What happened in Iowa and New Hampshire?

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Jolted by the Iowa primary election, labor advocates are puzzling out the significance of its disappointing results. Both wings of our labor leadership mobilized forces, each for its own preferred candidate: The industrial-manufacturing wing, like the Steelworkers and Machinists, plugged hard for their man, Richard Gephardt, who campaigned wearing an AFL-CIO union jacket. With only 11% of the vote, his cause collapsed and he abandoned the race. The public employee-service wing - SEIU and AFSCME - went all out for Howard Dean. With only 20% of the vote, his campaign suffered a devastating setback as he dropped from strong front runner to a weak third place. Added together, the two labor-backed candidates got only 31% of the total vote. Labor leaders seemed stunned, unable to account for the slim results of all their efforts. Actually, from labor's standpoint, the outcome was even more depressing than these stark statistics suggest.

They might have been forewarned by the outcome of the popular referendum on recalling the governor of California. Here in a state with a strong union movement, labor leaders campaigned against the recall, but a substantial majority rejected their advice and voted to dump the governor. Worse, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican terminator, won the governorship by a surprisingly large plurality.

Conditions in Iowa should have been far more advantageous for labor. In California the electorate included not only Democrats but Republicans who generally resist any labor message. In the Iowa primary, only Democrats voted, an electorate that is more responsive to a labor liberal program.

According to a post-election poll, most Iowa voters shared with labor a concern over precisely those issues that are on the top of the union agenda: health care, education, and jobs. Even though most voters disapproved of Bush's record on Iraq, their vote was really determined by their interest in these national problems.

Moreover, labor's two wings in combination had a multi-faceted appeal. If you were somewhat more mainstream-inclined, you could vote for Gephardt who supported the war in Iraq. If you were disenchanted, you could go with Dean, a vigorous critic of the war. Something for almost everyone.

Labor began with a strong natural base of potential support. The poll showed that 23% of the primary voters reported a labor union member in their household. But more than half of them rejected the labor-backed candidates.

The pattern was repeated a week later in New Hampshire. The Service Employees and AFSCME went all-out again for Dean. This time, with Gephardt gone, over 75% of union household voters rejected the union choice. Only 24% of them pulled the lever for Dean.

And so, despite all the advantages and the mighty effort, the union campaign, both parts, fell apart. Labor proved unable to inspire and mobilize its own base. No wonder, then, that it could not reach out effectively to the selective but broader public of Democratic voters. The labor movement has an inner union problem: its own membership remains deaf to its appeal.

There must be lessons here. Promoters of labor's New Unity Partnership insist that it is pointless to pay attention to democracy inside unions at a time when it is urgent to organize the unorganized. Not union democracy but industrial democracy is their shibboleth. Perhaps they have it upside down. It could be that it is essential to refurbish union democracy not only to make labor a strong political force on the outside, but also an effective force for organizing an industrial democracy. As we mull over the primary results, that surely is something worth considering.