It was no coincidence that the labor movement in both states used intensive, member-oriented campaigns to get voters registered, enthused about the campaigns, and then to vote.

Gray Davis's victory in California drew strength from a reinvigorated labor movement which had gathered momentum during the referendum fight earlier this year over Prop. 226, the phony paycheck protection scheme.

UAW members were recruited as one-on-one canvassers that centered around issues like the 8-hour day and workplace health and safety.

In Iowa a similar plan worked like clockwork.

"We took everything back to basics," said Rodney Brouwer, an assembly worker at the Maytag plant in Newton, Iowa, and vice president of the Iowa UAW CAP council.

"We did a lot of worker-to-worker campaigning," he said.

When the general election campaign began, Tom Vilsack, a little-known former mayor of the small town of Mt. Pleasant, was down twenty points in the polls.

But after comparing voter registration lists to membership lists, the UAW and other unions had registered tens of thousands of new voters.

Members were shown factual comparisons between Vilsack and the anti-worker record of his opponent which stewards would use as talking points.

Vilsack encouraged a strong absentee voter drive. By election day, 100 percent of some plants had already voted. A strong, old-fashioned, get-out-the-vote campaign with poll watchers checking to see who had voted, pushed Vilsack to victory.

From UAW Solidarity January-February 1999.