Democrats' convention fundraising hindered by rules, unions

WASHINGTON – With just weeks to spare, the leaders of the Democratic convention are chasing last-minute contributions to fund the political gala aimed at boosting President Obama's re-election bid. Their efforts are hampered, in part, by Obama's decision to limit direct corporate contributions and a refusal by some unions to donate to this summer's event in Charlotte.

By Chuck Burton, AP

Steve Law works on a luxury box at Time Warner Cable Arena — where the majority of the Democratic National Convention will be held — in Charlotte on July 16.

By Chuck Burton, AP

Steve Law works on a luxury box at Time Warner Cable Arena — where the majority of the Democratic National Convention will be held — in Charlotte on July 16.

Organizers of the Republican National Convention, meanwhile, say they also are collecting money but are well on their way toward hitting their goal of raising roughly $55 million as companies, such as Hewlett-Packard and Coca-Cola help underwrite the Aug. 27-30 Republican National Convention in Tampa where Mitt Romney will accept his party's nomination.

In a sharp departure from previous conventions, Democrats have banned checks from corporations or political action committees for the convention and have imposed a $100,000 cap on donations from individuals.

Those restrictions have made it harder to collect contributions, said Ken Eudy, who runs a Raleigh marketing company and serves on Charlotte's host committee. Democrats have set a $36.6 million fundraising goal for the Sept. 3-6 convention.

In a year when presidential candidates, super PACs and an array of other politicians down the ballot are scrambling for campaign cash, a convention "is at the bottom of the political food chain," said Eudy, who hosted a convention fundraiser last week attended by North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue and other top Democrats in the state. "It's very difficult to raise this money."

Making fundraising harder: Some labor unions have announced they will not help underwrite the Democrats' gathering in North Carolina, choosing instead to direct their money to get-out-the-vote efforts. Four years ago, unions accounted for five of the top 10 organizational donors to the Democrats' convention in Denver, according to a tally by the non-profit Campaign Finance Institute.

"We feel that a better use of our members' money would be spent on grassroots mobilization efforts this election cycle," Jim Spellane, a spokesman for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said in an e-mail. In 2008, the union donated more than $1 million to help stage the Denver convention.

Last month, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced the union would not make any "major monetary" contributions to the convention. Instead, the group plans an Aug. 11 rally in Philadelphia to promote labor issues.

Officials with both Tampa and Charlotte host committees refuse to say how much they have raised or provide a comprehensive list of donors. They are not required to provide a public accounting to federal regulators until Oct. 15 — more than six weeks after the conventions have ended.

"We've achieved every milestone we have set," Kenneth Jones, an executive at a Tampa private-equity firm who runs the Republican host committee, told USA TODAY this week. The Republicans have not imposed restrictions on corporate giving.

"We're on track," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, whose CEO Jim Rogers serves as co-chairman of the Charlotte host committee.

Officials with the Democratic Party tout the decision to limit corporate contributions as evidence of Obama's commitment to limit the influence of special interests. And Dan Murrey, the host committee's executive director, said the emphasis on smaller donations has boosted grass-roots giving. The convention already has received contributions "from nearly 65 times more individuals" than four years ago, he said.

Even so, there are ways around the ban on corporate giving. Democrats are accepting in-kind contributions, such as computer and telephone equipment, from for-profit companies for official convention activities.

In addition, the host committee is using a parallel fundraising account, New American City Inc., to accept unlimited corporate funds. Organizers say those funds will pay for expenses outside of the official convention events, such as welcoming parties for journalists and convention delegates.

Party officials say they have no say over how the host committee raises money through the New American City account. "The Democratic convention has gone further than any convention in history to reform the way conventions are funded," said Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Convention Committee. But the host committee "may raise money however it sees fit to promote Charlotte."

Conventions — splashy, made-for-TV affairs that kick off the fall presidential campaign — are expensive events, paid for with a combination of public and private funds.

Congress has set aside $100 million to provide security for both events. An additional $18 million in public money goes to each convention from the Federal Election Commission to help underwrite salaries, construction, entertainment and other officials convention activities. It's up to the host committees to collect the rest.

While an individual is barred from writing a check larger than $5,000 directly to a candidate for the primary and general election, federal law imposes no restrictions on what companies, individuals unions and foundations can give to host committees — which are treated as organizations promoting local communities rather than extensions of the candidates' campaigns.

