Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Unity, New Action Lose Over 11,000 Votes From 2010 To 2013

More caucus has the final vote tallies from the 2013 UFT election up and they're extraordinarily informative:

CHART: VOTING SHIFTS FROM 2010 TO 2013
slate votes only * remainders are split ballots
Elementary Division
                                    2013                                                        2010
MORE                       1,140                                                 703 for ICE/TJC
New Action              534                                                    978
Unity                          5,111                                                7,761
Middle School Division
MORE                       398                                                  248 for ICE/TJC
New Action             161                                                     421
Unity                        1,185                                                 1,981
High School Division
MORE                       1,430                                              1,369 for ICE/TJC
New Action             452                                                   774
Unity                         1,592                                               2,595
Functional Division (non-teachers)
MORE                       951                                               708 for ICE/TJC
New Action              754                                              1,175
Unity                        5,167                                            7,337
Retiree Division
MORE                    1,490                                             1,037 for ICE/TJC
New Action           1,880                                            2,234
Unity                    18,155                                             20,744

Looking at these numbers, we can see that Unity lost 9,208 votes in 2013 from their 2010 tally, while New Action lost 1,801 votes from 2010.

The two UFT leadership parties lost 11,009 votes between them in 2013 from their 2010 tallies.

MORE, on the other hand, gained 1,344 votes from the ICE-TJC totals in 2010.

That's nowhere near enough to knock off the leadership parties, of course, but it is a positive trajectory for MORE that can be built upon in the next election.

And as I keep reminding people, MORE will have one inherent advantage next time around that Unity and New Action will not have - the MORE people didn't sign off on APPR, Danielson, and growth models as the current UFT leadership as run by Michael Mulgrew has.

Let's see how people feel about the leadership of the UFT after three years of APPR, Danielson and the mass "ineffective" ratings that are sure to sweep the system after John King imposes his own evaluation apparatus onto us (with Michael Mulgrew's support, to boot!)

There were 10,000 fewer votes returned in the 2013 election than in the 2010 election.

As you can see from the above analysis, those 10,000 votes came out of the Unity/New Action totals.

MORE has much room for growth and will need almost all of that to actually make a serious attempt at knocking Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies off next time around.

With the advantage Mulgrew has with the retirees and the functionals (both reliable Unity voting blocs), he starts with a significant vote tally over the MORE candidate.

In 2013, Unity got 23,322 from the retirees and functionals alone on the Unity ballot line.  Add in the New Action ballot line totals for retirees and functionals (2,632) and you can see that Mulgrew started with 25,956 votes in his pocket before we even get to the elementary school totals.

The MORE candidate in 2016 will have to pick up a lot of support from active members to counter that advantage as well as try and turn some of those New Action/Unity votes into MORE votes.


That said, 75% of all UFT members this year did not vote.

There are plenty of opportunities for growth from that segment of what Norm Scott calls the Did Not Give A Crap vote and after three years of APPR, Danielson, and the mass "ineffective" ratings that are sure to sweep the system after John King imposes his own evaluation apparatus onto us, it's difficult to see those people, if they do vote, voting for either New Action or Unity.

So there is much to be feeling positive about here.

The news media, such as it is, may frame the Unity win as Mulgrew "cruising to reelection" (as Gotham Schools did yesterday), but an analysis of the numbers shows this was no easy cruise for Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies in 2013 - not with a loss of over 10,000 votes from their 2010 tallies.

We have some difficult times ahead of us, with APPR and Danieslon and VAM and growth models and all the other ed deforms that are going to be used to bludgeon teachers and fire them.

Unless the UFT leadership changes course and starts defending teachers both individually and collectively from these ravages, 2016 is going to be a much different year than 2013 or 2010 for Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies.

6 comments:

  1. MORE must be provided the same mailing list/contact information for retirees that Unity works with.

    Please clarify why New Action gets 3 seats on the Executive Board, and MORE gets none with 40% of the vote.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right about the mailing list issue.

      I think Norm may be better able to clarify the board positions. About all I can say is, New Action did some deal with Unity that amounts to board-rigging, as they get board seats with a very small fraction of the overall vote.

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  2. A ready-made campaign is battling against the Mulgrew/Danielson U ratings (MDUs) that will be coming in a tidal wave in the 2013 to 2014 year.

    More members are going to realize --with great pain-- how disastrous Mulgrew's leadership has been, on Danielson, APPR, the King-imposed test-based evaluation system.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I completely agree - Danielson and APPR will expose Mulgrew and the leadership.

      I suspect they'll try and pull an about face on these and say they were against them. Or try and argue that the concepts are fine, it's the implementation that is bad.

      They're going to have to try that, because when the rank and file sees how the UFT-approved APPR and Danielson rubric are used against them, the anger and hostility that's going to be aimed Mulgrew's way is going to be something neither he nor Randi has experienced.

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  3. 10,00 voters who were disgruntled with Mulgrew and didn't vote for MORE. MORE should not be very happy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No one said MORE is happy. If you read the piece, I say MORE supporters have reason for optimism because these numbers show a huge erosion of support for Unity and New Action and an opportunity for growth for MORE. That said, the inherent advantages Mulgrew has with the functionals and retirees is a huge hill to climb for any MORE candidate and whether that is Julie Cavanagh or somebody else, they have their work cut out for them.

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