The 1.7 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has played a critical role in shaping the outcome of the presidential election and several important races in three key ways:

1. applying organizing know-how to help set up the strategy and structure for a whole range of progressive coalitions.
2. providing an unprecedented level of people power, including more than 2,000 members working full-time for months in battleground states, along with more than 50,000 member volunteers.
3. making the largest investment by any single organization in the history of American politics – a total of $65 million.

“What our members and allies have done will forever change the face of political organizing,” said SEIU President Andy Stern.

“This is just the beginning,” added SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger, who oversees the union’s political operation.  “Our campaign will continue beyond election day to help John Kerry ensure that every American has access to quality, affordable health care.”

A closer look at the know-how, people-power and money utilized in SEIU’s Fight for the Future campaign (also see below for graphic breakdowns):

• Creating strategic grassroots organizations. SEIU’s leadership helped build bold new organizations to coordinate and fund sophisticated grassroots efforts. President Andy Stern and other SEIU leaders founded and/or serve on the boards of the largest and most progressive community-based voter mobilization groups like ACT, America Votes, Mi Familia Vota, American Families United, and the New American Opportunity Campaign.
  
  
• The largest single contributor. SEIU is the largest contributor to ACT at $26 million (exceeding individual contributions by George Soros and Peter Lewis); the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2004 Program; and America Votes ($900,000).  SEIU tripled the amount spent in 2000 ($65 million in 2004) to make significant donations as well as “in-kind contributions” – SEIU members and staff – to groups like Voting is Power, Mi Familia Vota, ACT and its Caribbean Power Vote, and America Votes, that together registered nearly 4.5 million new voters. SEIU gave $1 million to the DNC and has made large donations to groups that share our goals, like Rock the Vote and the New Democratic Network.
  
  
• Largest commitment of people power. Accounting for a pre-GOTV total of more than 6 million voter contacts in the battlegrounds, SEIU recruited more than 2,750 members and staff willing to take a leave from their jobs to do full-time political work with organizations like ACT, allowing the union to reach beyond the labor movement for the first time to conduct real voter contact with a wider universe of workers. Roughly 40 percent of SEIU’s full-time activists, or “Heroes” don’t live in the battlegrounds, so they packed their bags – nearly 1,000 of them as early as April and July – and temporarily moved to 16 key states. SEIU rallied another 50,000 “weekend warriors” who are now ratcheting up their GOTV efforts for a grand total of 19 million phone calls and 10 million doors knocked across the country.
  
  
• Independent TV and radio expenditures. SEIU spent just over $3 million on federal independent expenditure TV and radio ads, including $1.4 million for three TV and six radio spots in Wisconsin on health care, and $500,000 for three Spanish-language TV ads in Florida’s three largest markets running since mid-October through Nov. 2. Several other significant radio and TV buys hit the airwaves in ME, MO, NC, and AR. In addition, SEIU put $ 2.6 million into non-federal independent expenditures and initiative campaigns in CA, ME, AZ, FL, and NV and $9 million in direct contributions to worker-friendly candidates, campaigns and organizations.
  
  
• Worker communication and technology. 500,000 SEIU members, many of them low-wage workers who earn less than $30,000 a year, have voluntarily contributed an overall total of $16 million towards the union’s political action fund that helped pay for SEIU’s nurses, janitors, security officers, public employees in battleground states to receive over 4 million pieces of direct mail, designed to share with union households John Kerry’s vision for the country. Four purple mobile action centers traveled around the country to bring a unique communications technology to SEIU members, allowing them to complete millions of phone calls to voters across the country.
  
  
• Early focus on health care. The SEIU-led Americans for Health Care helped make health care a top campaign issue throughout the primary season with billboards and TV spots featuring Iowa and New Hampshire nurses calling on the candidates to offer comprehensive health care plans. The group has also identified over 300,000 “health care voters” – Americans who have signed pledges to hold politicians accountable on the issue at the polls.
  
  
• Health care campaign continues. SEIU members aren’t waiting for the ballots to be counted to spearhead a national effort to make sure quality, affordable health care is the number one priority for the next Administration and Congress.  On Election Night, SEIU will begin airing an issue-based ad on CNN.  As well, thousands of SEIU members will begin to distribute 1 million stickers that read “Quality, Affordable Health Care: Job 1 in 2005.”