ONE UNION'S WAR AGAINST CHOICE
Once the initiative qualified, the CTA expected to face it in the June 1994 election, but then Governor Wilson called a special election for November 1993. In preparation, the CTA kicked its anti-voucher campaign into high gear, assessing its 230,000 members a $19 per year anti-174 surcharge for the next three years, putting "informational" literature in every school in California and assembling a coalition of some 200 educational, professional, political, and governmental organizations. ("The most extensive coalition of public interest groups ever assembled behind any initiative campaign in California history," says anti-174 spokesman Rick Ruiz.)TAKING ADVANTAGE of its near unique ability to mobilize bodies in every district in the state, the CTA flooded the state with 140 phone banks (covering everything but the desert and the lightly populated northeast counties). It printed buttons for teachers and sent home anti-voucher fliers in kindergartners' knapsacks. It trained a speakers corps to address everyone from Ross Perot's United We Stand to fundamentalist church groups ("Do not debate the quality of public education in California," speakers were told. "Keep your focus on what is wrong with 174.").
To guard against the possibility of a low teacher turnout, it started an absentee ballot drive ("so no teacher will have any excuse not to vote," says the CTA). It created a series of anti-voucher radio ads, TV spots, and printed bumper stickers, buttons, newsletters, and brochures by the truckload. And just in case anyone still missed the point, the September back-to-school issue of CTA Action carried 21 different articles, columns, sidebars, and jeremiads attacking 174.
So far the campaign is working just as planned. According to CTA Assistant Executive Director Ned Hopkins, an internal poll showed that 80 percent of teachers were planning to vote against Proposition 174, which, says Hopkins, is an astonishing and unprecedented show of unanimity for his union - "We have never had 80 percent of our members on one side of anything in history."
One thing that has always puzzled people familiar with the CTA is that its official politics don't come close to reflecting those of its membership. Although 35 percent of CTA members (and its current president, Del Weber) are registered Republicans, its orientation isn't just mildly left of center, it's "rabidly liberal," says Sacramento campaign consultant John Nelson. "They give 92 percent of their money to Democrats. They have consistently advocated tax increases to augment the education budget. The CTA co-sponsored Proposition 167, a bill which would have increased taxes on corporations at a time when California is suffering the worst recession in most people's memory."
