KY Governor Steve Beshear sailed to victory tonight in KY, crushing David Williams in the general election; Beshear, who won office 4 years ago on the back of the labor program in Kentucky, was again endorsed by the KY AFL-CIO and helped to this win by a strong labor-to-labor program led by Kentucky AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan and a core group of affiliates focused on worksite leafleting, local union mail and phone banks across the state.

•             Worksite Leafleting: 159,250 Flyers were downloaded and distributed;  (3 distinct flyers on the Working Families Toolkit); 65 worksites leafleted (50 worksites leafleted multiple times)

•             Phone Calls: Volunteers made approximately 27,858 member to member calls from numerous sites throughout the state not counting GOTV robo calls made by local union leaders over the last 5 days, including a statewide robo call from the President Londrigan.

•             Local Union Mail: multiple locals have mailed their membership twice through their periodicals and newsletters.  BLE, UAW, IBEW, UA, IUPAT, IAM, IBT, CWA/IUE, UAW, IUOE, IAM, BMWE/IBT, AFGE, UTU, AFSCME, SEIU/FO, UMWA, USW, KYBCTC, ATU, USW locals all sent local union mail –

Thanks to UAW 862 in Louisville for hosting the Labor 2011 effort, and to UAW and LiUNA for release staff for the program;  25 affiliates, including IAFF, UAW, IBEW, UA, IUPAT, IAM, CWA/IUE, USW, IUOE, IAM, BLE, BMWE/IBT, IBT, AFGE, UTU, AFSCME, SEIU/FO, UMWA, USW, KYBCTC, and ATU released  staff to work their internal union program.

Other key races in KY this year included AG, Auditor, Secretary of State and Ag Commissioner.   Jack Conway, who lost to Rand Paul in last year’s tidal wave, ran again for Attorney General and won, beating a nasty right winger, Todd P’Pool (that’s right P’Pool).  P’Pool used anti union rhetoric all during his campaign, and went after UMWA in waning days,  so Conway’s victory is particularly sweet. Congrats to all of the national unions who supported your locals in these races – it’s great to see their hard work pay off.  There’ll be tough races in KY in 2012, especially defending Cong. John Yarmuth, who stood up for working families and voted against all 3 bad trade deals last month.  We’ll need to keep this momentum going next year.