{"id":2455119,"date":"2020-02-27T15:11:24","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T22:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=321696"},"modified":"2020-02-27T15:11:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T22:11:24","slug":"labor-union-unveils-150m-campaign-to-help-defeat-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/labor-union-unveils-150m-campaign-to-help-defeat-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor union unveils $150M campaign to help defeat Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
President Donald Trump with members of the president’s coronavirus task force speaks during a news conference at the Brady press briefing room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in Washington.<\/strong>
AP Photo\/Manuel Balce Ceneta<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 One of the nation\u2019s largest labor unions is unveiling plans to invest $150 million in a nationwide campaign to help defeat President Donald Trump, a sweeping effort focused on eight battleground states and voters of color who typically don\u2019t vote.<\/p>\n

The investment marks the largest voter engagement and turnout operation in the history of the Service Employees International Union, which claims nearly 2 million members. The scope of the campaign, which quietly launched last month and will run through November\u2019s general election, reflects the urgency of what union president Mary Kay Henry calls \u201ca make-or-break\u201d moment for working people in America under Trump\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s systematically unwinding and attacking unions. Federal workers rights have been totally eviscerated under his watch,\u201d Henry said in an interview. \u201cWe are on fire about the rules being rigged against us and needing to elect people that are going to stand with workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The union\u2019s campaign will span 40 states and target 6 million voters focused largely in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to details of the plan shared with The Associated Press. The union and its local members will pay particular attention to two key urban battlegrounds they believe will play a defining role in the 2020 general election: Detroit and Milwaukee. There may be some television advertising, but the investment will focus primarily on direct contact and online advertising targeting minority men and women who typically don\u2019t vote.<\/p>\n

Few groups of voters will be more important in the 2020 general election. Trump won the presidency four years ago largely because of his popularity with working-class whites and a drop-off in turnout from minority voters.<\/p>\n

The union\u2019s political director, Maria Peralta, noted that Trump\u2019s campaign has been working effectively in recent months to win over some minority voters, particularly men, who have traditionally voted Democratic.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going after our communities in ways that are pervasive. We\u2019re deeply aware of that,\u201d Peralta said. \u201cThey\u2019re talking about the strength of the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Service Employees International Union, like the Democratic Party and its allies across the nation, faces significant headwinds in its fight to deny Trump a second term. Voters who may dislike his overall job performance are generally pleased with his leadership on the economy, and unemployment for black Americans has hit record lows in recent months.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Trump\u2019s campaign is far ahead of where it was four years ago, when it had little national organization.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Trump campaign announced plans to open 15 \u201cBlack Voices for Trump Community Centers\u201d<\/a> in battleground states and major cities, including Michigan and Wisconsin. The offices will feature a line of campaign swag adopting the \u201cwoke\u201d label, and videos of prominent Trump surrogates like online stars Diamond and Silk explaining their support for the president and pamphlets outlining the president\u2019s record.<\/p>\n

SEIU is the most diverse union in the United States. The union\u2019s membership features those who work in health care, food service, janitorial services and state and local government workers, among others. Half its members are people of color, and more than half make less than $15 an hour.<\/p>\n

The 2020 investment is designed to benefit Democrats up and down the ballot this fall, though defeating Trump stands as a primary goal.<\/p>\n

That said, SEIU\u2019s political team has determined that a message simply attacking Trump isn\u2019t effective with its target audience, which includes a significant number of conservatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to get too caught up in the Trump bashing,\u201d Peralta said. \u201cData shows people care about wages, and they care about health care across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

The union also determined that it\u2019s particularly effective to highlight Trump\u2019s work to weaken labor unions and conditions for working-class Americans.<\/p>\n

After campaigning for a higher minimum wage, Trump has done little to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 for more than a decade. His administration has also taken steps to make it harder for new groups of workers to form unions. And labor officials have decried his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Supreme Court, which dealt a huge blow to labor in 2018 by ruling that government workers no longer could be required to pay union fees.<\/p>\n

When asked, Henry had little to say about the specific Democratic presidential contenders fighting for the chance to take on Trump. SEIU may endorse a candidate in the coming months, she said, but it has decided to stay out of the messy nomination fight for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to figure out, inside our union as we walk through Super Tuesday and through March, what do working people and our members think about the choice in the field,\u201d Henry said.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump with members of the president’s coronavirus task force speaks during a news conference at the Brady press briefing room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in Washington.AP Photo\/Manuel Balce Ceneta WASHINGTON \u2014 One of the nation\u2019s largest labor unions is unveiling plans to invest $150 million in a nationwide campaign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 13:12:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}