Mass. voters sent message about the economy, union says

Confusion about the Democrats' healthcare bill and anxiety over the economy cost them their 60th Senate vote, according to a senior official with the AFL-CIO.

“This is really a statement of frustration that working people have, across the country, around the economy and the question of jobs,” Karen Ackerman, the union's political director, told The Hill. “In Massachusetts this was a general overall frustration that no one was really addressing their needs."

In a poll the AFL-CIO commissioned Tuesday night, three quarters of respondents said the main issue was concern about jobs and the economy, Ackerman said. “They wanted to send a message to whomever, it wasn't necessarily the White House.”

Anxiety about losing healthcare benefits under the Democrats' reform plan was also an issue. "Folks are worried that they're going to have fewer benefits, not just that they'll be taxed on the benefits they have but they'll have some of their benefits taken away," she said. "There's a lot of confusion about what the Democrats' health plan is."

Although the AFL-CIO and other progressive groups scrambled to bolster Democrat Martha Coakley's faltering campaign, there simply wasn't enough time, Ackerman said.

"Nobody flagged that this race was in trouble," she said. "We, like everybody else, did not see this coming."

When the union did sense trouble last week, it directed resources into the state.

“We put a union program into place, really, in the last week,” she said, adding that the AFL-CIO sent 95,000 mail pieces to its Massachusetts members and made half a million phone calls. “There was really not enough time to reach out to union members and really talk about the issues. There just wasn’t the time."

Meanwhile, Coakley failed to live up to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s legacy as a champion for working people.

“She did not make that case to working people,” Ackerman said. “They basically went in big numbers for Brown. We are confident that it's because they were not convinced that she cared enough about issues that affected them -- jobs and the economy.”

The percentage of union members who turned out Tuesday still isn't clear, Ackerman said, adding that labor groups can still help get voters to the polls -- for the right candidate.

“When a candidate is good on the issues and has a strong campaign and makes the case, the union program can turn out voters for that candidate,” she noted. When the candidate “is weak or hasn’t yet been able to prove him or herself that they are fighters for working people, then it's very hard to turn people out.”

The AFL-CIO is now in the early stages of preparing for the 2010 campaign, she added. “We expect to have the biggest political program ever.”