Union Members Heartened by Voter Turnout

Like strategists preparing for battle, Damon Moore and Robert Craig pored over a map of a Van Nuys neighborhood and a list of local union members who had not yet voted.

It was election day, and the union duo had been at it nearly two hours, chatting up residents in the cause of Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor. With 10 minutes left until the polling place down the street at Van Nuys High School would close, they approached a final house.

At home was a Latino hospital worker who flashed his ballot stub at Craig and Moore. Relieved, Moore later said: “There’s a whole swath of voters who won’t vote unless you tell them to.”

That was the mantra for hundreds of phone-bankers, get-out-the-vote volunteers, even the mayor of San Fernando, who made all-out, last-minute efforts to persuade voters to go to the polls.

The San Fernando Valley, said Moore, a seasoned labor activist, is the battleground because there “is a new base of voters, many of them immigrants and many 18-year-olds who have not voted before.”

Mayoral candidates James K. Hahn and Villaraigosa battled aggressively to tap into this new electoral base, now heavily Latino. In northeast Valley precincts, Villaraigosa ruled.

He captured 205 votes compared with 50 for Hahn in one Pacoima precinct near Telfair Avenue Elementary School.

Down the street, in a precinct near Ritchie Valens Park, Villaraigosa took 207 of Tuesday’s votes to Hahn’s 46.

On Wednesday, community activist Paula Rangel, 49, of San Fernando, said she was pleased with the northeast Valley Latino voter turnout, if not the results of the mayoral race.

On Tuesday, “there was people power like I’ve never seen,” she said, reflecting on the high number of new citizens who voted.

Though she doesn’t live in the city of Los Angeles, Rangel had walked streets in adjoining Pacoima on Tuesday, urging neighbors to cast a ballot.

San Fernando Mayor Cindy Montanez also joined in the effort, stopping at Telfair Avenue Elementary to talk to voters and poll workers.

Huddling outside the school, volunteers Aida Cardenas, 27, and Lali Sosa, 25, from the Organization of Los Angeles Workers, which targets Latino voters, reviewed lists of registered voters to try to rally any stragglers.

In many cases, that legwork paid off.

Susana Favela, 48, and her husband, Arturo, 45, went to Valens Park to vote just after 6 p.m. About 20 minutes earlier, someone had knocked on their door--the second time that day--asking them to vote. The couple also received three telephone calls with the same message.

Alfonso Rico, 45, went to Valens Park twice Tuesday evening. His second trip was to bring his 24-year-old son, also named Alfonso.

“He got lazy, and I said, ‘No, no, no, you have to vote,’ ” Rico said. He added that he got two calls Tuesday asking his family to vote, plus a call on each of the two previous days.

In fact, a personal phone call or visit can make all the difference, said Moore, 40, director of government relations for Service Employees International Union Local 660.

After Moore and Craig--also 40, an electrician and member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 11--visited the home of one postal worker, both were surprised to learn the resident had voted for Hahn.

“My union didn’t say who to vote for,” explained Quang Han, 49, of Van Nuys. His son also wouldn’t make it home in time to vote, Han said.

Later, Moore lamented that a preemptive call from the union might have captured both votes for Villaraigosa.

With such crucial Valley numbers at stake, the frenzy at phone banks grew more frantic as the 8 p.m. poll closure loomed.

Inside a threadbare room on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana, Hahn volunteers, some not even old enough to vote, hunched over tables and telephones, dialing number after number.

“We still have an hour before polls close!” one man shouted.

Another staffer abruptly ended a phone bank volunteer’s rest break--even after the man had already made hundreds of phone calls and had checked off every number on his multiple-page list. He was quickly handed more sheets of phone numbers.

On Wednesday, Craig, a first-time volunteer, said he was somewhat chagrined by Villaraigosa’s loss.

“I was talking to the guys at work. They said all the unions weren’t behind him,” Craig said. “Next time I’ll start earlier and work harder.”