The Retired Teachers vote – What I missed

If you asked me to predict the Retired Teachers Chapter (RTC) election in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) a few weeks ago, I would have said “we have a chance, but we are underdogs.” If you begged me for a number, and I trusted you not to repeat it, I might have said “43% – 57%, best Retiree Advocate result ever, but not yet enough to win.”

And it turned out, I was wrong. Not only did Retiree Advocate win, but we (I am part of Retiree Advocate, or RA) won big, it wasn’t close. Retiree Advocate beat Unity Caucus 63% to 37%. What did I miss? (Spoiler, I had all the evidence, but I ignored it.)

 I have not worked with Retiree Advocate before. I wasn’t retired until two years ago. I had not previously seen their campaign up close. Each year RA ran 100 or so candidates – all the officers (10) and exec board (15), but not all of the delegates (300). As I understand it, the biggest part of previous campaigns was a one-page flyer. In RTC elections, ballots are mailed to retiree homes. Election rules include with the ballot a one-page flyer from each caucus. There also was some flyer distribution, and some social media. There may have been some phone calls? It was a credible campaign, although the result was usually a symbolic 10%-15% of the RTC vote.

(Three years ago, news of Mulgrew and the MLC’s Medicare Advantage plan broke during the election. RA added one line to its flyer – but that one line, and word of mouth, led to a surge in votes – 29%. A year later, in the general election, RA as part of a coalition also won 29%. Perhaps the damage to Unity was done, and this was the new reality?)

• Here is discussion of retiree voting patterns and numbers from 2022: The Retiree Vote
• Here is discussion of numbers for the election that just happened – 1 day before – Some Numbers

So what took an underdog campaign and turned it into a winner? Well, the easy answer is correct: Medicare Advantage. Retirees did not want Medicare Advantage, and instead of backing down, Unity doubled down. Mulgrew kept supporting the City’s appeals (at first openly, later you could tell because Mulgrew’s lawyer was helping the City) – and even on Unity’s election flyer they wrote that Medicare Advantage was better than our current health care. This was, for the most part, a one issue campaign.

But what were the mechanics that turned Unity’s pigheaded commitment to a scheme that enraged retirees into the votes that defeated them? UFT elections are generally low-turnout affairs… and Unity has loyalists… and was starting with a huge built-in advantage (all the jobs, all the positions, all the publicly facing stuff) and a voting record (16000 to 6500 in the last chapter election).

10,000 more votes than last

But the results came in. And we pulled in over 10,000 more votes. How did we get them?

NYCOPSR

The biggest single source was the support of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees (the group behind the law suits that have stopped the City/MLC/Mulgrew Medicare Advantage plan). Marianne mentioned us multiple times, had several of us on her YouTube shows, and pushed her supporters within the UFT RTC to vote for us.

Advertising, flyering, and media seems to have been a bigger campaign than in the past. We were in front of UFT borough offices, at events, even in complexes where concentrations of UFT retirees live. We took advertisements in Patch and the Chief and other publications. We got letters into local and community newspapers, and even into the Voice of the People in the NY Daily News. Compared to previous campaigns, I think this was a bigger, more organized effort. And it probably moved votes. Yet we know that this sort of indirect campaign helps, and helps set a tone, but that it takes direct campaigning to change many minds, to get individuals to mail in a ballot.

Retail campaigning , partially by accident, partially by design, was huge. One on one. Friend to friend. Acquaintance to acquaintance.

300 Candidates

Retiree Advocate made a crucial decision to run a “full slate.” ie 300 candidates. In the previous election we had run about 120. We made this decision because we wanted to present ourselves with a full ticket, wanted to underline that this was a real campaign, that we were an actual alternative. RA might have been a protest vote in previous elections – in this election we were a real alternative (even if we thought victory unlikely). And so it was important to us to run the full 300. (note: I was involved with the “candidate committee” where we coordinated recruitment).

It turned out not to be easy to get to 300. We asked RA members first. And people who had run with us in the past. And we stalled out around 200. Of course, we started early, so this was early December. We dug deeper – we reached out more broadly. And we brought more in. Late December Marianne put out an appeal, and then another, to UFT Retirees, and there was good response. And crucially, we asked candidates to reach out to more candidates – and ended up with people we had never met. We didn’t just get to our number (331) – but we broadened as we got there – and we began to activate our candidates in the process of building the campaign.

A couple more notes on the candidates. We asked all RA candidates to read and accept (not necessarily agree with every line, but accept) our platform. And the overwhelming majority did. As we got closer we did lose a few people – four rejected the platform, some never responded, a few changed their minds, a couple were UFT Retirees, but not members of the RTC, one woman passed, someone was trying to run on both RA and Unity’s slates – but we had our 300. We also were aware that Unity was having different struggles filling its slate. Some people were on their list who reported not being aware they were, others agreed but only after multiple calls. Some prominent names were missing. They seem to have finalized their 300 significantly later than RA.

As we moved into April and May, it turned out that among our 300 candidates, who included people Retiree Advocate had not known before this year – some from the NYCOPSR, many from friends of friends or colleagues of colleagues – among our 300, some of whom had already recruited candidates – we had campaign activists.

Each one, Reach one

We had 3 overlapping lists – the Retiree Advocate listserve – a Retiree Advocate mailing list (which we migrated to nationbuilder) – and our candidates. My work was mostly with the candidates – but there was some similar work with the lists. I have to say, the candidates we had already managed to – almost inadvertently – semi-activate during the recruitment period. This was pushing on an open door.

We asked candidates to develop expanded lists of who they could solicit for support. Friends. Acquaintances. Family. Anyone who is a UFT retiree. Former colleagues.

