Door to door, unions pave path for Obama

Strolling amid a sprawl of two-story stucco homes in the southwest valley, a Culinary Local 226 member knocked on door after door, seeking votes for the Democratic Party ticket topped by President Barack Obama.

It was thirsty work, and the laborer, whose regular job is in housekeeping at the Rio, wore a fanny pack with a water bottle attached. She had a gallon jug of frozen water in her car along with a fresh bunch of grapes for lunch.

The union canvasser faced rejection at the first door she hit last Wednesday.

"I'm not voting," said a man, peeking from behind his cracked open door. Besides, he added, the union worker the canvasser was looking for didn't live there anymore. He moved to another city. Or another house. Who knew?

The union planned to track the missing worker through his job, using a list of about 55,000 Culinary members in Nevada that shows what party they belong to, where they live and work, as well as other contact information.

The house-by-house hunt is part of a huge union get-out-the-vote push that began on Labor Day and will continue through early voting, which started Saturday , and kick into overdrive on Election Day, Nov. 6. Now, instead of asking voters who they like, canvassers will tell them where to vote - and keep bugging them until they do.

If labor's small army of paid canvassers does its job, Obama will win Nevada a second time, helping him win re-election and defeat GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney. If strong enough, the president might pull some other down-ticket Democrats across the finish line with him.

'A FIGHT WORTH FIGHTING'

The Culinary is heavily promoting U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., in her bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., giving her extra boots on the ground that could counter all the negative TV ads in the tight Senate race.

Jeanette Hill, a veteran Culinary canvasser, said there's less voter energy this year compared to 2008, a historic election that saw the first African-American win the White House. Perhaps the newness of Obama has worn off, or the pain of the economic recession he inherited has been too hard to bear for some.

Nonetheless, Hill said she's confident Obama will win because union workers know the stakes are too high and if the Democratic president is booted, the labor movement and the middle class may suffer, she said. The Culinary is heavily Hispanic, and most polls show Obama has a 3-to-1 advantage over Romney among Latinos.

"Before, it was more exciting. This time the people aren't as excited as they were before," Hill said at the union hall as she prepared to canvas for the day. "I have to knock on so many doors to find the one person I need. I just go to the next house. In many ways, our future depends on it. I know it's a fight worth fighting."

Hill works at the Flamingo as a utility stocker, but along with about 90 other Culinary members, she has taken a leave from work to go on the union's payroll and canvas targeted neighborhoods in Southern Nevada. She said getting union members to pledge their vote to Obama has been easy, but Berkley isn't an automatic sell. And some folks, union or not, say they'll vote for Romney or Heller, according to Culinary canvassers.

"Some say, 'I don't know Shelley Berkley, but I'll vote the Democratic ticket,' " Hill said. "Some I've been talking to, they're listening to all those negative ads. They say, 'I'm not sure about her.' I tell them, 'She's union.' "

Many of the negative ads focus on the House Ethics Committee's investigation of whether Berkley had a conflict of interest in advocating on issues related to kidney treatment funding that may have benefited her physician husband, who owns kidney treatment clinics.

Still, the seven-term congresswoman is far more widely known than Heller in Southern Nevada, especially within the labor movement she has long supported. Berkley, at a recent Culinary hall visit to encourage canvassers, noted that her waiter father was a member and she, too, once worked as a cocktail waitress and keno runner.

"I can't win this election without you and what you're doing," Berkley told the Culinary workers.

Last Thursday, Berkley appeared at a union rally with Vice President Joe Biden at the Culinary Training Academy of Las Vegas, underlining her support for Obama's agenda. Biden said the president needs Berkley in the Senate so that Democrats can keep control and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid can keep his majority leader job.

COURT RULING EXPANDS WEAPONS

While the Culinary concentrates on getting its members to the polls, other active labor groups in Nevada are reaching beyond union households for the first time this election, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The Citizens United ruling from January 2010 not only tossed out a ban on corporations and unions making independent election expenditures, it also allows them to spend unlimited money on ads and other political tools that call for the election or defeat of individual candidates.

As a result, the Nevada AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union have for months been registering voters and knocking on doors, expanding far beyond the 150,000 union members in the Silver State.

