1199 Appears Wary Of Entering Fray For Ferrer
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The city’s largest health care union has endorsed Fernando Ferrer for mayor, but is it really going to pull out all the stops to help the Democrat?
The Service Employees International Union/Local 1199 packed its 43rd Street headquarters with sign-waving and cheering members at its endorsement rally last week, but blanketing the city with Ferrer volunteers is a far more expensive and time consuming commitment than an early morning news conference.
The union spent more than $10 million trying to get Senator Kerry elected president, but won’t give a number on how much it will put behind the Ferrer campaign.
With Mayor Bloomberg’s lead in the public opinion polls well into double digits, an aggressive strategy could sabotage the union’s relationship with City Hall if the mayor is re-elected on November 8. Mr. Bloomberg has budgeted billions of dollars for health care spending, some of which finds its way, directly or indirectly, to the union’s members.
“The question is, how much of a force will they be?” a political science professor at Cooper Union, Fred Siegel, asked. “Will they bet the farm? I don’t think so.”
A spokesman for 1199, Chris Flemming, told The New York Sun that the union, which has 200,000 members and retirees in the city, had no plans to “spend advertising dollars” on the Ferrer campaign.
“There are not going to be television ads, there are not going to be radio ads,” Mr. Flemming said. “The strength of 1199 is in the large number of members we have that are racially and ethnically diverse.”
He said the union did not buy commercials when it endorsed Governor Pataki, a Republican, for re-election in 2002, or in the mayoral election in 2001, when it endorsed Mr. Ferrer in the Democratic primary and then Mark Green in the general election.
It does, however, have a reputation for going after its enemies, and while there are Campaign Finance Board rules against coordinating with campaigns, it could pay for commercials if it wanted to. Mr. Flemming said 1199 generally buys commercials for conveying its position on an issue, not a political campaign.
The union’s reputation as a political powerhouse lies in its ability to provide thousands of foot soldiers to get voters to the polls, but it only exerts its force when it strongly gets behind its candidate. In 2001, for example, its endorsement of Mr. Green was tepid and it took a sideline position in the general election.
Almost all agree that 1199’s presence provides the Ferrer campaign with the “ground operation” it was lacking. But the degree to which the union participates could be crucial to Mr. Ferrer’s chances if the race gets closer.
The 1199 spokesman, Mr. Flemming, said the union started its “phone bank” operation this week and sent out “literature” to all its members to notify them of the Ferrer endorsement.
“The notion that this is a lukewarm endorsement is preposterous,” Mr. Fleming said. “We have over 200,000 members and we intend to reach every last one of them.”
Several political analysts said 1199’s president, Dennis Rivera, may have been halfhearted about a Ferrer endorsement early in the campaign, but his attitude changed last week.
Last Monday, the New York Post reported that the union had offered Mr. Bloomberg an endorsement in exchange for putting 25,000 home health workers on the city payroll. The story seemed to have the Bloomberg campaign’s fingerprints on it, and when Mr. Rivera stood with Mr. Ferrer at the endorsement rally he shouted to his members: “We don’t get mad, we get even!”
A political consultant, Evan Stavisky, said, however, that 1199 was a “smart” and “practical” and that how much might it musters will probably boil down whether the leaders feel Mr. Ferrer has a real shot.
“If they believe Freddy can win, they will move heaven and earth to make that happen,” he said. “If, however, they don’t believe that’s a possibility they are not going to waste vast sums of money and countless hours.”
Ousting Mr. Bloomberg, who switched his party registration to Republican from Democrat to run for office in 2001, has not taken on the same kind of urgency inside the labor movement as beating President Bush did last year. The municipal workers’ union, DC37, and 1199’s sister union, the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which represents 60,000 porters, building workers, doormen, and security guards in the city, are backing the mayor’s re-election.
Even the left-leaning Working Families Party, a coalition of unions and community groups, was until this week undecided about whom to endorse. After sitting out the Democratic primary, it voted to back Mr. Ferrer but announced it would not put his name on the party’s ballot line in the general election because the Democrat did not win the required two-thirds vote from the party’s “coordinating council.”
The legislative and political director of the Communications Workers District 1, Bob Master, who is co-chairman of the Working Families Party and a Ferrer supporter, said comparing 1199’s efforts in the 2004 presidential race to this year’s mayoral race did not make sense.
“Inside the labor movement 2004 was perceived as a life-or-death struggle in a way that was unprecedented in my entire career,” Mr. Master said. “There is no comparison between the 2005 mayoral race and the 2004 presidential race. 2004 was about trying to oust the most anti-labor national administration since McKinley.”
Before the Working Families Party announced its endorsement, some political analysts said its decision would be an important gauge for how aggressively 1199 would come out for Mr. Ferrer.
The party’s endorsement is viewed as a positive for Mr. Ferrer, especially since the Bloomberg campaign was courting its leaders, but without its most valuable asset – its ballot line – its backing is being perceived as somewhat lukewarm.
Correction: Chris Fleming is the correct spelling of the name of the spokesman for the Service Employees International Union/Local 1199. The name was misspelled in an article on page 1 of the September 30 New York Sun.