A Hot Campaign Season Comes to a Close

by Doug Collier, President, SEIU Local 205

During the dog days of summer, your Union was out and about all across the state to get more pro-labor, pro-working family candidates elected to office all across Tennessee.

It was a tough summer, with SEIU's endorsed candidates getting mixed results at the polls on August 7.  First, the bad news.  Several great candidates the Union supported in the Metro School Board elections lost their races.  Tim Coleman of Goodlettsville was unable to beat the politically-connected incumbent Mark North in District 3.  And William Mason Jr. lost to Sharon Gentry, who herself is practically an incumbent.  The Union's political coordinator, Mark Naccarato, lays out what happened.  "Both of these races were always going to be tough.  When you're a challenger in a race where voters are not getting information from the press, name recognition of the incumbent is extremely difficult to overcome.  The 'North' and 'Gentry' names are widely known across the county and that was always going to be an obstacle.  There is absolutely no doubt that our candidates outworked their opponents, but in the end, their name recognition was too much to overcome".  In District 9, Lee Limbird was edged out by Alan Coverstone, who made headlines with his record-breaking campaign fundraising.  Mark explains: "Both Alan Coverstone and Lee Limbird were highly qualified candidates, but Coverstone started campaigning earlier, raised a ridiculous amount of money, and had all his supporters locked in a couple of months ago.  Lee kept up well, but ultimately was forced to split her votes among the other 3 candidates in the race".

There's some good news that happened in some of Local 205's other races.  Ed Kindall was handily re-elected to the Metro School Board by the voters of District 7.  Among SEIU's other endorsed candidates, Mike Stewart won in a landslide for his bid to the State House of Representatives in District 52.  And, in an election that has been making national headlines over the last couple of weeks, Representative Steve Cohen won re-election to the U.S. Congress over Nikki Tinker, a corporate attorney at a union-busting law firm.  Despite a wave of horrible negative ads by the Tinker camp and a racist whisper campaign, Memphis voters gave their overwhelming support for Steve Cohen as he won with 80% of the vote in the solidly African-American district.

Meanwhile, away from the polls and at Nashville's city hall, two resolutions supported by SEIU passed the Metro Council.  The first, RS2008-381, mandated that any new voting machines that need to be ordered for the November elections will be "optical scan" machines that would provide a paper record of all votes in case of a recount.  This is a first step to phasing out all the electronic voting machines in Davidson County by 2010 and the resolution passed unanimously.  The second resolution was RS2008-402, which condemns the English-Only ballot initiative being sponsored by Councilman Eric Crafton and his unknown financial backers.  This resolution encourages all Davidson County residents to reject Crafton's exclusionary and borderline racist bill, which is almost certainly going to be on the ballot in November.  The passage of RS2008-402 is a victory for diversity, tolerance, and public safety in Davidson County.  SEIU will be weighing in on this issue again over the next few months and I strongly urge all of our members to keep their minds open and understand the facts about what the English-Only legislation will mean to all of us if it passes.

I'd like to personally thank the dozens of our staff and union members who volunteered their time to work on the campaigns.  Specifically, our Member Political Organizers this season were a top notch team.  Teresa West, Betty Russell, Brenda Shields, Lill Russell, Rhonda Blackshear, and Michelle Hardy were the backbone for the union's grassroots efforts and they all did a phenomenal job.  Whether they were making calls, formulating strategy with the candidates, or knocking doors, this group of "purple-powered people" led the way.  We also want to thank our union brothers and sisters who went above and beyond the call of duty to volunteer in the summer elections:  Michael Thomas, Michelle McKenzie, Jack Watkins, Eva Rogan, Andrew Linear, Janice Casey, Mary Owen, Billy Deaderick, and Shane Lankford all stepped up and made a big difference.  And I don't want to forget the SEIU staff members who volunteered extra hours at night and on Saturdays to work the campaigns:  Mark Naccarato, Jessica Stewart, Scotty Davison, Matthew Stafford, Matt Brown, William Currie, Trista Boseman, Maura Lee Albert, Jeff Berntsen, and Ed Timmons.

To take a brief look at some of what your Union worked on during the Metro School Board elections, click here.

We can never get everything we want with these election results.  It will be interesting to see how many of our members actually voted in this cycle and how much work we have to do to make sure that SEIU members turn out for Barack Obama in November.  In the meantime, we'll continue to learn from our mistakes and keep moving forward to make sure that all our members and their families understand that politics matters!