Utility giant Duke Energy has emerged as one of the biggest players in the Charlotte convention. It has provided a $10 million line of credit to organizers and has given free office space to the host committee and the Democratic National Convention Committee. Rogers also has donated $100,000 personally.

The utility, which spent more than $6.3 million to lobby Congress and federal agencies last year, doesn't "expect any special treatment" in return for its largesse, said Williams, the Duke spokesman. "We're not in this for that."

"This is a way to showcase Charlotte in a way we never have before," he said. "When Charlotte is successful, Duke is successful."

Other companies helping underwrite convention include the Charlotte-based Bank of America; Time Warner Cable, a top sponsor of the media party in Charlotte; and Hewlett-Packard, which will provide computers and printers at both conventions, company spokesman Michael Thacker confirmed.

While a funding shortfall could force Democrats to divert campaign funds to the convention, it's unlikely to have a big impact on public perception or dampen delegates' enthusiasm, said Peter Ubertaccio, a political scientist at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass.

"When most people tune in," he said, "they will be completely unaware if the Democrats have not raised as much as they had hoped."

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Republicans aim to quash new union rules (AP)

WASHINGTON – Republicans are maneuvering to short-circuit an effort by Democrats on the National Labor Relations Board to approve rules that would quicken the pace of union elections.

The GOP member of the labor board is threatening to resign his post, which would deny the board a quorum and quash the entire process. At the same time, the House is poised Wednesday to approve a GOP bill aimed at short-circuiting moves they consider anti-business. That measure is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate.

The developments are the latest sign of how intensely business groups are opposing any moves that could help organized labor make new inroads at companies that have long opposed unions.

At the labor board, the Democratic majority was set to take up a proposal Wednesday that would simplify procedures and shorten deadlines for holding union elections after employees at a work site gather enough signatures.

But the board's lone GOP member, Brian Hayes, has threatened to quit the agency over his objection to the planned rules, an unprecedented move that would render the board powerless to approve any new measures at all. The board needs at least three members to make any decisions.

If Hayes leaves, only two members — both Democrats — would remain instead of the five members it's supposed to have. Congressional Republicans have blocked President Barack Obama from filling the other two vacancies at the board.

Under current rules, union elections typically take place within 45-60 days after a union gathers enough signatures to file a petition. Republicans contend the new rules could shorten that time to as little as 10 days.

Unions claim companies often abuse current rules to file frivolous appeals, holding up elections for months or even years. But business groups claim the plan would give unions "quickie" elections without leaving employers enough time to respond.

The board's majority has been rushing to approve the new rules before the end of the year, when the term of one of the two Democratic members expires. A modified plan being considered Wednesday is a limited version of more sweeping rules proposed earlier this year. It would not, for example, require employers to provide a list of worker phone numbers and email addresses in voter lists provided to unions.

A final vote on the rules would take place next month, unless Hayes leaves the board.

Hayes has vowed not to participate at the Wednesday meeting and threatened to resign his post over his objection to the rules, according to a letter from the board's chairman, Mark Pearce, circulated last week. Hayes has declined requests for comment.

Union officials have decried Hayes' threat as a bullying tactic that undermines the board.

"We are shocked by the idea that a partisan difference would shut down the workings of a federal agency," said Peter Colavito, director of government relations for the Service Employees International Union.

Minnesota Rep. John Kline, GOP chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, blamed the board's Democratic majority and called on Pearce to withdraw "his ambush election proposal."

The bitter feud between Hayes and the board's two Democrats is the latest sign of how polarizing the debate over union rights has become. Board members often quarrel over policy differences, depending on which political party is in the majority. But labor experts say a board member has never resigned for the sole purpose of preventing a vote.

"As far as I'm aware, it's unprecedented," said William Gould, a former NLRB chairman during the Clinton administration and now a professor at Stanford Law School. "The board has become more polarized, but this takes it to a different level entirely."

In the House, meanwhile, Republicans are expected to pass a bill that would override any changes to NLRB election rules. The measure would delay any vote on a union for at least 35 days after a petition is filed.

The bill would also overturn a recent board ruling that made it easier for smaller groups of workers within companies to organize bargaining units. Business groups claim so-called "micro-bargaining unions" would allow unions to cherry-pick certain departments or employees within a company.

