To win the Midwest, labor-backed coalition pursues minorities who haven't voted before
By James Hohmann
October 26 at 10:19 AM
THE BIG IDEA:
DETROIT— Instead of trying to woo working-class whites in the suburbs of Macomb County who defected to Donald Trump after voting for Barack Obama, the Service Employees International Union decided early to focus its program in Michigan for the midterms on mobilizing African Americans who didn’t turn out at all.
“We lost by 10,000 votes in the state of Michigan, and there were 200,000 voters that didn't show up in the city of Detroit. That is criminal, and it way overshadows the number of Obama-Obama-Trump voters in that state,” said SEIU president Mary Kay Henry. “People debate the exact number, but the way you win Michigan is you need to have 40,000, 50,000 or 60,000 more voters turn out in Detroit than have normally turned out in off-year elections.”
Mobilizing infrequent voters is much harder than turning out those who reliably participate in elections and thus need little prodding, but the 2-million-member union has spent tens of millions of dollars on a massive field operation to try expanding the electorate in 2018. Democrats are well positioned to make significant gains in the Wolverine State, including picking up the governorship and two or more House seats, but it will take precinct-level returns to show whether organized labor’s investment paid off.
Their political program is active in battlegrounds across the country, but the SEIU has put extra emphasis on the Midwestern states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania where Trump won unexpectedly in 2016 and Republican governors took a sledgehammer to union power over the course of the past eight years by signing right-to-work laws or otherwise making it harder to organize and collect dues.
A key part of the strategy has involved coupling its years-long crusade to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour with more traditional electioneering efforts. Internal research found that the infrequent voters they’re trying to reach can be motivated more easily by issues that matter to them than individual candidates, who they tend to view more cynically.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/10/26/daily-202-to-win-the-midwest-labor-backed-coalition-pursues-minorities-who-haven-t-voted-before-in-midterms/5bd204e71b326b38c0be11d0/