America Coming Together: Extended Profile
By Richard Poe
2004

America Coming Together (ACT) represents the Government Union wing of the Democrat Shadow Party, which encompasses such leftist labor unions as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFSCME. ACT funds, coordinates, and provides foot soldiers for the Shadow Party's grassroots voter mobilization programs, which are carried out by ACT's member organizations.

ACT is one of seven organizations (sometimes dubbed the "Seven Sisters") forming the administrative core of the Shadow Party. The other six constituent groups are America Votes, Center for American Progress, Joint Victory Campaign 2004, The Media Fund, MoveOn, and The Thunder Road Group.

ACT is also one of the 33 "progressive" member organizations constituting the Section 527 group America Votes.

The President of ACT is Harold McEwan Ickes. The Chief Executive Officer is Steven Rosenthal. The Treasurer (and also a Board Member) is Carl Pope. The Assistant Treasurer isBrian Foucart. Other Board Members include Ellen Malcolm (also an Assistant Treasurer), Anne Bartley, Hillary Clinton, Gina Glantz, Rob Glaser, Jonathan Lewis, Rob McKay, Minyon Moore, Cecile Richards, Jonathan T. Soros, and AntonioVillaraigosa.

During the 2004 election cycle, ACT ran what it called "the largest voter contact program in history," with over 1,400 full-time paid canvassers -- many of whom were discovered to be felons convicted of violent crimes -- as well as thousands of volunteers working from 55 offices, contacting voters door-to-door and by phone. ACT's website predicted that the voters it mobilized would "derail the right-wing Republican agenda by defeating George W. Bush and electing Democrats up and down the ticket." ACT focused its efforts on 17 designated "swing" or "battleground" states, including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Washington.

In order to ensure that the voters it mobilized would cast their ballots only for Democrats, ACT canvassers focused on "swing" voters (which it defined as "pre-retirement women" and "younger voters," who ACT deems less likely to be politically informed than other demographic groups), as well as what it calls "Democratic base voters" -- such as African Americans and Hispanics -- "who vote Democratic but need extra contact to persuade them to vote."

ACT used intrusive, high-pressure tactics to register and mobilize voters, both by phone and by door-to-door canvassing. Not only did its canvassers register voters, but they compiled extensive personal dossiers on them -- including such private information as their drivers' license numbers and social security numbers -- information which could be retrieved on demand through the canvassers' hand-held Palm Pilots.

Follow-up was key to ACT's get-out-the-vote strategy in 2004. According to ACT's website, its canvassers extracted firm "promises" from individual voters, then followed up to make sure that "promises are kept." ACT's website does not explain precisely how its canvassers enforced the "promises" they exacted. On June 23, 2004, the Associated Press revealed that an undetermined number of ACT's fulltime canvassers were felons, convicted for crimes ranging from drug dealing to burglary, assault and sex offenses.

In a January 11, 2005 column in The Almanac of American Politics, political analyst Charlie Cook credited ACT with bringing Democrats to the brink of success in the 2004 race. He wrote, "[D]emocrats, chiefly through America Coming Together, mounted what was not only the most sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation in the party's history, but it was probably the best field work by a factor of at least 10. Merging the latest in technology with old-fashioned shoe-leather, Democrats not only met, but surpassed their vote total targets in key states such as Ohio and Florida. With voter turnout unexpectedly climbing from 105 million in 2000 to 119 million in 2004… [Democrat voter mobilization efforts were] not quite good enough to win, but it was awfully close."

The original idea for ACT appears to have come from union activist and Democrat strategist Gina Glantz -- a New Left veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964, an event that marked the first illegal takeover of a university building and forced the school to allow political recruiting on its campus.

Following the sweeping Republican victory in the November 2002 mid-term elections, Glantz convened a meeting of hard-left activists at a DC restaurant to discuss strategy for the upcoming presidential race. Glantz was then an official for the SEIU. (She would later become a key strategist for the Howard Dean presidential campaign of 2004). Present at the 2002 meeting meeting were ex-Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, SEIU president Andrew Stern, ex-AFL-CIO political director Steven Rosenthal, Sierra Club head Carl Pope; and EMILY's List founder Ellen R. Malcolm.

Glantz proposed creating an "umbrella  group" to coordinate leftist organizations in the 2004 presidential campaign. All in attendance agreed that the recently passed McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002 -- which took effect on November 6, 2002 -- would not prevent independent groups such as theirs from soliciting "unlimited" donations, as long as they observed two simple rules: 

1. Do not explicitly advocate the "election or defeat" of federal candidates, and

2. Do not work directly with the candidates' campaigns or their political parties.

This interpretation of federal election law remains controversial. But it forms the basis for ACT's fundraising activities and those of all other Shadow Party groups to this day. 

A Roadblock

Glantz's vision of an "umbrella group" of leftist issue-advocacy organizations had a grave flaw. The wealthiest and mightiest groups she proposed including under her umbrella -- unions of government employees such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFSCME -- were engaged in a brutal power struggle. Until that struggle was resolved, Glantz's umbrella was little more than a pipe dream. This was no ordinary union turf battle. At stake was control of the American labor movement -- and potentially of the entire Democratic Party, which depends on union contributions for survival.

Union membership has been in steep decline in America since 1955. Part of the reason is that "right-to-work" laws now permit workers to refuse union membership, where formerly they would have been forced to join, often under threats of violence. Another reason for declining union membership is that businesses paying high wages to union workers have been going out of business, unable to compete with businesses that employ non-union labor. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, nearly 50 percent of all workers in the private sector in 1955 were union members. Today that figure has shrunk to 8.2 percent. Big Labor might well have faded away in America, were it not for the sudden emergence of the so-called "New Voice" movement -- a coalition dominated by socialist government unions such as the SEIU, AFSCME and the NEA-AFT teacher unions. 

