NEENAH, Wis. — When Mike Pyne and other union foot soldiers knock on doors to promote Senator Barack Obama, they often confront a tricky challenge: how to persuade union members to vote on the basis of their wallets rather than on issues like abortion, gun rights and race. þþIn battleground states like this one, union voters could be vital to the outcome of the election, and the labor movement has mounted a huge push on behalf of Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, built largely around the message that with unemployment rising, the financial system reeling and gasoline and food prices soaring, the nation cannot afford to have another Republican in the White House.þþThe labor effort appears to be making headway. Social issues have moved to the background while the economy is foremost in the minds of many voters, and Mr. Obama appears to be benefiting politically. People like Tom Crooks, an electrician at a paper company’s research center, are telling union canvassers that they are “definitely leaning” toward Mr. Obama because they are worried about their financial well-being. þþFour years ago, it was not so, Mr. Crooks said. He voted for President Bush, partly because guns were a significant issue for him. (Helped by labor support, John Kerry won Wisconsin by less than one-half of 1 percent of the votes.) þþ“But this year the economy is very important,” said Mr. Crooks, an Air Force veteran. “My wife is out of work. My son has a job with no medical. My 401(k) is going down.”þþHis wife’s telemarketing job was outsourced to the Philippines. “A lot of jobs are being lost to foreign countries,” Mr. Crooks said, adding that he disliked the economic ideas of Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee. “I think he’s just out of touch.”þþYet union canvassers are also confronting an unprecedented factor in this election — Mr. Obama’s race — making the effects of their door-to-door appeals less predictable.þþMacDavis Slade, a political activist with the painters’ union, said that was why “some people are having a hard time seeing things for what they are or hearing what he has to say.”þþ“I think race is playing a major part,” Mr. Slade said. “I think that’s why some people say, ‘Isn’t he a Muslim?’ ”þþOther union leaders said that some members had acknowledged opposing Mr. Obama because he is black, and that canvassers had heard racial slurs against him.þþTo increase Mr. Obama’s chances of winning, labor’s field marshals have sought to make sure that canvassers, when distributing fliers and visiting union members, focus on economic issues, like Mr. Obama’s calls for cutting taxes on the middle class and repealing tax breaks for companies that invest overseas. The canvassers also emphasize protecting Social Security, problems with trade agreements and the need for change.þþ“We’ve lost something like 600,000 jobs so far this year,” said Anthony Rainey, president of U.A.W. Local 469, which represents workers at Master Lock in Milwaukee. þþMr. Rainey said his wife had warned him that Mr. Obama would lose if voters were not able to distinguish his economic policies from Mr. McCain’s. “There hasn’t been anything on the issues and it’s going to be crunch time,” Mr. Rainey said, “and people have to understand where these presidential candidates stand on economic issues.” þþBut many union members have a history of basing their votes on noneconomic issues, giving Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a shot at winning their support. Mr. Pyne, who knocks on doors wearing a Steelworkers for Obama T-shirt, witnessed that firsthand while visiting Scott Siegel, a union plumber, and his wife, Amy. þþ“We basically vote pro-life,” said Ms. Siegel, a mother of five. “As a ‘little person,’ I don’t feel that any of these candidates have our best interests in mind. So if there’s a specific thing that sways our vote, it would be abortion.”þþUnion strategists say that if Mr. Obama is to win Michigan, Wisconsin and other Midwestern swing states, he will probably need a hefty margin of victory among union households there, because they expect that a majority of voters in those states who are not from union households will vote for Mr. McCain. Two weekends ago, Mr. Pyne was one of 200 union activists who knocked on some 10,000 doors throughout Wisconsin, in Waukesha, Eau Claire, Madison, Cudahy, Appleton and other communities. It is all part of labor’s ground game to focus on three million union voters in 17 swing states, with the emphasis on getting out the vote and moving undecided voters into the Obama column, in part through “member-to-member visits.” þþ“Union voters are going to decide this election,” Doug Burnett, the Wisconsin political director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told union canvassers at a training session on a recent Saturday morning at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in Appleton. “We were the force that made the 2004 election so close, and we will be the force that wins this election. Without union members we would have lost Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2004.”þþThe union canvassers said that they were up against formidable obstacles, but that the economic slowdown and financial crisis were making a difference.þþ“In 2000, after eight years of a good economy and eight years of raises and not having to go to war, it was easy to focus on wedge issues,” said the deputy political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Mike Podhorzer. “It is less easy now. Today it’s an entirely different ballgame.”þþ
Source: NY Times
