As AFT president Edward J. McElroy emphasizes, the union supports candidates based on the issues, not their party affiliation, and large numbers of AFT-endorsed candidates were victorious. In addition to gaining control of both houses of the U.S. Congress, Democrats held their 14 governorships and won gubernatorial elections in six additional states. State chambers (either house, senate or both) shifted from the Republican to the Democratic column in seven states. Just as important, the AFT—usually working in coalitions—helped defeat a number of dangerous ballot initiatives, such as TABOR (the Taxpayer Bill of Rights) in Maine, Nebraska and Oregon and the 65 percent mandate (a gimmick to limit spending on public education) in Colorado, as well as passing initiatives to raise the minimum wage in six states.

Some AFT members also won election to high-profile offices this year, including two new members of Congress. High school teacher Tim Walz, a member of Education Minnesota from Mankato, and Dave Loebsack, a member of the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Teachers Federation who teaches at Cornell College, are both part of the new Democratic majority.

In virtually every key race, including all but one of those highlighted in the previous issue of Reporter, AFT-endorsed candidates came out on top. And stories like those of Ohio paraprofessional Kris Schwartzkopf can be found in every one of the key races where AFT members were involved. Schwartzkopf, a member of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, says the voters she met on precinct walks and at phone banks seemed very in tune with key issues, such as job losses, unfair trade policies and the need for a higher minimum wage, and they wanted a new direction. “There was real enthusiasm in this year’s election—it was building for months,” she says.

As hard as it may seem, getting candidates elected is often the easy part of the political process, McElroy says. The real work is legislating and governing. “For AFT members,” he explains, “our next steps must be to make sure the candidates we worked so hard to elect remember the working men and women—and their families—whom they now represent.” (See the box at left for some ways to help keep the momentum going.)

There are plenty of issues to keep AFT’s growing number of activists at every level of the union involved and engaged. Reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, congressional action on increasing the minimum wage, and efforts to safeguard workers’ pensions and labor rights will be high on the agenda, legislative director Tor Cowan recently told AFT state federation presidents. Cornerstones of the effort will be grass-roots mobilization that supports traditional lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Just days after the election, for example, AFT members and staff attended a packed rally on Capitol Hill to support raising the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), a longtime leader of the effort to raise the minimum wage, singled out paraprofessionals as among the men and women who work hard but still earn only the bare minimum. “Anyone who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year in the richest country in the world should not live in poverty,” Kennedy said.