"Congress must act now to thwart the NLRB's radical regulatory maneuvers," said David French, a vice president for government relations at the National Retail Federation, the world's largest retail trade group.

The federation, whose members include Best Buy Co. and Macy's Inc., claims the board's proposed rules would limit workers access to "information needed to make an informed decision about union representation."

California Rep. George Miller, top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce committee, has denounced the measure as an "anti-worker, anti-family bill" that would undermine worker rights.

The bill is not expected to go far in the Senate, where Democratic leaders are not likely to bring it to a vote.

___

Follow Sam Hananel on Twitter at http://twitter.com/shananel

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GOP-led states change voting rules ahead of 2012 (AP)

COLUMBUS, Ohio – After years of expanding when and how people can vote, state legislatures now under new Republican control are moving to trim early voting days, beef up identification requirements and put new restrictions on how voters are notified about absentee ballots.

Democrats claim their GOP counterparts are using midterm election wins to enforce changes favorable to Republicans ahead of the 2012 presidential election. They criticize such legislation, saying it could lead to longer lines in Democratic-leaning urban areas and discourage people from voting.

Supporters say bolstering ID rules helps prevent fraud. And at a time when counties face tough budgets, they contend local elections officials don't have the money to keep early voting locations staffed and opened.

The process of changing voting rules may be nonpartisan on the surface but it is seething with politics just below the surface.

"We've had nothing short of a rhetorical firefight for years between the folks who are worried about fraud and folks who are worried about disenfranchisement — a firefight which is pretty much neatly broken down between the two major parties," said Doug Chapin, an election expert at the University of Minnesota.

While states typically adjust voting rules ahead of presidential elections, this year provides an opportunity for new Republican governors and GOP majorities to legislate on election issues.

Put simply, Chapin said: "What's happening in 2011 is just as much about what happened in 2010."

New voting rules recently cleared state legislatures in what have traditionally been presidential battlegrounds, creating partisan rancor.

Plans to reduce the number of days to cast an early ballot cleared the Republican-controlled swing states of Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. Legislatures in Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia also lopped off advanced-voting time. North Carolina has a pending proposal. And Maine has done away with a policy that allows people to register at the polls on Election Day before casting ballots.

Each party, when in control, seeks to rewrite the rules to its electoral advantage.

Although the reality may not be so cut and dried, both parties believe a looser voting regimen benefits Democrats because it increases opportunities for Hispanic, black, immigrant and poor people — harder to reach for an Election Day turnout — to vote.

Democratic voters held an edge in early voting during the 2010 elections, despite the unfavorable climate for the party nationally and the eventual Republican gains.

Voters in 32 states and the District of Columbia can cast a ballot in person before Election Day without having to give a reason.

Georgia and Ohio had some of the longest early voting time periods. Georgia had 45 days, while Ohio had 35. The new laws bring the two states closer to the typical timeframe, which is about two weeks before the election.

The move to shrink the early voting window in some states comes as others have pushed to require voters to show a photo ID at the polls.

Five states — Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — recently passed strict photo ID laws. At the beginning of the year, just two states — Georgia and Indiana — required that voters must show a photo ID in order to have their vote counted.

Other legislatures are rewriting their state's election laws in other ways.

Florida rolled back its early voting time to one week from two in an overhaul that also makes it more difficult for groups such as the League of Women Voters and the Boy Scouts of America to conduct voter registration drives.

Ohio's top elections chief, a Republican, acknowledged that changes to voting rules have invited an overreaction from each party.

"Both sides of the political spectrum have found it advantageous from a fundraising point of view, from a motivating their base point of view, to call into question the confidence in the election system," Secretary of State Jon Husted said in an interview.

While Ohio's overhaul bans local boards of elections from mailing unsolicited absentee ballot requests to voters, Husted has agreed to have the state send the requests to voters in all counties in 2012.

Ohio's law is not yet in effect, and opponents are working to get a proposed repeal question on the fall 2012 ballot. The legislation ignited debate early this summer on the floors of the state's GOP-controlled General Assembly.

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Rules would speed up union elections (AP)

WASHINGTON – The National Labor Relations Board proposed sweeping new rules Tuesday to allow unions to hold workplace elections much more quickly, winning praise from Democrats and labor leaders who called it a long overdue fix to a broken system riddled with roadblocks and delays to union organizing.

