Labour endorsement could mean win

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/09/2014 (4014 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every civic election, the Winnipeg Labour Council endorses municipal candidates. The list is typically met with a collective yawn. It’s never been clear labour’s nod amounted to much on voting day, despite frequent moaning from the right that certain candidates are beholden to unions and couldn’t get elected without labour’s shock troops.

Unions, like corporations, can’t make donations. Their roster of endorsed candidates, especially non-incumbents, has never been star-studded. And during the last two campaigns, labour endorsements rarely resulted in the installation of new, progressive faces in the council chamber. Labour was no match for the entrenched power of incumbency, and even in wide open seats, its influence has been spotty. In 2010, for example, labour-backed Ross Eadie won the open Mynarski seat, but broadcaster Shaneen Robinson lost Elmwood, a traditional NDP/labour stronghold, to Thomas Steen’s Tory-organized campaign.

So this June, when the labour council released its obligatory list, most shrugged it off as symbolism and not much more.

That might not be the case, thanks to a labour movement that’s better organized, turnover on city council and the evaporation of centralized party campaigns, especially by the Tories.

This election, the Winnipeg Labour Council launched a more strategic candidate-recruitment process. The council endorsed some as early as February, manoeuvred others into winnable wards and brokered backroom NDP and union support around key names to avoid vote-splitting.

There are four wards where sitting councillors aren’t running again — a huge opportunity. Labour-backed candidates have a strong shot at winning at least two and could also steal one more from a right-leaning councillor. This would significantly shift the balance of power on council to the left.

With mayoral candidate Judy Wasylycia-Leis flush with experienced NDP campaign staff, labour council president Dave Sauer has focused his attention on council races, offering advice on everything from strategy to sign-buying and mustering union volunteers.

Corralling volunteers willing to door-knock, drop leaflets, make phone calls and put up lawn signs is, as Mayor Sam Katz noted Monday, the toughest part of a campaign and absolutely critical to victory.

Already, teams of trade unionists have hit the streets for Wasylycia-Leis, St. James-Brooklands candidate Stefan Jonasson and others, with calls for more volunteers going out nearly every weekend. Several union-endorsed candidates, such as St. Boniface’s Matt Allard, are way ahead on the sign war.

That door-to-door activity has been bolstered by a couple of unions that are politically cranky in a way they haven’t been, largely over a scandal-plagued city hall and perceived attacks on city staff. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505, which represents city bus operators, is usually hands-off at election time. Now, the ATU has about 30 core volunteers.

Still murky, though, is whether labour-endorsed candidates have access to lists of potentially friendly voters, including NDP lists. In any campaign, those lists, compiled by party headquarters or by area MLAs or MPs, are the Holy Grail. They give a campaign a huge head-start. It’s always been assumed that with a labour-council endorsement comes some sort of NDP list.

Not so, claims Sauer, insisting labour-endorsed candidates only receive a list of a couple dozen area union activists. Some candidates and campaign staffers dispute this, saying the second-best part of a labour endorsement is access to an established voter database.

Others agree with Sauer, saying the NDP guards its central list jealously. But that doesn’t mean area MLAs or MPs, friendly with the candidate and comforted by the labour council’s seal, don’t hand over their voter database.

Less murky is what politicians agree to give up in exchange for labour’s nod. Candidates say during the get-to-know-you interview process, they were never asked to vote a certain way or champion certain policies. Sauer says all the WLC asks in exchange for an endorsement is a friendly ear.

The sense labour is a bigger player in this election is magnified by the fact no one else is. The NDP no longer endorses candidates and has passed the work of identifying left-leaning candidates to the labour council, which many view, with good reason, as a proxy for the party.

Creating an even bigger vacuum are the Tories, who appear to have bowed out of the civic race entirely. In the last civic elections, Katz ran a slate of council candidates using a centralized organization quarterbacked by Marni Larkin, the Conservative strategist whose team helped eked out an improbable victory for MPs Lawrence Toet and Joyce Bateman. Though senior federal and provincial Tories are working on mayoral candidate Gord Steeves’ campaign, there’s very little evidence the party is helping much on council races.

Beyond that, Winnipeg has no other partisan or issue-based groups able to do ground-level, ward-by-ward organizing like the labour council.

That leaves unions free to flex their political muscle. We’ll see on Oct. 22 if a labour endorsement actually matters.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca