Working people and community allies mounted the state’s largest ground campaign in nearly a decade & created a winning playbook for Democrats nationally
Sacramento, CA – The day after Governor Gavin Newsom’s decisive victory over the Republican recall, SEIU California and labor and community allies who led the sweeping ground campaign behind the victory outlined their winning tactics for news reporters. The coalition of labor and more than 90 community organizations powered the largest ground campaign since the landmark Yes on Prop 30/No on Prop 32 victories in 2012. Their defeat of the recall not only protects important gains for working people in California, it serves as a national model for building a winning coalition of Black, Brown, white and API voters in 2022 and beyond.
“We showed the nation that the right-wing extremists and billionaires who wanted to undermine our state’s democracy cannot overcome the power of working people,” said Max Arias, Executive Director of SEIU Local 99 and Executive Board Member of SEIU California.
SEIU California led the largest, coordinated ground campaign of labor and community allies since 2012 in order to beat back the Republican recall. The statewide voter contact and Get Out the Vote Campaign had unprecedented results for an off-year special election:
GOTV
· 25,000 GOTV shifts between doors, phones, and texting
· Over 500k doors knocked
· Over 3 million calls made
Overall:
· Over 31 million calls made
· 1.5 million doors knocked
Of these, SEIU members knocked on over 412,000 doors, over 250,000 doors over the last four days of GOTV alone, and made over 4.8 million calls. SEIU members collectively contributed more than $6 million of their dollars to the anti-recall campaign and field efforts to turn out communities of color.
Oscar Lopez, Political Director for SEIU California, said: “This victory is the fruit of more than a decade of time and significant investment of members’ dollars into growing our political muscle as a coalition of labor and community organizations.”
“At the outset of this campaign, we set a goal of 10,000 volunteers, ambitious considering the truncated nature of this election. We blew past that goal, more than doubling that number in volunteer shifts,” said Steve Smith, communications director with the California Labor Federation. “What that means in terms of real-world impact can’t be overstated. Millions of personal contacts with voters helped turn the tide of this election.”
“Along with our labor allies, MVP is proud to have run one of the largest get out of the vote operations in the state to make sure our communities’ voices were heard and to protect the progress we have made to make California a more inclusive, just and equitable state,” said Amado Uno, Director of the Million Voters Project, a coalition of community-based civic engagement organizations that has been working for more than a decade to build political power in communities of color and lower-income communities throughout California. “Because we are rooted in local communities, because we are trusted local messengers and because we have invested in organizing, we were able to stand up a large scale GOTV program in a matter of weeks.”
Labor and community leaders hailed the defeat of the recall as a turning point and a clear signpost for the nation as we head into another very divisive election year.
“We’ve demonstrated it is possible to build an effective, energized, multi-racial coalition rooted in the concerns and priorities of working communities – Black, Brown, white, and API. When workers and communities come together to focus on the problems we face, we can overcome the politics of hate and division,” Arias concluded.
View the press conference held this morning here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/5n9dTwSOaWp7bd1JRCguUNfbjxxLN5CD53u-OZtkcYqtwNIiis-QvaxXnP_rL2VM.rh2sz3eNLb4kZ7Ha Passcode: ks19$Lvz
# # #
