConnell’s corporate masters. He got a chance to make his case to workers last week when he took part in a worksite leaflet at a Louisville factory. Lunsford told workers, “We’ve got to stop the movement of jobs out of Kentucky and out of the United States.”

Added Lunsford: “It’s important that we get people to get out the vote….This is probably the most important election of any we’ve had in my lifetime, and I hope that by getting out and doing this, our people working hard, we’ll be able to make this election one about change across the board.”

In Alaska, Mark Begich, mayor of Anchorage, is in a tight race against longtime Sen. Ted Stevens, who last week was convicted on felony corruption charges (even though he’s now telling his Alaska constituents he hadn’t been convicted).

If Begich wins, he says, he’ll support working families, and make sure we recognize and act on the potential to transform the economy so it works for everyone. At a labor walk over the weekend, Begich got union members fired up to go knock on doors. He credited Alaska’s union members with putting victory within reach.

There are some incredible opportunities this year. There’s no question about it, across this country.

We are not leaving anything to chance, no matter what the circumstances that are out there. We are not going to take anything for granted. We are going to work double time. And you folks have been unbelievable, what the labor movement has done….I see it everywhere I go. It’s a fantastic support base out there. You folks are going to make the difference….If labor is united, labor will determine not only the U.S. Senate, what goes on in Congress, but our state legislature. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for a long, long, long time. The excitement is out there, and what we have to do is turn out the votes.

In Minnesota, Al Franken is running against Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman. Franken spoke to union members at a pancake breakfast last week, promising that if union volunteers kept up their great efforts knocking on doors and working the phones and helped him win the Senate race, he’d fight for workers and follow in the footsteps of his role model, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.

Union members in Mississippi are working hard for Senate candidate Ronnie Musgrove—and he’s putting in a lot of work himself. Last week, Musgrove showed up at 4 a.m. to join union members for worksite leafleting at the port of Pascagoula. Said Musgrove:

I want to tell you how important and how historic this election is. We have an opportunity to change the direction of this country. We need to focus back on the men and women who are the hard-working people who make America strong.

I encourage you to vote. This is our time to make a difference in America.

Georgia’s Senate race has become more competitive in the past months, and union members are getting out the vote to put Jim Martin over the top in this race. Martin met with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney at a union breakfast and phone bank this weekend, speaking to a crowd of union volunteers about the challenges we face following the disastrous Bush economic policies. Martin also spoke about the opportunities that are possible with new, pro-worker senators:

Organized labor has been the difference in this campaign….We knew these [Republican] policies were going to come crashing down, but we didn’t realize it was going to be such a disaster for this country. The country has a lot of hard work to do, and I’m looking forward to getting to work if I’m elected.

Martin says if he’s elected, he’ll join with fellow senators to support pro-worker legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act, a crucial bill to help workers exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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