Nurses Union Leader Is a Tonic for Governor’s Foes

Her name is Rose Ann DeMoro, but in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office she might be better known as Trouble.

DeMoro is the 56-year-old, Missouri-born, Bruce Springsteen-loving executive director of the California Nurses Assn., a 60,000-member labor union that has led the fight against much of Schwarzenegger’s policy agenda. In David-vs.-Goliath fashion, the battle appears to be going DeMoro’s way.

“He was on a roll, he was unassailable, and people told us we couldn’t take him on,” said DeMoro, sitting in a fourth-floor conference room at the association’s brick headquarters here. Two Schwarzenegger bobble-head dolls, one labeled “Governor Girlie Man,” roosted on her desk. “We take extreme credit for his poll numbers dropping like a rock,” DeMoro said.

Schwarzenegger’s once-soaring approval ratings have indeed plunged, and his sweeping proposals to revamp state government have stalled.

He can’t seem to attend a fundraiser free of boisterous union protesters, with chanting nurses often in the front ranks. And one of his favorite lines for diminishing his opponents -- “I am always kicking their butts” -- has come back to haunt him, thanks to angry RNs mobilized by DeMoro.

In December, Schwarzenegger used the taunt to belittle nurses who picketed his speech at a Long Beach women’s conference. He lumped them in with Sacramento’s “special interests.”

His remarks proved to be a rallying cry for DeMoro and her devoted troops, who have grown accustomed to victory. During DeMoro’s 12 years heading the association, the union has defied labor-movement trends by tripling its membership.

In the face-off with Schwarzenegger, the association has staged about 40 attention-grabbing demonstrations up and down the state and as far away as Ohio, where sign-waving nurses tailed him to a bodybuilding exhibition. The protesters have railed primarily against his attempts to block an association-sponsored law that requires more nurses in California hospitals.

The union contends that Schwarzenegger has gone after the law at the behest of the hospital industry. The governor has said a nursing shortage prevents hospitals from meeting the ratios.

Another target of the demonstrations has been his bid to privatize pensions for public workers, including nurses employed by the state.

Schwarzenegger has withdrawn the pension proposal. And an appellate court has upheld a Sacramento judge’s injunction suspending the governor’s order derailing the new nurse-to-patient ratios. The union’s lawsuit to permanently invalidate the order is pending.

It may have been unions representing firefighters, police officers and teachers that forced Schwarzenegger to retreat on the pension measure. But DeMoro supporters and critics -- and she has plenty of the latter -- agree her association took the lead. The tide turned when Schwarzenegger egged on the nurses, and unleashed her fervor for street-level activism.

“It all started with her and the association,” said Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and former presidential candidate. Nader worked with DeMoro on an unsuccessful 1996 ballot initiative that would have limited the power of HMOs.

“She’s showing what some moxie can achieve,” Nader said. He added that the association “is probably the most authentic labor union in the country today.”

Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican strategist in Los Angeles, is no fan of DeMoro and her association, which he described as “very hard-core liberal.” But he acknowledged DeMoro’s effectiveness.

“When Arnold attacked those nurses, he just fell into a trap, and there’s no doubt the nurses outflanked him,” Hoffenblum said.

Schwarzenegger declined an interview request. His spokesman, Rob Stutzman, downplayed the role of DeMoro’s group in the governor’s fall in the polls.

“All they’re doing is riding on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s back to show the rest of the country that they are aggressive union organizers,” said Stutzman, who noted that DeMoro is trying to unionize nurses outside California. “ ... The more hysterical and over-the-top they are, the more publicity they get for themselves.”

DeMoro’s foes in the hospital industry agree. Some denounce her as a “radical” who engages in intimidation tactics, twists the facts and sullies the nursing profession. They point out that she has never been a nurse.

Before joining the association staff 19 years ago, DeMoro organized Hollywood producers for the Teamsters. She began working for unions after leaving a UC Santa Barbara graduate program in women’s studies.

Jan Emerson, spokeswoman for the California Hospital Assn., said the nurses union has been “impossible to deal with” under DeMoro. Emerson said a demonstration at the hospital association’s Sacramento offices in 2001 turned ugly, with protesters bursting through doors and threatening to urinate on the carpet if they were not allowed to use the bathroom.

“We were astounded that professional nurses would do this,” Emerson said. Union spokesman Charles Idelson disputed Emerson’s account, saying the nurses behaved properly.

DeMoro, whose parents ran a beauty parlor and pizza restaurant in St. Louis, received a salary of about $175,000 last fiscal year, according to documents the union filed with the U.S. Labor Department. The association also employs her husband, Don DeMoro, as a researcher, paying him about $100,000 last year, the records show.

The union has cited Don DeMoro’s work in pressing for legislation such as the ratios law. Some of the association’s detractors have questioned the credibility of his research because of the spousal relationship.

Don DeMoro also heads a small research institute that the union’s lawyer, James Eggleston, said has “evolved” into an arm of the union. State officials say the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy has run afoul of regulations for filing tax returns and related disclosures. In 2002, the California Franchise Tax Board suspended the institute from doing business because the organization had not filed state tax returns since 1997, said board spokesman John Barrett.

“They need to bring themselves back into good standing,” Barrett said.

Eggleston said the failure to file the tax returns and other documents was a clerical oversight that would be corrected. “Somebody should have been paying attention,” he said.

He said Don DeMoro has not received any financial benefit from the institute in many years. Don DeMoro did not return telephone calls about the institute.

Dismissing any suggestion of nepotism or conflict of interest, Idelson and union officials said Don DeMoro’s research is worth every penny of his salary.

“He’s an exemplary researcher,” Idelson said. “His studies have been models for other organizations.”

But Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, said Don DeMoro’s employment by his wife’s union “raises eyebrows,” no matter the quality of his research. “It just doesn’t look good.”

Meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board last year overturned an organizing election the association had won at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The board found that the 2002 election had been tainted because two antiunion nurses had received anonymous telephone threats against their families and pets.

Idelson said the association had nothing to do with the Cedars-Sinai threats and the board’s finding reflected the Bush administration’s antipathy toward unions.

The association has won more than 65 elections on DeMoro’s watch, while losing about a half-dozen, Idelson said. He said it represents about 45% of hospital nurses in California; 61% of the 297,000 nurses licensed in the state work in hospitals.

Outside the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco recently, DeMoro was in her element as the association and other unions picketed a Schwarzenegger fundraiser. Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” blared from loudspeakers. Overhead, a plane hired by the union trailed a banner that read “Arnold: California Is Not For Sale.” Slogans on placards referred to allegations that Schwarzenegger had groped unwilling women in the past.

Demonstrators clogged the streets in every direction, hurling insults at well-dressed contributors arriving at the fundraiser: “Corporate scum! Shame on you!”

Nurses at the protest spoke glowingly of DeMoro. “She’s actually my hero,” said Deborah Burger, a Santa Rosa nurse who is the elected president of the association.

Jenny McGrane, a San Francisco nurse, said DeMoro is a “very positive public voice” for the union.

DeMoro says the union’s triumphs flow from the crusade-like resolve of its 30 part-time directors, all working nurses, as well as a “women’s culture” that emphasizes collaboration, rather than competition, within the association hierarchy. The membership is more than 90% female.

DeMoro brands Schwarzenegger a “bullying” sexist. “I think he sees women as completely subservient,” she said.

At union headquarters, she lifted one of the bobble-head dolls from her desk and dropped it accidentally. It snapped in two.

“I broke his head off,” DeMoro said, retrieving the pieces. “Do you think that’s symbolic?”