I spent a good part of the last week looking at Obama’s sudden popularity with unions. Here’s my story, but there was some color that got cut out that I thought I’d share. If it is a true microcosm of what’s going on in Ohio, it’s really interesting.
The Obama campaign and its union partners are aiming to knock on a million doors in Ohio by tomorrow. The Cleveland area is ground zero for Ohio’s unions and for Democratic primary voters: 43% of those who voted in the 2004 Democratic primary live in the Cleveland media market. Change for Win has one of seven Ohio hubs in Cleveland and Andy Stern, SEIU president, spent Saturday morning rallying a thousand door knockers there. On the wall behind him were tallies of the work done so far. The goal for that particular hub was three rounds of contacts with 15,000 union households by March 4. As of Thursday they’d knocked on 5,985 doors, of which 1,503 signed Obama pledge cards. Comparatively only 189 identified themselves as Clinton supporters and 379 were undecided (the remaining 3,914 were either not home, weren’t voting or planned to vote Republican).