Above all, teachers are out to oust incumbent Republican governors. | AP Photos Teachers unions target GOP govs

This story is part of an ongoing POLITICO series on how national policy issues are affecting the 2014 midterm elections.

Teachers unions are struggling to protect their political clout, but as the midterm elections approach, they’re fighting back with their most popular asset: the teachers themselves.


Backed by tens of millions in cash and new data mining tools that let them personalize pitches to voters, the unions are sending armies of educators to run a huge get-out-the-vote effort aimed at reversing the red tide that swept Republicans into power across the country in 2010.

The unions have plenty of money: They spent $69 million on state races in 2010 and are likely to top that this year. But as they gear up for the most intense and focused mobilization efforts they have ever attempted, they believe it’s their members who will give them an edge. Americans may be frustrated with public schools and wary of unions, but polls still show respect and admiration for teachers.

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“If someone knocks on your door and says, ‘I’m Mark, I’m from the state Democratic Party,’ you take the literature and shut the door,” said Karen White, political director for the National Education Association. “If you say, ‘Hi, I’m Karen, I’m a third-grade teacher at Hillsmere Elementary and I’m here to tell you what’s at stake for public education,’ that gets a very different reaction from the voter.”

Or at least, so union leaders hope.

While other interest groups focus on the frenzied fight for control of the Senate, teachers unions are pouring their resources into state politics. They’re pushing to flip legislative chambers in several states to Democratic control and put allies in key offices such as attorney general and secretary of state in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

Above all, they’re out to oust incumbent Republican governors, especially Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Florida’s Rick Scott and Michigan’s Rick Snyder.

Education rarely shows up as a top concern for voters in national polls. But it’s been a galvanizing force in recent mayoral elections in New York and Newark, and unions believe it will stir voters on the state level in a year roiling with debates about the Common Core, standardized testing and the soaring cost of college.

( POLITICO's full coverage of the 2014 elections)

All the GOP governors in the union cross hairs are considered vulnerable, their races listed as tossups by The Cook Political Report. All have moved to curb union influence, cut education funding or promote alternatives to traditional public schools — or all of the above.

Walker stripped public-sector workers of most collective-bargaining rights (and then beat back a ferocious effort by organized labor to recall him). Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback cut job protections for teachers. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has been locked in a years-long battle with unions over school funding.

And in Maine, Gov. Paul LePage famously advised his constituents: “If you want a good education, go to private schools.”

The enmity many teachers feel toward these governors goes far beyond partisan politics: It’s personal. There was even a booth at the NEA convention in Denver this month that gave teachers a chance to throw darts at the Republican governor of their choice.

“We’ve got to play real hardball in these midterm elections,” said Antonio White, a business teacher in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

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He bounced on his toes, fairly crackling with energy in his eagerness to take on Gov. Scott. “Without a doubt, we’ve got to be Scott-free,” White said. “We’ve got to gain back power.”

To that end, the NEA has held training sessions across the country to teach members how to shape their message for every possible audience — including their own spouses. The vast majority of NEA members are white suburban or rural women, and their spouses are mostly middle-age white men, a voting bloc that Democratic candidates have traditionally struggled to reach. Union strategists see huge potential in training their members to start their voter outreach in their own living rooms.

The NEA has also developed more sophisticated data-mining tools to target specific voters outside union households.

The union’s database might indicate, for instance, that the adults at a given address are struggling financially and don’t have school-age kids. So rather than send a teacher to talk with those voters about reducing class sizes, the NEA might dispatch a school bus driver to talk about a favored candidate’s commitment to raising the minimum wage.

( Also on POLITICO: Full education policy coverage)

Other common talking points include college affordability, student loans and concerns about too much standardized testing in K-12 schools.

The American Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, has joined other major unions in funding a huge expansion of the Grassroots Victory Program, run by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and focused on state legislatures. The initiative already has deployed 236 field organizers across 27 states — up from 60 organizers in 10 states in 2012.

And the NEA is partnering with Rock the Vote to bring more young people to the polls and with the NAACP to help voters intimidated by new ID requirements in some states.

“When you stand up, others follow, because you are the trusted messengers in your communities,” AFT President Randi Weingarten told 3,500 of her members at the union’s recent convention in Los Angeles. “We need you to be those trusted messengers like never before.”

