On the Trail with New Hampshire's Bird Dogs

Six hours before the September 26 Democratic presidential candidates' debate at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, the Service Employees International Union gathered on the college green. SEIU members and staff, often clad in purple t-shirts, are a frequent sight on the US presidential campaign trail. The union's "New Hampshire for Health Care" campaign is several years old, and has bird-dogged politicians and gathered names of health care supporters all along.

But this action was a little different. This time, the gathering included members of SEIU Local 560, which represents workers at Dartmouth, including the college-owned Hanover Inn, which sits next to the building where the debate would take place. Workers at the Inn gained union recognition in 2004, and signed their first collective bargaining agreement with the Ivy League college the following year. But the contract left open a clause dealing with compensation for tipped employees while they are on vacation or when they are sick.

Local 560 is campaigning to raise the compensation for paid time off from its current level of $3.50 an hour. "We have a 15-year employee who had some life-threatening medical issues and was out of work for two months. His weekly pay was based on $3.50 per hour! You can imagine how the financial security of the family suffered," said a letter from the union to all the Democratic candidates.

Local 560's request to the candidates to contact Dartmouth's president has a precedent. Four years ago workers at New Hampshire's major commercial TV station, WMUR, were similarly struggling for a contract. When, with help from the state's AFL-CIO, the union threatened to picket a WMUR-sponsored debate and ask candidates to stop buying ads on the station, the company quickly came to the table.

Making the Issues Visible to Candidates

The New Hampshire Primary campaign, still first-in-the-nation even though no one knows exactly when the next one will take place, is not just a horse race between the candidates. It also presents an unparalleled opportunity for labor, environmentalists, the LGBT movement, and peace activists to gain attention and real leverage for our issues. In addition to New Hampshire for Health Care, other groups in the mix include Priorities NH, which campaigns for a shift of military spending to human needs programs, several groups concerned about global climate change, and the American Friends Service Committee's "Cost of War" project. The Global AIDS Alliance now has staff in the state planning a December 1 rally. The Human Rights Campaign, which describes itself as "America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality," opened a new Concord office in September.

Common tactics include visibility, such as the Priorities "pig-mobile" and "pie mobile," which depict excessive military spending, and the purple "I'm a Health Care Voter" stickers the SEIU passes out. Heavily funded groups can run their own radio and newspaper ads. Grassroots groups without much money can still bring hand-made signs to events with hope of catching the eye of candidates or reporters.

Then there is the art of "bird-dogging," or taking issues to the candidates through direct questions and statements. While Barack Obama can draw a thousand people to a rally, and Hillary Clinton runs highly staged events that likewise attract hundreds of New Hampshire residents, there are still plenty of opportunities for determined activists to get a word with the candidates, even the "rock stars."

Olivia Zink, who runs the Priorities NH candidate tracking and outreach project, is probably the state's top bird-dog. She subscribes to all the candidates' email lists, scours the web each day to find out where all the candidates will be, and posts the events on the Priorities website [www.prioritiesnh.org/birddog_calendar.php]. She also trains volunteers, offers them suggested questions, and has spoken directly to all the major Democratic and Republican candidates but one.

Bird-dogging skills are not only useful in presidential campaign season. The ability to frame questions in ways that are succinct, direct, and informative, and that put politicians on the spot, is a valuable skill. Martha Yager, who ran the AFSC's New Hampshire Economic Justice Project during the campaign for the 2004 Primary, recalls leading a skills training session for women at a transitional housing facility in Manchester. The women were more interested in bird-dogging the Board of Aldermen than they were in the Presidential campaign, but even at the local level they were not sure their voices mattered. After a two-hour workshop, though, they were eager to bird-dog local candidates on housing and zoning issues.

Repetition of questions can also get issues into candidates' stump speeches and even shift their positions. Four years ago, John Kerry started his campaign defending his record of supporting NAFTA, WTO, and "Fast Track" authority. But as he faced repeated questions from students, union members, and trade justice activists, he apparently realized he needed a new position to attract support. Three months before the NH Primary, Kerry told members of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO he would oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which George W. Bush's administration was pushing. The weekend before the primary, Kerry added his commitment to oppose CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement. Although Kerry did not become president, he did vote against CAFTA, which passed by a slim margin.

Retail Politics

In this campaign season, much effort has gone into making candidates state explicitly their position on the use of nuclear weapons. Anne Miller of New Hampshire Peace Action has twice waded into crowds to challenge Clinton's position on Iran. At the first event, at Concord High School in February, "most of the throng was people who wanted books signed and pictures taken," she observed. But she wanted to ask Clinton about a statement about Iran she had made the previous week, in which the New York Senator said "no options are off the table." "I asked her how she could threaten nuclear genocide on another nation's children. She told me that we cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, for it would be an "existential threat" to the US, and repeated that all options were on the table. When I tried to ask her about the very real role the US is playing in spurring proliferation with our repeated threats and actual nuclear arsenals, she said she didn't want to discuss it and turned away stiffly."

In recent weeks, Senator Barack Obama, who gave vague responses on more than one occasion to bird-dog Erin Placey's questions about nuclear weapons, has taken a position in favor of nuclear weapons abolition.

"New Hampshire's tradition of 'retail politics' [a term for occasions when candidates have to deal with voters one-on-one, rather than in huge batches, or 'wholesale'] opens the door for people to raise issues that the candidates would never discuss otherwise," says Priorities NH's Olivia Zink. "And when voters organize and coordinate their efforts, we know the candidates really feel the heat."

Zink says Priorities NH's staff and volunteers have asked more than 150 questions of candidates in New Hampshire, while activists from their sister organization in Iowa have asked more than 200. "Several candidates have moved from dodging the issue of Pentagon waste altogether to listing the weapons systems they'd shut down or cut back," she reports.

The bird-dogging and visibility is at least getting the candidates' attention. Governor Bill Richardson wore a Priorities lapel pin, which depicts the Pentagon's excessive share of the federal budget, to the Dartmouth debate, where he also linked the need for health care funds to the cost of the Iraq war.

Senator Hillary Clinton alluded directly to the SEIU's purple stickers during the debate. "You see a lot of people with those stickers that say, 'I'm a health care voter,'" Clinton said. "Well, I want to be the health care president."

John Edwards stopped by the union rally on his way to the debate, as did Dennis Kucinich's wife, Elizabeth.

Chris Peck, Vice President of Local 560, said the additional visibility is useful. "The college got a message," he commented, during a commercial break at the union's debate watching party. "They're not used to seeing us outside protesting."

Dartmouth and SEIU settled on a contract shortly after the Dartmouth debate.