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Get Four
|  | JULY 28, 2004
A Union Chief's Bold New Tack Even as SEIU President Andrew Stern heads a massive effort to put a Democrat in the White House, he admits the party needs fixing With 1.6 million members, the Service Employees International Union is the nation's fastest-growing labor group. Much of the credit goes to SEIU President Andrew L. Stern, who has added 800,000 members since taking the helm in 1996. Now, while Stern throws its muscle behind Big Labor's efforts to get John Kerry elected, he's also pushing for changes at the AFL-CIO, of which the SEIU is a part. At the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Stern sat down with BusinessWeek's Lorraine Woellert and Paula Dwyer to discuss labor's strategy for the Presidential campaign and the future of his union. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation: Q: The Presidential race remains neck and neck. How can Kerry pull this off? A: In the end, the election is going to be won by turning out new voters who aren't necessarily swing or independent. They just have been previously unregistered or previously not voting.... It's a very thin margin. For example, in Missouri, [pollsters] assume an 8% African-American turnout. [Yet], in 2000 there was a 12% African-American turnout. When you ask [pollsters] why, they say 2000 was an aberration, because [traditionally] only 8% [have] voted. But the reason 12% voted in 2000 was because [Democrats] worked to get the vote out. Q: Republicans are doing things like collecting and using church directories for canvassing. You're saying this type of tactic is new? A: People used to go to the churches and give out the voter guide to everyone. That's a lot different than getting the church list and talking to those people as a target audience, identifying them, registering them, and turning out the vote. [It's gone from being] a swing voter, independent strategy to being a new voter, new target strategy. Q: Do you have numerical targets in the key states? A: [Iowa Governor Tom] Vilsack says Iowa is collecting 1,200 absentee ballots a day. In Missouri we've registered over 50,000 [voters]. We did a hundred-and-something-thousand in Philadelphia, 70,000 of which ended up voting in the mayor's race. Q: How have the new McCain-Feingold rules limiting campaign donations affected the game? A: McCain-Feingold has liberated independent groups to do what they thought they could do better than the party, which is do grassroots, registration, and mobilization.... In the past, if you had [unlimited] soft money and you were [a big donor like] Haim Saban or Steve Bing, you gave it to Bill Clinton and got a night in the Lincoln Bedroom or a flight on Air Force One. But since they've limited soft money...you can't do that anymore. If you're someone like George Soros, who is a businessman, you want to have a high-performing organization. You're almost like a venture capitalist trying to figure out where to invest your money. [The new system] gives donors the advantage of figuring out how to get credit and how to get effectiveness at the same time. When the parties were in charge, all you could do was get credit, because the parties determined effectiveness. It really is like a market where people compete to convince George Soros or Haim Saban or Steve Bing or unions or whomever that you have the best product on the market, not just the largest product. Q: Is there a risk that the message might get muddled? That you get a multitude of conflicting messages? A: Perfect capitalists would say the market would resolve that problem. Q: The GOP made great progress in turning out the vote in 2000, when they basically stole the unions' playbook. They're building on that effort this year. How do the get-out-the-vote efforts on each side stack up? A: The Republican Party is a dictatorship right now. All the money is in the party.... You have a single line of control. It's very top-down, as when Bill Clinton ran the [Democratic] party. The party was really Bill Clinton's consulting firm, Bill Clinton's media firm. If you want to know the worthlessness of parties, in some people's minds, ask Bill Clinton why, when he left office as the greatest fund-raiser in the history of the Democratic Party, [he] left it [in debt] in an old building with no voter file. It must mean you don't think much of an institution if, after eight years in office, you don't think it needs to live on beyond you. The Republicans are a party controlled by the President and [GOP political operatives] Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman. There are advantages. They know what they want to do. But there are disadvantages. They're very inflexible.
BW MALL
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