As we got closer to the balloting, we sent out more specific messages. Rather than describe them, I will share some:

Write emails to anyone you know who is UFT. Friends. Neighbors. Bridge partners. Book club members (please – this is one of the most important things we can do). Bring up election at lunch/social events with other retirees. (Please do)

Who can you reach who you have not reached?   That’s the Get Out the Vote piece for us – since 80% of new voters will be RA votes. We don’t need to target – any retiree helps. Who have we not thought of? How can we get to them?  A phone call is only one person – but much more effective than a mass-mailing. Are there phone calls – or personal emails – that we can still make? Please share ideas / success stories.

And keep calling and emailing retirees you know… every vote matters.

Can you email How your calls and emails are going? (positive responses?) when your ballot arrives and you vote? How many people you have on your list to call/email?

Did you reach out to every UFT retiree you know? 

• Friends √
• Relatives √
• Neighbors – did you miss anyone?
• Former Colleagues? Worth trying everyone
• Members of social groups, book clubs, classes, etc?  There are lots of people here
• Friends of relatives. Relatives of friends. Keep thinking!

Happy to organize some brainstorming – almost everyone can find a few people they had not thought of.

Call people who said they are voting for RA, and make sure they voted. There are people who promised to vote for us. Let’s make sure they follow through. This is a genuine “Get out the Vote” activity (the rest is campaigning) – and GOTV is what makes or breaks modern campaigns. If they say yes, they voted, ask for a detail. I usually ask which post office they brought it to. Most people will tell you – but some will say “oh, actually, I’m about to mail it in” – and you might have just saved a vote! These are OUR votes – and we need to make sure that none of them are left on top of the refrigerator

(optional) – Do you want to call other Retiree Advocate supporters, and help explain to them how to “Get out the Vote”? If you do, respond, and we can set you up with some calls.

Calls

Interestingly enough, we got a strong response for volunteers to make phone calls. We should have started earlier, and made more of them. The calls generally had three questions. Here’s an email I sent to a volunteer:

thank you for offering to make calls.  The schmoozier the better – helps morale, keeps people pushing (the campaign runs until mid-June, but most of the voting will be done in a couple of days). The routine is, 1. Make sure they voted. 2. Make sure they did some outreach to others. and then the big one. 3. Ask them to get back in touch with everyone who said they planned to vote for us. Did THOSE people mail in their ballots?  This has been saving a good number of votes.

I think distinguishing between phone banking voters (which is good) and phone banking campaigners (which is worth so much more) was very important.

And I made a bunch of calls. And the results were amazing. The responses were positive. And I had all the information I needed to realize that we were winning. And I felt great about the responses, but somehow I stopped myself from reevaluating how well we were doing based on this entirely accurate information. Disbelief got in my way?

Positive Responses I Got (and discounted, wrongly)

Phone call to a supporter/candidate. He’d been out making calls. Good. He had recruited key people who had worked at other schools, and got them to work the retiree lists from their schools as well. I asked about any pushback – what percentage were saying they weren’t sure, or voting for Unity. None. He said there were no Unity voters. I thought that was fantastic. But did not factor it into my predictions. And I also missed that he had reached groups retired from multiple schools, and turned some of them into captains. Each one, reach one? Or each one, reach scores?

Phone call to a supporter/candidate. Prominent in her community, gave her some extra clout campaigning. Also well connected with her retirees from her previous school, and with connections from some other schools. She had been diligent about reaching all of them. Any pushback? None. Not a single Unity voter. Fantastic! But I didn’t factor that in.

Phone call to a supporter/candidate who I knew from years ago, from my first school. Let’s call him Dave, because that’s his name. He’s been a supporter, but not super-active, I don’t think. I have not been in touch. But he was always a fun guy, nice to talk, and he liked talking to me. He was a little surprised, pleasantly, I hope, by my call, and happy to talk – and some people are just nice to talk to. You know people like that. He had done a little outreach, didn’t know that many people who were UFT Retirees, but those that he did, he had lined up their votes. And we were talking and schmoozing, and having a nice time, and some reminiscences from the old days, I remember I was on the phone, walking up Broadway, near NYU, and he remembered that he had numbers for a bunch of people from our school, and hung up – interrupted a nice conversation – to go make calls. How many points for enthusiasm is that? Fantastic! But I didn’t factor that in.

I reached out to people who are members of Unity, or used to be members of Unity. In some cases I appealed for a vote for Retiree Advocate, with some success. Several actually agreed to campaign. Some would not vote RA, but agreed to vote for me. So first, as a sign of respect, I was touched. And second, this included people who would not have done that in former elections. And it wasn’t just me.

Many of us were not afraid to campaign directly with members of the Unity Caucus. We got some votes. We learned that their support was already crumbling. Frankly, we could have done much more. Among this group, yes, there was anger over privatizing Medicare, but for some there was accumulated resentment, in some cases distrust. Unity had not done a great job among their own supporters.

Phone call to a former Unity member, who I knew would campaign for us. Told me back in January that they were unwilling to be a candidate, but would work their contacts. I didn’t need to make this call. The person has a significant network of contacts, from multiple schools, from a few adjoining neighborhoods, and even without my calls texted me periodically on the progress they were making harvesting votes. And nope, no pushback that people were voting the other way. Absolutely fantastic! But I didn’t factor this in.

There were a lot more calls. And I reached out to voters (not campaigners) as well – but once we had their vote, still tried to get them to find someone else. All good stories. But what I shared above are some of the best.

It is true, my friends and contacts were already willing to talk to an opposition person (me) which skews my sample. And most (not all) of these reports are Bronx and most (not all) of these reports are high school… But there was good evidence that the election was going far better than I thought, and I ignored that evidence.