But the move was quickly condemned by business groups and their GOP supporters as another in a series of moves by the board to placate organized labor and tie the hands of employers.

The board is proposing to streamline a union election process that currently has workers vote within 45-60 days after a union gathers enough signatures to file a petition, a time many companies use to discourage workers from unionizing.

The new plan could cut that time by days or even weeks — depending on the case — by simplifying procedures, deferring litigation, allowing electronic filing of petitions and other documents and setting shorter deadlines for hearings and filings.

If the board makes the rules final, following a period for public comment, it would be a victory for labor unions that long have complained about employers using procedural delays and litigation to hold up elections and intimidate workers. Some employers use the extra time to hire so-called union busting consulting firms to produce videotapes, draft talking points or create brochures to deter unionizing.

"Our current system has become a broken, bureaucratic maze that stalls and stymies workers' choices," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. He hailed the proposal as "a common sense approach to clean up an outdated system."

Not so, said Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who called it "an outrageous assault on America's job creators and workers."

"The question everyone should be asking is why the need to rush?" Enzi said. "Is it because union membership is at an all-time low? If employees want to unionize they should be allowed to do so, but to ram elections through before important questions are asked and answered does a disservice to everyone involved."

Usually an obscure federal agency, the board has grown into a major political target since its acting general counsel filed a lawsuit in April that accuses Boeing Co. of retaliating against union workers in Washington state by placing a new assembly line for the Dreamliner 787 in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

The latest NLRB proposal has reignited a growing debate over whether the agency is simply doing its job or overreaching.

Union membership has declined steadily from about 20 percent in the 1980s to 11.9 percent of all workers and just 6.9 percent of the private sector. Many members blame increasingly aggressive anti-union tactics, but they have tried without success to pass legislation in Congress that would address those problems.

Labor leaders made a major push in 2009 for Congress to pass so-called card check legislation that would have made it easier for unions to organize workers by signing cards instead of holding secret-ballot elections. But the measure failed to garner a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Since then, labor has pinned its hopes for a revival on action at the NLRB, the Labor Department and other sympathetic agencies.

The rule proposed on Tuesday could be one step in helping unions halt the membership slide and organize more workers.

It would:

• Allow electronic filing of petitions and other documents to speed up processing.

• Set pre-election hearings to begin 7 days after a petition is filed.

• Defer litigation of eligibility issues involving less than 20 percent of the bargaining unit until after the election.

• Eliminate pre-election appeals of rulings by an NLRB regional director.

• Reduce from 7 to 2 days the time for an employer to provide an electronic list of eligible voters.

Union officials say the problem under the current system is that procedural delays and needless litigation can postpone some votes by months or even years. One study by Stanford Business School professor John-Paul Ferguson showed that 35 percent of the time that workers file a petition for a union election, an election never happens.

Joe Trauger, vice president of human resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, said that in 2009, labor unions won 68.5 percent of representation elections. And 95 percent of all elections are conducted within 56 days of the filing petition submitted by the union.

"These so-called snap elections are the latest attempt by the NLRB to effectively do for the unions what Congress wouldn't — stack the deck in their favor," Trauger said.

Anticipating the critics, board chairwoman Wilma Liebman issued a statement predicting the new proposal would be controversial, but she insisted the agency has a duty to resolve union elections "quickly, fairly and accurately."

"That controversy is unfortunate, but it is not a good reason for the board to abandon its responsibilities," Liebman said.

Jumping to her defense was California Rep. George Miller, ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

"Ideologues will undoubtedly criticize and scaremonger over this modest, commonsense proposal," Miller said. "In reality, the proposal will reduce costly litigation for all parties and reduce unnecessary conflict in the workplace."

The proposal was approved by the board's majority, led 3-1 by Democrats. The board's lone Republican, Brian Hayes, issued a vigorous dissent, saying the proposal would result in the type of "quickie elections" union leaders have long sought. Hayes claimed elections could be held in as little as 10 days to 21 days from the filing of a petition, giving employers less of a chance to make their case.

"Make no mistake, the principal purpose for this radical manipulation of our election process is to minimize or, rather, to effectively eviscerate an employer's legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining," Hayes wrote.

The board will take 75 days to review comments and replies before making a decision on whether the rule should become final.

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