Perdido Street School

As many others jump off the Clinton bandwagon, the NEA jumps on:

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

“We recommended Hillary Clinton on the incredible and lengthy track record she has, that is just wrapped around children, working families and education, from preschool to graduate school,” NEA president Lily Eskelsen García said.

Seventy-five percent of the union’s 170-member board backed Clinton.

The nod from the NEA gives Clinton a much-needed boost, after the International Association of Firefighters earlier this week backed away from plans to endorse her.

Not unexpected, of course, but nonetheless inexplicable.

As Clinton sinks in polls and under the weight of an email controversy she still hasn't shown she can put to rest, concurrent to another union pulling back from an endorsement announcement, the NEA endorses Clinton.

Makes little sense politically at this point - but that didn't stop the leadership from doing what it wanted to do anyway.

I keep hearing some NYSUT people brag how NYSUT refused to endorse Andrew Cuomo for governor and am hearing from the same people that NYSUT is making sure the AFL-CIO does not endorse him either.

All of this is fine, dandy and absolutely meaningless.

I want to remind everybody that when it mattered, when Andrew Cuomo absolutely needed the union leadership - including the newly minted NYSUT leadership - to back him, they did.

That was during the weekend when it looked like Working Families Party might actually endorse Zephyr Teachout over Cuomo for the general election.

Polls had shown that Cuomo was running away with the race against his GOP opponent Rob Astorino - unless a third party candidate from the left entered the general election.

Then polls showed this:

Major elections in the United States are almost always two-party affairs. Yes, third-party candidates run, but they’re rarely competitive, and they almost never win. Still, there are exceptions, and the 2014 New York governor’s race may be one of them.

The progressive Working Families Party perceives Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to be too centrist, and it will decide this weekend whether to field its own candidate instead of cross-endorsing Cuomo. (New York allows candidates to appear on multiple ballot lines.) An opponent from his left could put Cuomo’s re-election bid in at least some danger.

An average of early polls by Quinnipiac University and Siena College shows the governor garnering 38 percent support, Republican Rob Astorino 24 percent and an unnamed Working Families Party candidate 23 percent. That’s down from Cuomo’s average lead of about 30 percentage points over Astorino in a two-way affair.

As I detailed earlier this week, early gubernatorial polling of two-way matchups is pretty reliable — 30 percentage point leads are nearly impossible to overcome. But an early-stage 14 percentage point lead in a three-way contest may be a different story.

Cuomo was desperate to avoid that third party candidate from the left and his union allies were happy to oblige by threatening WFP activists that if the party nominated Zephyr Teachout over Andrew Cuomo, they would defund the party:

When Working Families Party state committee members gather at their convention tomorrow, far more than the endorsement for governor will be at stake.

The very future of the labor-backed party will be on the line, and according to one labor source, the damage done by the disagreement over whether or not to back Gov. Andrew Cuomo again may very well be irreparable.

“Regardless of what happens now, the way the party has conducted itself has done lasting damage to relationships with key (union) affiliates,” the source said. “It’s unclear if the party will ever be the same.”

Union leaders were burning up the phone lines this morning, discussing whether the time had finally come to pull their support of the party they helped create and have financially sustained since 1998.

According to another labor source involved in these talks, a number of the largest and most significant unions – including 1199 SEIU, HTC, the laborers, RWDSU, and the UFT – were prepared to call it quits with the WFP, knowing that their withdrawal could very well lead to the party’s “collapse.”

The Teamsters and TWU were also involved in these discussions, which were far enough along to warrant talk of drafting of a joint statement, although one was never actually released.

The UFT controls NYSUT - it was the UFT leadership, backed by Randi Weingarten, who instituted the Spring Time Putsch that dethroned the previous NYSUT leadership and replaced them with pro-Cuomo shills.

The Spring Time Putsch was all about making sure that the suddenly aggressive old NYSUT leadership would be replaced by a more compliant Cuomo-friendly leadership - which is exactly what happened.

That the UFT was part of the union leadership that threatened WFP if Teachout was endorsed and was behind the NYSUT putsch to get rid of the old regime that had turned on Cuomo tells you all you need to know about how much they've already helped Andrew Cuomo.

An endorsement by the UFT, the NYSUT or the AFL-CIO is not needed at this time because all the help Cuomo needed to win re-election - keeping a third party candidate from the left out of the general election race - was engineered by the unions, including the UFT and the NYSUT, last spring.

I am calling for the UFT to enthusiastically and vocally endorse Governor Andrew M. Cuomo for re-election this November.

Sure Cuomo has shown himself to be anti-union, anti-teacher and anti-traditional public schools during his tenure as governor.

And sure it makes no sense that a teachers union would continue to support a politician who hates unions, teachers and traditional public schools, as the UFT does with Andrew Cuomo (and the AFT and NEA do with Barack Obama.)

And really, another four years of Andrew Cuomo will probably be the final nail in the coffin of traditional public schools in NYC, since Cuomo has already forced into law a provision that forces the NYCDOE to take money and resources from traditional public schools and give them to charter school entrepreneurs like Eva Moskowitz and David Levin.

