Today’s the Day: Get Out the Georgia Vote in Senate Runoff

by Seth Michaels, Dec 2, 2008

Georgia voters head to the polls today in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate. It’s a close race between incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Bush ally and opponent of working families, and AFL-CIO endorsed Jim Martin, who’s putting up a strong pro-worker challenge.

If Martin wins today, he’ll be the 59th pro-worker elected to the Senate this year to help break the grip of obstruction that has blocked important legislation on health care, the economy and the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Chambliss is the embodiment of that obstruction, voting against working family-friendly legislation—from veterans benefits to children’s health care and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Again and again, Chambliss has put corporate donors above his constituents. A win for Martin today wouldn’t just mean ousting one of the most anti-worker members of the Senate; it would mean replacing him with a true ally of working families.

That’s why union volunteers all around the state have spent the past month mobilizing union members and retirees and their families to get to the polls in this critical election.

Karen Head, political director of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), is one of the many union leaders and activists who have spent the past weeks getting out the vote for Martin. She says she’s enthusiastic about the hard work she’s seen from union volunteers across the state.

They are doing the worksite leaflets, local union mail, phone banks and labor walks. They are putting in the time, and now it comes down to getting out the vote.

The AFL-CIO’s Labor 2008 program and its emphasis on member-to-member contact is important in this election, because union members talking to each other gets the message across much better than when union members hear from a partisan candidate or a campaign.

The same program that was effective across the country—in close races from Oregon to Florida, from New Hampshire to New Mexico—has continued in Georgia. If Martin heads to the Senate, he’ll get there thanks of the the efforts of these union volunteers.

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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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