The turnaround began when John J. Sweeney -- a Marxist ideologue -- nearly doubled SEIU's membership from 625,000 to 1.1 million members during his presidency of that organization. He became President of the AFL-CIO in 1995, from which position Sweeney began elevating other likeminded leaders such as Gerald McEntee (President of AFSCME), Andrew Stern (Sweeney's protégé and successor at SEIU) and former Clinton aide Steven Rosenthal, who Sweeney made Political Director of the AFL-CIO.

With the discipline and focus characteristic of hard-left activists, Sweeney's team of New Voice leaders quickly infiltrated the one sector of American labor that was growing in numbers – the government workforce.

Today, more Americans draw their paychecks from the U.S. government than from manufacturing firms. Consequently, the two largest and fastest-growing unions in America are the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) -- of which Andrew Stern is now President -- and the American  Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), whose presidency Gerald McEntee now holds. Both are aggressively organizing government employees, including health care workers paid through government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Both of these unions are committed, for their very survival, to an ever-expanding government. The bigger the government grows, the more members these unions acquire, and the more membership dues they collect. A large portion of these dues are then pumped into the campaigns of leftist Democrats who know that the government unions will continue supporting them only if they (the Democrats) continue raising taxes and swelling the ranks of government workers. Thus a never-ending feedback loop pushes public-sector unions to the left as fast as the unions themselves push the Democratic Party leftward.

Even so, the New Voice movement is no monolith. Power struggles keep the bosses divided. Just as John J. Sweeney wrested control of the AFL-CIO from the aging Lane Kirkland in 1995, today younger leaders are probing Sweeney for signs of weakness. As Sweeney nears retirement, McEntee, Stern and Rosenthal have all jockeyed to succeed him as President of the AFL-CIO -- the giant labor coalition of which SEIU and AFSCME are both members. Whoever wins the battle will emerge as one of the most powerful kingmakers in the Democratic Party. ACT will be an important base of his power. 

Andrew Stern made his move at the AFL-CIO's winter meeting in Hollywood, Florida, held on February 27, 2003. Stern and four co-conspirators confronted Sweeney, demanding that he form an Executive Committee that would share power with him. Stern's so-called "Gang of Five" included Sandra Feldman, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT); Bruce Raynor, President of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees  (UNITE); Terence M. O'Sullivan, President of the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA); and John W. Wilhelm, President of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union (HERE).

Sweeney yielded to their demands. Stern got his Executive Committee. But Sweeney was no pushover. He had just begun to fight. 

Prior to the Gang of Five's effort to muscle John Sweeney, Gerald McEntee had maintained cordial relations with Andrew Stern and his ally Steven Rosenthal. Growing tensions between Rosenthal and his one-time mentor John Sweeney had led to Rosenthal's resignation from the AFL-CIO in November 2002. But McEntee had remained friendly and supportive. When Rosenthal formed Partnership for America's Families (PAF) -- a grassroots, get-out-the-vote coalition aimed at mobilizing non-union, blue-collar voters -- McEntee joined the group, provided $20 million of AFL-CIO money to fund it, and helped Rosenthal raise an additional $10 million.

But things changed after Stern's confrontation with Sweeney. McEntee remained loyal to Sweeney and began distancing himself from Stern and Rosenthal.

The final break came in May 2003. McEntee staged what amounted to a public repudiation of Rosenthal. McEntee resigned from PAF, along with AFL-CIO executive director Linda Chavez-Thompson. Even worse, McEntee publicly charged that Rosenthal had been ineffective in reaching out to minorities.

McEntee thus sent a message throughout the AFL-CIO that it was open season on Rosenthal. Cries of "paternalism" arose against Rosenthal from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement  (LCLAA), which objected to a white man "leading the charge" in minority turf.

Various member unions began fighting over how Rosenthal's $30 million should be allocated. Without Sweeney and McEntee to protect him, Rosenthal was helpless.

"We are fighting among ourselves when there is a common enemy, a very strong  common enemy," complained Harold Ickes to the Washington Post on June 5, 2003. Gina Glantz added that the turf war was giving the Bush team, "a happy day for the White House. I'm sure they feel their voter-suppression efforts have just been enhanced." 

Soros Intervenes

It was at that point that George Soros intervened. He invited Steven Rosenthal and Ellen R. Malcolm to his Southampton beach house in July 2003 and listened to their vision for a voter outreach group that would encompass labor, pro-abortion and environmentalist forces under one big umbrella. Soros liked the idea and pledged $10 million to it on the spot. Before the meeting adjourned, Soros convinced other funders at the meeting to contribute an additional $12 million, for a total of $22 million.

IRS filings list July 17, 2003 as ACT's official launch date. The New York Times announced the group's public debut on August 8, 2003, naming as its co-founders Ellen Malcolm, Andrew Stern, Carl Pope, Cecile Richards and Gina Glantz.

The following month, ACT announced that Rosenthal's Partnership for America's Families would be absorbed into the larger umbrella group. It would become a sub-group of ACT. Rosenthal would keep his job as CEO of ACT, but would also serve as President of Partnership for America's Families, which would "focus almost exclusively on registration efforts in urban areas."

Soros had effectively ended the turf war. More importantly, his Shadow Party had absorbed two powerful New Voice leaders, in the persons of Steven Rosenthal and Andrew Stern. 

During the 2004 election campaign, canvassing and mobilizing potential voters in the 17 designated battleground states constituted ACT's primary mission.