So you may be wondering, why am I calling for the UFT to endorse Andrew M. Cuomo for governor?

Well, it's quite simple really.

As I posted earlier this morning, pretty much every candidate the UFT endorses loses - the latest being Adriano Espaillat, the state senator who conceded to Representative Charles Rangel after losing a second close primary race for Congress.

Quite frankly, one of the better things that can happen if you're opposed to Andrew M Cuomo and corporate education reform in New York State is for the UFT to enthusiastically and vocally support Andrew M. Cuomo for re-election.

While the UFT's endorsement may not be the "kiss of death" for Cuomo, it surely means a lot less in real political terms than the UFT leadership would have the members and the public believe.

So go ahead, Mikey and Company - do the right thing and endorse Cuomo for governor.

And then we can hope for the kind of political results you got in the Espaillat/Rangel race, or the Thompson 2013 run or the backing of the Holy Triumvirate of Hevesi, Ferrer and Green in 2001...

From State of Politics:

In a statement sent out this afternoon, Sen. Adriano Espaillat conceded the primary for the 13th congressional district to incumbent Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel. He also declared his candidacy for re-election to the state Senate.

Espaillat had held off on conceding to Rangel, saying he’d wait until “every single vote” was counted before admitting defeat. This comes after the senator’s last attempt to knock off Rangel in 2012 ended in an extremely tight race. As affadavit and absentee ballots continued to be counted in that election, the race grew tighter, eventually ending in a victory for Rangel of less than 1,000 votes.

But it seems Espaillat’s camp realized the vote deficit was too much to overcome this time around. Earlier today, the senator called Rangel to congratulate him on his victory and his long career in the House of Representatives.

Two months ago:

The city’s teachers union, which backed Rep. Charlie Rangel for re-election in 2012, is now looking to unseat him.

The delegate assembly of the United Federation of Teachers voted today to urge the union’s state affiliate, the New York State United Teachers, to endorse State Senator Adriano Espaillat, the leading challenger to Rangel in next month's Democratic primary.

Two years ago, the U.F.T. recommended an endorsement of Rangel.

In a statement, U.F.T. president Michael Mulgrew credited Espaillat with having “been a vocal champion for pre-k funding” and “a leading voice for banning standardized tests for our youngest students,” along with backing a three-year moratorium on using the new Common Core curriculum.

Back during the 2013 mayoral election, Bloomberg called the UFT endorsement the "kiss of death":

The candidates vying to succeed him can "shill" all they want for the teachers union, but they may very well be wasting their time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters today, during a press conference at the education department headquarters near City Hall.

"The last time the U.F.T.'s endorsement got somebody elected was better than two decades ago, O.K.?" said Bloomberg. "It's almost the kiss of death."

Espaillat made a lot of mistakes in this race - the UFT endorsement was not literally the "kiss of death" that did him in.

I'm sure he garnered a few votes because of Mulgrew's endorsement, but let's be honest here.

The UFT endorsement is pretty much worthless.

The Rangel/Espaillat race is just one more example of that.

You always see the UFT described in the papers as the "powerful" teachers union.

"Powerful"?

Hardly.

The newspapers are reporting that Bloomberg said today that he has decided not to endorse a candidate in this year's mayoral election.

The reality is, he can't endorse a candidate in this year's mayoral election.

Poll after poll shows that people are ready to move on from Bloomberg.

While his approval rating is right around 50% and he does not conjure up the same animosity that Giuliani did, he also does garner much warmth from people these days.

After 12 years, many New Yorkers are sick of their imperious billionaire mayor and his soda bans, his trans-fat decrees, his school policies, and the like.

That fact became clear as the campaign went on and de Blasio, the anti-Bloomberg, started to surge, and the other candidates in the Democratic primary were forced to pivot from their moderate positions and begin to criticize Bloomberg more.

While the GOP primary certainly did not turn anti-Bloomberg the way the Democratic primary did, it is no longer clear that a Bloomberg endorsement of Lhota would help the Lhota campaign - not after the New York Magazine article where Bloomberg called de Blasio a "racist" for using his biracial kids and his black wife in his campaign ads.

Bloomberg endorses Lhota, Lhota owns those comments.

So Lhota doesn't really want Bloomberg's endorsement.

He's got enough trouble trying to live down the Giuliani association (Lhota worked for Rudy in the 1990's), he doesn't want to have to explain away Bloomberg's inexplicable "de Blasio is a racist" comments.

So Bloomberg, a man with so fragile an ego that he puts his name in big letters on everything he owns (BLOOMBERG!!!!), now must suffer the humilaition that nobody wants his endorsement this election season after 12 years running this city, that not only would his endorsement of Quinn hurt her in the Democratic primary, but an endorsement of Lhota in the general might hurt him too.

This humiliation can't make Mike Bloomberg happy.

He likes to think he is the most indispensable person in the room, the city, the state, nation.

This is guy that looks pained when he has to stand next to the governor or the president and make believe like he defers to them on the power chart.

And here is, unwanted for an endorsement, unloved by the New York City electorate, with most people simply ready to move on from the Bloomberg Years and the Bloomberg policies.