The AFL-CIO has also launched a mail campaign promoting Obama, Berkley and congressional candidates state Sen. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, and Assembly Speaker John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas.

Horsford is running for the new 4th Congressional District against Republican Danny Tarkanian. Oceguera is trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., who represents the 3rd Congressional District.

On Saturday , the SEIU held a rally with the international head of the union, Mary Kay Henry, in Las Vegas to show Nevada's importance as one of nine battleground states where the 2 million-strong organization is focusing its attention. In Nevada, the SEIU has 18,000 members, including county employees, nurses and airport workers.

Henry said the SEIU is partnering with community groups such as Mi Familia Vota to reach out to Latino voters, who make up about 15 percent of the electorate and who could decide the election in several key races. SEIU has 90 canvassers going door to door and plans to boost that to 200 during early voting.

"We think of it as a union-community army," Henry said in an interview. "We have to reach outside of the labor movement and across communities. For us, the face-to-face conversations we're having are the key ingredient to identifying our voters, educating our voters and turning them out," especially during early voting.

REPUBLICANS WORK GROUND, TOO

Although outside GOP and Democratic groups are spending tens of millions of dollars on TV ads in Nevada to affect the outcome of the White House, Senate and congressional races, the unions believe direct contact with voters is more effective than a numbing series of 30-second commercials. The Republicans, too, have hired canvassers and have hundreds of volunteers from inside and outside the state hitting doors across Nevada.

Democrats have a 90,000-voter registration advantage over Republicans statewide, which gives Obama's party more voters to get to the ballot box. Republicans tend to vote in higher percentages, however.

"We have a ground game in place to make up that gap," said Darren Littell, communications director for Team Nevada, the Republican National Committee's operation here. "We have been identifying our voters - Republicans, independents, soft Democrats. We're not concerned with whether they're union households or Hispanic households. We don't care about demographics. All we want to know is, are you voting for Romney or Heller and down the ticket" for other Republicans. "If we turn out X percent, our people will win."

Last Wednesday, the Culinary canvasser had 49 doors to knock on her list. In less than an hour, she hit a half-dozen union households in one precinct. Two had already been visited by a GOP canvasser, who had left a door hanger that posed a question: "Can you afford four more years of the Democrats?"

Where no one was home, the Culinary canvasser left a flier focused on Romney's now-famous comment that 47 percent of Americans won't vote for him because they're too dependent on government. The flier shows a photo of a disabled veteran and an elderly couple, examples of the 47 percent who get govern­ment benefits.

"Thousands of union members are vets," reads the glossy flier. "Mitt Romney ignores that union members pay into the system over a lifetime of work."

At one home, a Hispanic woman answered the door.

"No English," she told the canvasser, who asked if the union member was home.

"At hotel," the woman answered, raising three fingers to suggest he would be home at 3 p.m.

The canvasser planned to return then.

At another home, an Asian woman answered the door. Two small children, a girl and boy, played at her feet while she spoke to the Culinary worker. The boy rang the doorbell over and over, laughing at the game.

"He go to L.A.," the woman said in broken English, referring to the union member being in Los Angeles.

She gave the canvasser the man's cellphone number so she could call him and ask if he planned to vote. The man is registered as a nonpartisan, a prized swing voter for either party.

Dogs barked at the canvasser at several stops, including a tail-wagging mutt from behind a "Beware of Dog" sign. A note to Federal Express to leave a package "under camera view" greeted the canvasser at one door. That household included two Democrats and one Republican, according to the Culinary list.

The canvasser scored on her fourth door of the day: two Democrats who plan to vote a straight Democratic ticket. The garage door was open, and the Culinary worker caught one of the voters ready to run errands, her vehicle running and dog barking in the back.

Down the street, Alise Bamforth was driving by when she saw a canvasser and stopped to shout encouragement. Bamforth said she voted for Obama in 2008 and would do so again.

"The Republicans have not given Obama the support he needs" to fix the economy, Bamforth said, adding that she's among the 47 percent "Romney so disdains." "I think all of them are conspiring against the man."

Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919. Follow @lmyerslvrj on Twitter.