As confirmed by a bone-bruising handshake, his brawny palms are bone dry: look, Ma, no nerves, not even when the badgering about running for mayor starts up. And though Brian M. McLaughlin politely permits an interlocutor to steer the conversation, his agenda is on the tip of his tongue — the magic words being ÿLabor for Democracy,ÿ a euphemism for the highly organized backlash against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's hankering to vanquish party primaries with a charter referendum proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot.þþHe'd much rather ride herd on the current mayor than take his own temperature on the possibility of his becoming the next mayor. That's premature, he scolds affably, with a faint twinkle enlivening his bloodshot baby blues. But yes, he's already raised about $1 million in campaign fodder, just in case.þþEven were Mr. McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, to get distracted from the agenda, the portrait above his desk of his mentor, Harry Van Arsdale Jr., the labor evangelist, would put him back on message in a heartbeat. It was Mr. Van Arsdale who convinced him that a job as a unionized electrician and a college degree weren't incompatible. No matter where he settles his ex-athlete's frame in his office off Union Square, Mr. Van Arsdale's motivational gaze follows him. Idealism incarnate. If Mr. McLaughlin, 51 and gray around the edges, is less idealistic, it's by necessity.þþPolitics ought not to be a beauty contest, Mr. McLaughlin, who is also a state assemblyman from Flushing, Queens, says sadly, or a contest where whoever can afford to flood the airwaves with the most spots wins. So much for vetting candidates; so much for accountability. ÿIf not the labor movement,ÿ he intones, ÿthen who is going to stand up and speak out for the working people? Sure, I'm looking cynically at the mayor's proposal; this smells of politics. What's broken? What's he trying to fix? The medicine we're trying to give the patient is not what the doctor prescribed. It imperils democracy.ÿþþIf the goal of the charter revision is, he says, to pump up voter participation, then why not expand Election Day to a three-day event? Mr. McLaughlin, who's represented the 25th District since 1992, says he knows of children who didn't have time to vote for their own father when he ran for re-election. Uh oh, this sounds personal. Turns out that his oldest daughter — his five offspring range from 3 to 30 — was the guilty party. He understood it was a priorities thing: her job at the Gap won out. It's not for a labor leader to criticize anybody's abundance of work ethic.þþMr. McLaughlin cites another potential cure for voter apathy, this one straight from the mouths of nonvoting working stiffs: Stop making voter registration a conduit to jury duty rolls. ÿIt's like a poll tax,ÿ he says. þþThe labor council's president since 1995 and a Democratic mayoral maybe for 2005, Mr. McLaughlin swears he entered politics quite by accident. ÿI don't particularly like politics, and I have no ego for it, quite frankly,ÿ he says. ÿI guess all of us would say it's disproportionately influenced by money. But in the end, it's a process where you have a limited opportunity to champion and better the situation of the people who elected you. And if you don't have determination, it's an unfriendly process.ÿþþHe was drafted into running for Democratic district leader in 1986 with the Queens Democratic Party in disrepair after the suicide of Donald R. Manes; he won by 86 votes. Terrorized by flop sweat the first time he gave a union speech 30 years ago, he recalls that he was initially no prize as a third-generation union activist, either.þþBut Mr. McLaughlin, whose paternal grandfather, Miles, was a member of Mr. Van Arsdale's so-called Committee of 100, has slicked up his act in the interim. He earned a master's degree in industrial labor relations from the New York Institute of Technology. He honed what he calls ÿleadership qualitiesÿ and collaborative instincts and is comfortable at the helm of an organization comprising 400 unions with a combined membership of 1.5 million workers, 100,000 of them added on his watch. On Oct. 4, as New York chairman of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, he presided over a rally of 100,000 immigrants and their supporters at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. He is adamant about upgrading the civil rights of some eight million workers who are in the country illegally: ÿThe labor movement is well placed to redefine itself around the needs of those who most need a labor union.ÿþþHE was born in Inwood, Manhattan, and lived in Queens, and his family moved to Brentwood when he was 10. His father was an electrician; his mother worked for General Motors, and later for Gertz department stores. No one in the family had a college degree. In his high school yearbook, his career ambition was pragmatic: electrician. He dropped out of Bridgeport University and became an electrician, met Mr. Van Arsdale at a union meeting and was persuaded to attend night school. þþWithin 10 years, he traded his tools for a desk at the union. So far, he hasn't missed them. ÿIt's kind of like being a lawyer who doesn't give legal advice at home,ÿ he says. ÿI don't do too much around the house; you can interview Mrs. McLaughlin about that.ÿþþþþ
Source: NY Times
