By Dustin Brown
Six weeks before the Democratic primary, City Council Speaker Peter Vallone’s (D-Astoria) uphill fight to move into the mayor’s office has been marked by a steady climb in the polls and a sudden spurt of union endorsements.
Although the endorsements may bolster Vallone’s campaign, the city labor movement has been largely divided over the four Democratic candidates for mayor.
Vallone’s standing among the Democratic mayoral candidates has steadily improved in polls conducted by Quinnipiac University over the past six months. In February, only 11 percent of registered Democrats said they would vote for Vallone.
But he is now in a statistical dead heat with city Comptroller Alan Hevesi and Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. Vallone has 16 percent of the Democratic vote, compared to Hevesi’s 17 percent and Ferrer’s 18 percent. Public Advocate Mark Green has consistently held the most potential votes at around 30 percent, the Quinnipiac polls show.
“We’ve always expected that as the election got closer my father’s poll numbers would shoot up because he has a history of that,” said Peter Vallone, Jr., the son of the mayoral candidate who is running for his father’s city council seat. “We know the poll numbers are going to change, and we know we’ll do even better in the election.”
The elder Vallone’s campaign is using a strategy expressly intended to bring about a late-hour comeback in the race. With less than six weeks until the Sept. 11 Democratic primary, Vallone’s campaign is aggressively stepping up its efforts after holding back for months to conserve funds.
Vallone released his first TV advertisement only this week, a move campaign spokesman Mattis Goldman said was designed to hit the voters when they are paying closest attention to the race.
“What we’ve decided to do is to conserve our resources and put them to best use by advertising at a maximum level when the voters are starting to focus and make up their minds,” Goldman said.
Immediately before stepping up his campaign efforts, Vallone received major endorsements from District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal labor union, and every police union but the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which has yet to issue an endorsement for any candidate.
The recent flurry of endorsements is a far cry from a few months ago, when Vallone faced an early setback as the Queens County Democratic Party endorsed Hevesi, a resident of Forest Hills.
What remains to be seen, however, is whether the labor support Vallone and other candidates have received will ultimately play much of a role in the election outcome.
The labor movement’s impact on the election has been severely limited by labor organizations’ inability to unite behind a single candidate, said Bob Fitch, an adjunct professor of politics at Long Island University in Brooklyn.
Major union endorsements have already gone out to Vallone’s opponents, with Hevesi picking up the nod of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of New York and Green getting the endorsement of UNITE, the city’s garment workers union.
Agreement is hard to come by even within the unions themselves. Although the DC 37 endorsement was coveted by all Democratic candidates, the breakdown of the delegates’ vote showed that Vallone’s support among union membership was hardly universal, which may make the endorsement less valuable than candidates originally thought.
Delegates representing about 40 percent of membership abstained and 8 percent voted against Vallone, meaning the city council speaker won the DC 37 nod with support from only about half of the union membership.
DC 37’s largest chapter, Local 372, which represents about 25,000 school employees, announced last week that its 22-member executive board had split with the union leadership and unanimously voted to support Ferrer for mayor.
Meanwhile, Mark Rosenthal, president of DC 37’s Local 983 for motor vehicle operators has offered his support to Hevesi.
Although the DC 37 endorsement gives candidates a good way of generating support among the 125,000 members, the division within the union dilutes that support.
Union support was historically more meaningful to political campaigns because city labor leaders spoke for the entire movement and so were able to guarantee a lot of support for candidates, Fitch said.
“The levels at which deals are being cut is lower,” Fitch said. “I think it’s strictly individual interest. There’s nobody speaking for labor.”
Labor leaders see the trend as a step toward democratization as individual groups advocate for their own interests rather than following dictums issued from above.
“Unions represent so many different sectors in the city that it’s very hard to build a consensus that meets the needs of every union,” said Chris Chafe, national political and legislative director for UNITE.
Although candidates often flaunt union endorsements like athletes display medals, labor support ultimately plays little role in determining the outcome of city elections, Fitch said.
Whether that assessment will hold true for Vallone, who still is trailing in the polls if only by a hair, will be determined Sept. 11.
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
