Re: a teacher in trouble, reply to Nathan
Nathan Newman wrote:
So I’m hardly alone in seeing it as one of the most significant victories for progressives in 2005. That you think the story is “obscure” reflects how detached LBO is from social movements with any base in real politics. Go to any meeting of groups doing state politics and TABOR is one of the number one topics of discussion.
See other coverage as well: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1297115 http://www.oraflcio.unions-america.com/2005_WU/7-44.htm http://www.afscme.org/press/2005/pr051102b.htm http://www.aft.org/presscenter/releases/2005/110205a.htm http://www.ohiosfuture.org/
With the exception of the CAP, these are all short election-day press releases. That’s hardly broad coverage.
At the CAP site, we learn:
Here’s some context to understand how we won this election. The two referenda were companion measures that came out of our legislature as a result of a much touted bipartisan budget compromise between the Republican governor and the Democratic majority legislature. All the Democrats and 40 percent of the Republicans voted to refer Colorado’s Economic Recovery Plan (C&D) to the electorate, which was significant because past attempts to address Colorado’s budget crisis had failed. The fact that C&D had bipartisan support with a surreally broad coalition of over 1,100 endorsing organizations was critical for a win. At the same time, such a coalition proved to be occasionally problematic as the campaign leadership decided early that their way to win was through TV ads and talking-head messaging meant to appeal to the so-called political center and mainstream Republicans. As a result, there was no messaging directed to low-income and people of color communities and less emphasis on grassroots field work - going door to door and speaking to voters from the heart about why C&D mattered and how they and their families would benefit. Therefore, it was critical that groups like the Colorado Progressive Coalition (CPC) were active in the campaign’s steering committee and coalition structures to raise these issues - with support from allies - and get the campaign on board. The campaign eventually prioritized a get out the vote effort and implemented a door to door field campaign led by groups like CPC and relying on volunteers that came from the coalition organizations. Reaching voters in targeted precincts in a neighbor to neighbor fashion was critical. Helpfully, the campaign did allow organizations to create their own literature with constituency specific messaging.
So while it’s wonderful that the forces of good won this one, the coalition behind it was very broad. An American Prospect pre-election piece http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10411 reports broad support from business groups & moderate Republicans. So thanks to Colorado’s unions for whatever they did in this fight, but they were hardly alone, and not taking any political risks.
Doug