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December 16, 2005
On The Wrong Side Of Big Money
Disclosure: Houtopia worked for the Jay Aiyer campaign.
Reports of the Labor movement's death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, it's alive and well, just in a new body. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has arrived in Houston, and wasted no time establishing a footprint.
Some may remember that SEIU, led by the brilliant and quirky Andy Stern, broke away from its long association with the AFL-CIO back in July, after a nasty battle over the Labor movement's direction.
Armed with deep pockets -- $60 million -- and a new campaign, "Change to Win", SEIU set out to make its own mark on the organizing and political scenes. SEIU played big in municipal elections in Los Angeles, Raleigh, NC, and most recently San Antonio, where it backed mayoral candidate Julian Castro, who lost in a runoff. This fall SEIU landed in Houston, with its sights set on changing the organizational and political scene at City Hall.
It recently made a splash organizing local janitors, along with ACORN, a community empowerment organization, and others. SEIU national swept in with money and muscle to supplement the ground work ACORN and others had been doing for months. On December 1st, the janitors won the right to organize. SEIU national, which has had a Justice for Janitors campaign for years, but only arrived in Houston two months ago, wasted little time claiming credit for a victory with many fathers and mothers.
Simultaneously, SEIU had begun a war with its former AFL-CIO brethren, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) over the organization of Houston City employees. While City employees have no single official union, AFSCME has represented many of them for decades, and is less than thrilled with SEIU's intrusion. The battle has yet to play out and is likely to get nasty.
SEIU also decided to get involved in City races, mostly in a peripheral way, save one. While SEIU made modest contributions to unopposed City Controller Annise Parker, two incumbent Council Members with weak opposition -- Carol Alvarado and Adrian Garcia -- and Peter Brown, a well-funded candidate who won an open seat, it turned its real focus (and checkbook) to the open At-Large Position #2 race.
The race had five candidates, 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats -- Jay Aiyer and Sue Lovell. Aiyer, a virtually unknown attorney and Houston Community College Trustee, raised considerable resources -- some from the lobby, but mostly from his own Indian-American community. Lovell, a longtime Democratic activist who had run before, raised some money, mostly from traditional Democratic givers and the GLBT community. Enter SEIU.
In the November general election, SEIU did three citywide mailers for Ms. Lovell, plus thousands of paid phone calls, at least doubling what she spent on her own campaign, and blindsiding everyone in the race. After the dust had settled, both Democrats emerged into the runoff -- an outcome few had predicted. Exact figures are not yet known, but it looks like SEIU spent between $100,000-125,000 on Sue Lovell in the first round.
In the runoff, SEIU, understandably, wanted to see its investment through. Lovell's opponent, Aiyer, is a Democrat who received numerous other Labor endorsements and co-endorsements despite Lovell's longtime Labor ties (she's actually an AFSCME member -- we'll get to that.) Aiyer was hardly a natural enemy, but no matter to SEIU. They did five mail pieces in the runoff, both supporting Lovell and attacking Aiyer, and thousands more paid calls -- likely at least another $100,000-125,000 spent. Lovell won the race by 600 votes out of 36,000 cast.
As the dust begins to clear, we ask why? Why did SEIU make an unprecedented expenditure in a City race on a candidate who is herself an AFSCME member, with deep ties to the AFL-CIO and "old line" labor? What will SEIU expect of Lovell on difficult possible upcoming votes on organizing of City employees, or on the Mayor's plans for civil service reform at City Hall? Finally, the Aiyer campaign has lodged a City Ethics complaint over the huge expenditures, claiming illegal coordination, but even if the expenditures are found to be truly independent, should any one entity be able to spend unlimited amounts -- $200,000-300,000 or more -- on a City race?
We will likely never know why SEIU chose to invest so heavily in one candidate in one race, so we can only speculate. We suspect it had less to do with the individual personalities in the race than with making a statement about its ability to influence local elections here. SEIU likely didn't expect Aiyer to survive the first round, and was gearing up to take on Poli Acosta or another of the Republicans. That he did may have been too bad as far as SEIU was concerned, but of little consequence.
In the At-Large #2 race, SEIU had an opportunity to back an underfunded candidate for an open seat and make the difference, and that's exactly what it did. Makes for good bragging to donors and sends a message that, local roots or no roots, SEIU is here now and to be taken seriously.
Still smarting from a tough, narrow defeat, the Aiyer campaign is left scratching its collective head. How did we end up on the wrong side of big money?
Posted by houtopia at December 16, 2005 02:40 PM