See How They Run

After years of helping others win political office, AFSCME members are doing it for themselves. We follow the campaigns of three members who are in the running.

AFSCME members have always been politically active. After all, they get to elect their own bosses. Over the years, AFSCME activists have learned the ropes: working phone banks, literature drops, get-out-the-vote efforts. They have even run campaigns for pro-worker candidates.

Now AFSCME is taking activism to the next step: encouraging members to become candidates.

Part of an AFL-CIO initiative aimed at having 2,000 union members elected to public office in the year 2000, union members are running for office — school boards, city/county councils, state legislatures and Congress — all across the country.

In this issue of the Public Employee, you will meet three AFSCME-member candidates: a doctor who is running for Congress, and a secretary and an institutional counselor who are both running for the state legislature. We will follow them for the next few months through the highs and the lows of their campaigns.

They are different from each other, but they share a common commitment to the political process — a belief that one person can make an impact.

PATIENTS FIRST. Janice Nelson, MD, is nothing if not consistent. Just last year, Nelson played a leading role in the successful effort to organize Los Angeles County’s doctors into the AFSCME affiliate, Union of American Physicians and Dentists. This year finds her running for a seat in Congress. The reason for both campaigns is the same: to ensure quality patient care.

“I am very frustrated with the direction health care is going,” she says. “Forty-five million people have no health insurance.” She also wants to safeguard Medicare — the health care safety net for older Americans.

Nelson is medical director of Blood Bank, Tissue, and Transfusion Medicine Services at the Los Angeles County and University of Southern California (USC) Medical Center, as well as a professor of pathology at USC’s School of Medicine.

DISENCHANTED. Nelson is running against 10-term incumbent U.S. Rep. David Dreier (R).

“He comes across as being a moderate,” she says, “but he votes as a conservative — extremely Republican right-wing.”

She worked for Dreier’s opponent in 1996, and, although he lost, Nelson learned a lot about her district and about the campaign process. In 1998, she decided to run herself.

The 1998 race was all uphill. Nelson had to fight for recognition and publicity. Her campaign was written off.

“Everybody considers a long-time incumbent like royalty — like they have a job for life,” she says. But Nelson disagrees. “It is a job and has a performance evaluation every two years.

“People are in his camp because they don’t believe anybody can beat him.” That was 1998. This time things may be different.

LEARNING BY DOING. Nelson is the first repeat competitor Dreier has faced. The 1998 campaign taught her important lessons. She is ready to put them into practice.

“I learned a lot by running with [U.S. Sen.] Barbara Boxer in 1998. You decide on your issues, and you go out there. Some people will love you. Some people will hate you. But you have to be true to your issues,” says Nelson.

It seems the media is also paying attention to the race. Nelson has been featured in major publications across the country as one of the year’s women candidates to watch. She also believes she will benefit from “the changing political mood of the nation.

“People don’t align themselves so much with the party,” Nelson says. “They listen to the candidates and want to think things out for themselves.”

She’s hoping that approach will work especially well with the middle-class, educated, affluent voters in her district.

INTO THE SUNSHINE. On the East Coast, two AFSCME local union presidents are running for seats in Florida’s state legislature.

With four children and four grandchildren, Carrie Mitchell-Long’s concentration on education is a natural.

A senior secretary with the Florida Board of Regents, she gets a first-hand look at developments in higher education, but she is concerned with the entire system. She is running for the Florida House of Representatives from the 8th District — in the Tallahassee area.

“I feel I can assist in supporting our school board system to ensure equal and quality education for our children,” she says.

Mitchell-Long is president of Local 3343 (Council 79) and represents the State University Conference Board as a council vice president.

She has a long history of church and community involvement including a number of political campaigns. “I worked on [the late] Gov. Lawton Chiles’ campaign,” says Mitchell-Long, “and the campaign for Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson.”

Council 79 has endorsed her, and she is currently attending labor- sponsored political training programs, getting petitions signed so she will be on the September primary ballot, raising money and taking steps to develop greater name recognition.

In addition to her concerns about education, Mitchell-Long is also focusing on ways to handle the often-competing needs for community development and environmental protection.

Although she doesn’t have an incumbent to face in the primary — he was term-limited — she does have competition.

VOICE IN TALLAHASSEE. “I feel I’ve worn out 10 pairs of shoes and two feet already,” John Leshuk says about his campaign for a Florida House seat representing the 12th District in the Jacksonville area.

Leshuk has been spending every spare minute since late last fall working on his campaign.

An institutional counselor at the Florida State Prison in Starke, Leshuk is in a primarily rural district where corrections is the main industry. As president of Local 2848 (Council 79), he is well known as someone who fights for workers throughout the correctional system. But Leshuk’s interests go beyond the prison gates.

“I want to help out the working people,” he says. “There are a lot of things I would like to do for the elderly.

“The state of Florida has a $25,000 homestead exemption,” he says, “but we have people who are on a fixed income. Their property values have gone up, but the homestead exemption hasn’t been revised in years.”

His willingness to go the extra mile to investigate issues — intellectual curiosity — is a Leshuk trademark. While working full time, running his local union and staying involved in community activities, he has also continued his own education.

Right now, he is spending his time getting acquainted with people. He has a campaign manager who sets up meetings, barbecues and house parties where he can discuss the issues and raise money.

By the time his September primary comes around, Leshuk will have quite a collection of worn-out shoes in his marathon campaign.

By Susan Ellen Holleran

This portion of the website is posted in full compliance with FEC regulations (11C.F.R. Sect.11 4.5(i)). It is paid for by the AFSCME PEOPLE Committee, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.