GOP financially armed

Republicans aren’t exactly quaking. The Republican Governors Association and Republican State Leadership Committee have collected far more cash than their Democratic counterparts this year — and are far ahead of their pace in the 2010 midterms.

The RGA, for instance, raised $50 million in the first half of the year, compared with $27 million for the Democratic Governors Association. The RGA also reported a record $70 million cash on hand as of the end of June, up from $40 million at the midyear point in 2010. And Republican strategists are confident they can take at least a few governor’s mansions from Democrats, including in Illinois and Connecticut, where teachers unions will be forced to expend resources playing defense.

Republicans have new allies, too, including a super PAC focused on electing conservatives to state Legislatures from West Virginia to Nevada.

Plus, GOP partisans predict union endorsements will backfire among voters who don’t trust Big Labor to put the public good first.

“Unions want to keep electing liberal Democrats who continue to drive up unsustainable spending to their special interest causes,” said Jill Bader, a spokeswoman for the RSLC. “Hard-working families who are having trouble making ends meet have recognized that this doesn’t work.”

Incumbents take heart, too, from two high-profile stumbles for organized labor in recent years. In Wisconsin, unions went all out — including a tremendous voter mobilization effort — to recall Walker in June 2012. He won that vote easily. And in November 2012, Michigan voters resoundingly rejected a union-backed ballot initiative that would have enshrined collective-bargaining rights in the state Constitution.

“All the millions spent attacking the governor didn’t work in the recall and spending millions more won’t work this fall,” said Alleigh Marre, a spokeswoman for Gov. Walker.

To be on the safe side, though, the union’s top targets have been busy buffing their images on education.

In Florida, the state Republican Party this week came out with a Spanish-language TV ad featuring four teachers praising Scott for improving public education. In Pennsylvania, Corbett is holding near-daily events aimed at persuading voters to blame the Legislature, not him, for pinching school budgets. And in Michigan, Snyder used the high-profile platform of his State of the State address to rebut union claims that he’s decimated school funding.

“Michiganders see the progress the state is making, and I don’t think any amount of union attack ads will change that perception,” said his spokeswoman, Emily Benavides.

David vs. Goliath?

Union leaders like to frame the political battleground as a David-vs.-Goliath affair. They speak with pride about their working-class members, armed only with clipboards and comfy sneakers, going up against corporate titans of immense wealth and power.

It’s a point of pride with the NEA that nearly 12,000 members volunteered to register or contact voters in the 2012 presidential campaign and more than 900,000 have indicated some interest in political activism.

“We’re in every legislative district, every county, every precinct. No other organization has that kind of reach,” said White, the union’s national political director.

“The money conversation distracts from the point. What we’re putting in is the mobilization,” said Michael Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO, which also plans a heavy focus on state races.

The money, however, is hardly incidental.

Organized labor spent $252 million on state-level campaigns in 2010. Public-sector unions alone spent $140 million, according to campaign finance records assembled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Teachers unions, which represent a combined 3.8 million workers, spent $69 million on state races in 2010 and $92 million in 2012, according to the Institute. The NEA and AFT are also perennially among the top outside spenders on federal campaigns.

In this cycle, the teachers unions plan to play in some federal races, including the Senate campaigns in Arkansas, North Carolina and Louisiana. The NEA’s political action committee recently made a $500,000 ad buy attacking Rep. Tom Cotton, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arkansas.

But union strategists say they’re deploying the bulk of their resources on state races, in part because the scrum around the Senate races is already so noisy, it’s hard for additional voices to break through.

It’s a savvy strategy, analysts say. “Governor’s races don’t have as many warplanes up in the air as the Senate races,” said Brock McCleary, president of the Republican polling firm Harper Polling.

Pennsylvania, where Gov. Corbett is lagging in the polls, is a top target. Teachers unions have already donated more than $1 million to Tom Wolf, the Democratic nominee for governor, campaign finance records show. They’re also helping to fund a PAC that just bought $2 million in airtime to slam Corbett for education cuts.

Labor strategists even have ambitions to flip the Pennsylvania Senate to Democratic control. They’re also targeting state Senate chambers in New Hampshire, Arizona and Wisconsin and have their eyes on the Arkansas House as well.

“We plan to play big and aggressively in this election cycle,” the AFT’s Weingarten said. “Our members are determined to reverse some of the devastation they have felt since the 2010 elections.”