Working on winning union vote in Nevada
— -- Luz Padilla Velasquez may not look like your typical union shop steward.
The 26-year-old mother of three, a Mexican immigrant who recently became a U.S. citizen, doesn't work in a factory or a mill or a manufacturing plant. She's a housekeeper in a hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
She's also on the front line of an army of union reps working member by member to turn out voters throughout Nevada, a battleground state in the race for the White House and a vanguard in the new generation of the nation's labor movement.
For Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who is seeking to wrest Nevada from Republicans for the first time since 1996, labor unions have become a formidable turnout force targeting some of the constituencies most important to his campaign: Latino voters and women.
Velasquez is one of hundreds of paid union canvassers working to identify, influence and turn out more than 100,000 voters.
In Nevada, where presidential elections traditionally are very close, that organization could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
"It could be a very positive factor for Obama," says Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada-Reno. "When labor gets motivated, they are an important force."
Until recently, opinion polls had marked Nevada as a true tossup state throughout the matchup between Obama and Republican nominee John McCain. As recently as Oct. 19, a Politico-Insider Advantage poll had the race deadlocked at 47%.
The latest polls show Obama starting to pull ahead. A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted Monday showed Obama up 50% to 46%, and a Reuters-Zogby poll done last Thursday through Sunday had Obama leading 48% to 44%.
An Associated Press-Gfk Roper poll conducted Oct. 22-25 had Obama up by as much as 12 points.
President Bush won the state twice. In 2000, Bush won Nevada with 50% of the vote to 46% for Vice President Gore. In 2004, Bush beat Sen. John Kerry 50% to 48%.
Nevada is one of only a handful of states where union membership is growing, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. From 2004 to 2007, union membership grew from 126,000 workers to 182,000 workers.
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