The Vermont AFL-CIO endorsed Doug Racine for the Democratic gubernatorial primary nomination on Sunday. Racine beat out his four contenders – Peter Shumlin, Susan Bartlett, Deb Markowitz and Matt Dunne – for the coveted support of one of the state’s biggest union organizations. The primary is set for Aug. 24.
Racine, along with a slate of other candidates for statewide office, won the endorsement on a voice vote.
There wasn’t a single nay, according to Jill Charbonneau, acting president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, which represents 27 affiliated unions, including the National Association of Letter Carriers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. In all, the unions have 9,200 members.
“Doug has a strong labor record,” Charbonneau said. “We also feel he has electability and that he would be successful in the fall.”
Racine’s campaign manager, Amy Shollenberger, said the endorsement will “add to the momentum we’ve been building,” and it will enable him to bring in more money and draw more volunteers.
Racine said: “I’m very excited that they’ve recognized the work I’ve done on behalf of organized labor and all working Vermonters on issues from minimum wage increases to working to fix worker’s compensation to health care, and this will add momentum to my campaign. It’s a big boost for a primary contest.”
With five Democrats in the running for the governor’s seat, the Vermont AFL-CIO’s executive board decided to hold its annual convention this month instead of the fall in order to endorse candidates for the primary, according to Charbonneau.
She said union members affiliated with the Vermont AFL-CIO will donate time and money to campaigns.
“It gives them some momentum at a time when candidates are trying to distinguish themselves and promote their electability,” Charbonneau said. “It’s wonderful to have good candidates to choose from, and we certainly did.”
Impact on the Democratic primary
Will the endorsement narrow the field of Democratic candidates? Probably not.
The AFL-CIO endorsement will help Racine “a little bit,” according to Eric Davis, a Middlebury College professor emeritus of political science and long-time observer of state politics. That’s because the vote represents the opinions of the leaders of the unions that are a part of the AFL-CIO, rather than the membership.
The endorsements that matter most, Davis said, will come from Vermont-NEA, the state’s teachers union and the Vermont State Employees Association, which represents state workers. Backing from these unions can be translated into votes, he said, and in a year when the primary turnout is expected to be very low, it will be public sector workers who make or break the election. Davis predicts about 60,000 voters will go to the polls on Aug. 24, and he expects a 50 percent to 75 percent turnout from union members.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if 10 percent of the voters were from Vermont-NEA,” Davis said.
The teacher’s union, which has roughly 10,000 members, Davis said, will announce its pick today at a press conference (stay posted for a vtdigger.org story and video early this afternoon).
If the Vermont-NEA endorses Racine as well, that could give him a significant boost, but it won’t narrow the field, Davis said.
“I expect all five candidates will stay in to the end,” Davis said. “The filing deadline is in the next two weeks if we’re going to have anyone drop out. Some will be more disappointed (not to get the endorsement of labor) than others.”
Dunne and Shumlin would be surprised to be shunned by union groups, he said. Bartlett and Markowitz, on the other hand, likely wouldn’t expect to receive labor endorsements, according to Davis.
The endorsement slate for two other top contested Democratic primary offices, which consisted of candidates with well-established liberal track records, also included Steve Howard for lieutenant governor (his primary opponent is Christopher Bray) and Jim Condos for secretary of state (his opponent is Chris Merriman). Sitting members of the U.S. Congress, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., were also endorsed.
Democrats Jeb Spaulding, state treasurer, and Bill Sorrell, Vermont attorney general, were snubbed by the unions, according to a Green Mountain Daily post. The union delegates didn’t back Spaulding, “because of his support for lowering public employee pensions,” according to the GMD report, and they didn’t support Sorell because union delegates were concerned about his “positions on Instant Runoff Voting and campaign finance regulations.”
The big surprise (perhaps besides the gubernatorial announcement), was the backing of Doug Hoffer for auditor (his opponent would be Ed Flanagan). Hoffer, who said he is 99 percent sure he will run, is an independent policy analyst who once produced reports for Flanagan when he held the slot in the late 1990s.
Davis said the Vermont AFL-CIO backing will give a boost to candidates further down the ballot like Howard, Condos and Hoffer. “Endorsements can make more of a difference in a low profile race,” Davis said.
Unions unhappy with Legislature
Union members were motivated to move the date of the convention up in part because of what they saw as a disappointing legislative session. The deal that legislative leaders struck with the Douglas administration on a fix for the bankrupt Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund was particularly troubling to AFL-CIO union members, she said.
“It’s been a not very good session for organized labor,” Charbonneau said. “It was all the more reason for us to dust ourselves off and get out there and get ourselves a candidate we believe will support working Vermonters.”
Charbonneau said the Vermont AFL-CIO was opposed to a number of provisions in the trust-fund fix, including the one-week waiting period for laid-off workers to receive benefits (which goes into effect in 2012), the inability of workers to collect unemployment and severance payments simultaneously and changes to the amounts laid-off employees can earn if they work part-time. Charbonneau said Vermont now has the most regressive unemployment system in the country.
“Our actions on unemployment put us back in the Dark Ages,” Charbonneau said. “Once you get legislation like that, it’s hard to go back.”
Ironically perhaps, given the Vermont AFL-CIO’s great displeasure with the unemployment fund fix, the union supported Racine, who voted for the bill. The other two state senators in the gubernatorial race, Shumlin and Bartlett, also supported the legislation.
