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UFT push helps Hillary win NY, NJ

by Deidre McFadyen

Feb 14, 2008 12:16 PM

UFT members demonstrated they are a political force to be reckoned with in the union’s all-out get-out-the-vote drive for Sen. Hillary Clinton leading up to her Feb. 5 Primary Day victories in New York and New Jersey.

UFT volunteers made 75,000 member-to-member phone calls at after-school phone banks in the five borough offices which started on Jan. 14.

On the Saturday before the election, many of the city’s most prominent current and former female elected officials — Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, former vice presidential nominee and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro and former U.S. district attorney and Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman — joined UFT President Randi Weingarten, her members and other volunteers at the phone banks at UFT headquarters.

UFTers were also visible on the streets. They passed out Hillary Clinton leaflets at major subway hubs and street corners during the week before, while on Primary Day, Weingarten and UFT volunteers, working alongside volunteers from other labor unions, handed out leaflets across the city.

The UFT sent a letter home on behalf of Clinton to every member who is a registered Democrat in New York and New Jersey. The union also ramped up its use of e-mail to reach out to members and encourage them to vote for Clinton, including e-mailing an audio clip of Hillary’s surprise call-in to the January Delegate Assembly.

“UFT volunteers gave Hillary Clinton the tailwind she needed on Primary Day,” said UFT Director of Legislation/Political Action Marvin Reiskin.

Weingarten noted that the Democrats were in the enviable position of having two strong candidates.

“If you take a step back, it’s remarkable how far we’ve come to have two formidable candidates: one, an African-American man and the other, a woman contending for the Democratic nomination,” she said.

But on education issues, Weingarten said at the Feb. 6 Delegate Assembly, there were critical differences between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

“Hillary Clinton said to us, and she has said publicly, that she is committed to scrapping No Child Left Behind, while Obama has been endorsed by its two leading Democratic Party architects,” Weingarten said, referring to Sen. Edward Kennedy and Congressman George Miller. Both helped create the federal education law as chairs of their respective legislative education committees.

“They do not want No Child Left Behind jettisoned,” she said.

NCLB, she reminded the delegates, is the driving force behind the testing craze that has swept New York City schools and is “hurting schools with this punishment and sanction model, hurting kids and driving our members crazy with test prep and paperwork.”

Weingarten also pointed out that at the National Education Association convention Obama said he is in favor of individual merit pay for teachers while Clinton rejected that, saying that only schoolwide performance pay works in schools.

Nationwide on Feb. 5, Obama won 13 states, while Clinton won nine, including the three largest. The popular vote from the states that voted on Feb. 5 was split almost evenly: 50.2 percent for Clinton and 49.8 percent for Obama. In the all-important delegate count, Clinton picked up 667 delegates while Obama got 583 that day.

Weingarten warned members to brace themselves for a long nomination fight — Obama is predicted to win virtually all the rest of the February nomination contests. After his victories in Washington, Louisiana, Nebraska and Maine, the pundits were predicting that the race may not be decided until the Democratic convention in Denver Aug. 25 to 28.