Hi, everyone. As you know, my Dad is
Jack Carter, who's running for US Senate in Nevada. We've had some really exciting news lately that I want to share with you. In this campaign update, you'll get:
- A new Rasmussen poll that gives us plenty to be optimistic about
- Some information about the union endorsements we're racking up
- A little bit about Dad's recent rural tour
- An interview that Dad recently did with blogger Stuart O'Neill
Polling Data
First, the most recent poll, done by Rasmussen (via Nevada Today):
Rasmussen 7/31/2006. Likely voters MoE 4.5 (numbers from January in parentheses)
Ensign 46% (53%)
Carter 39% (34%)
some other candidate 4% (7%)
not sure 11% (6%)
We're very pleased with these numbers; there's been a lot of movement in our direction, and Ensign is looking very, very vulnerable. And he should be vulnerable - he votes with Bush 96% of the time (including
100% in 2004) in a state that gives Bush a
38% favorability rating. He's far too red for purple Nevada.
Union Endorsements
Nevada (Las Vegas in particular) has very strong unions. Here are some of the statistics from In Business Las Vegas:
The U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Nevada's union density grew by 1.3 percent from 12.5 percent in 2004 to 13.8 percent in 2005. The state's growth in union membership was ranked 6th highest nationwide, while the national percentage of union membership remained stagnant at 12.5 percent in 2005.
The number of Nevada's workers who are members of unions grew by 19,000, a fair share of which are a result of the organizing efforts by the Culinary Union Local 226, the Service Employees International Union and the Laborers International Union of North America, said Danny Thompson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Nevada State AFL-CIO. In 2005 the Culinary Union added about 4,000 workers at Wynn Las Vegas and another 1,300 at the Aladdin. The union now has about 54,000 members.
"If you look at the national trend, we are the opposite of the national trend," Thompson said. "The national trend had a slowdown in organizing -- here we have not. It's because we've had active new campaigns."
My Dad is a strong believer in power of unions and has worked to get their support. On Monday, we received the official endorsement from the
Culinary Union, which has nearly 60,000 members. We're excited to have them on board! Remember that Nevada has only about a million voters. A big chunk like that supporting my Dad will help a lot. These unions will be using their organization to pound the pavement to get out the vote come November.
Here is the list of unions that have endorsed Jack Carter for Senate:
- Culinary Union local 226
- Service Employees International Union
- Laborers' International Union of North America Local 169
- AFL-CIO
- Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters
- United Transportation Union
- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
- Central Labor Council of Southern Nevada
- International Union of Painters and Allied Trades
- Operating Engineers Local 12, Local 3
- United Auto Workers
- United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and
Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada
Dad's rural tour
My Dad went on tour with a couple of musicians and a flat-bed truck, visiting 11 towns in 4 days. He had a great time and talked to some interesting characters! I don't want to tell you too much about his tour yet - I'm working on getting some video from the events and I'm going to post it when it's ready. But in the meantime, here is some good local coverage of his tour from the Elko Daily Free Press. It's an article titled, "Jack Carter Rocks Wells." An excerpt:
Laying aside his guitar, Carter stepped to the microphone and spoke on the issues of his campaign.
He said the United States has a health care system set up "for and by the lobbyists." He went on to say that Medicare officials, by law, cannot negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. "The system favors the big drug companies. We need to change this."
The candidate said that, if elected, he would vote to turn the current focus of government away from big corporations.
On the matter of national security, Carter said the Bush administration is making all the decisions in Washington.
"He has our best interests at heart, but he needs help. Congress has got to stand up on its hind feet and be heard."
Carter said national security must involve the grassroots core. "Local police and local firefighters need a bigger voice in Homeland Security."
As Carter spoke, smoke from wildland fires west of Wells created a haze in the air. Particles of ash drifted down on the park tables.
"I've spoken to the firefighters who man the front lines of wild fires. They say that we need to extend firefighting time. They say they need to start the fire season a month earlier and end the season a month later," Carter said.
I promise I'll have more about the tour later - I'm working on getting that video up.
Interview with Stuart O'Neill
My Dad has talked with Stuart a couple of times now. Stuart has his latest interview up at his blog politicalinterviews.com - you can listen to it there or download the mp3. They discussed the rural tour (my Dad tells some pretty good stories), Democrats and Republicans, populism, and a few other things.
Here are a few excerpts (I transcribed them myself, and I'm pretty sure I got them right, but let me know if there are any mistakes!):
"The interesting part about the trip, aside from the kinds of things I learned about the local issues and the range problems and things like that, was a pretty deep vein of anti-administration rhetoric amongst peoeple who I would have taken to be pretty strong Republicans."
. . .
"The promise I made to them was, you know, I said I don't make promises very much, and I'm certainly not promising to agree with anybody, but I promise you that when I get elected, I'll be back here very early after I win because I want to know what's going on. I want to listen to you and I want to make you a part of my decision making process."
. . .
"If you really believe in the power of the people, if you really believe that the average American - and I do - that the average American's got good sense, knows what's going on, has got a lot of pretty good solutions to what's going on, and they are unselfish, in the sense that all they want is good government - and I do believe that. Then we have to, we Democrats have to also go out and see our people out there, the working men and women in America - and you know, a solid number of them live out in the country - and go talk to them and see what's coming back. It's got to be a two-way street. We can't just develop expert opinions in Washington without any of these things, and just go out and preach it to these peple. We've got to go out and find out what the working men and women - whether it's a union guy here in las vegas or whether it's that rancher I was telling you about earlier - we've got to go out and ask them what they think `cause they've got good sense, too, and are often much closer to the ground in terms of what the issue affects, and they can really provide a lot of insight into it. So that's the basis of my campaign."
You should really listen to
the whole thing (it's only 17 minutes long) over at Stuart's place.
We think that poll puts us in really good shape, and we're building support on the ground, but we're going to need all the help we can get to win this thing - please donate to the campaign if you can. Thanks for reading!
Sarah
You can always find more at the Carter Blog