UFT Election 2025: ARISE - A Forensic Analysis - Will ARISE Demise? And What About ABC?

Prediction from John Q. Teacher: ARISE will get about 20% of the vote. Unity will get 40% and ABC will get 30% of the vote. Thus, Unity still wins. I have been saying this for a while. Having two groups such as ARISE and ABC will cause a Unity victory and I am not happy to see that happening. Hope I am wrong..... 

Unity will break 60% closer 65%. .... Anon

Comments on "Proposal from MORE to ABC Coalition (Oct. 2024) - Why This Agreement Favors MORE Caucus and Hurts Broader Union Democracy ":

Friday, May 30, 2025

Yesterday, as predicted, was a dud in terms of election results - even worse than I predicted due to the expected complications of in-person, mail, dealing with the large number of booklets vs single slate voting. They did count the in-person with estimates that around 1200 voted, and from what I could see from the screens, Unity won that vote overwhelmingly - looked like 65-70% to me. But that was expected. I was in and out all day with a noon doc appt and then at 5 to the rally on immigration at Tweed where there was a big crowd.

 

But today they are ready to start the serious scanning of the mail ballots -- we have no number on returns - we were told north of 50K. But how far north is a key as 50K is still on a quarter of the 200k ballots.

 

I'm heading down soon for the day which may stretch into Saturday. We won't know official results until sometime next week. We can only detect trends.

 

Here are the scenarios and at this point I can't do much speculation other than to say ABC has a shot and ARISE will not win.

Unity wins with 60-65% along the lines of the 2022 UFC election.

Unity wins but with lower totals ever: low 50s%

Unity wins small: Under 49%

ABC wins - if so it will be small

ARISE wins - I see no path

 

If Unity hits over 60%, that is a tribute to the campaign they ran that was aimed at getting out their base. They were desperate, because, you know, going back to the classroom was possible of they lose. But if the win with under 50%, that is a major warning sign that the end is near - if the opposition can get their stuff together -- always problematical.

But before we know results, as ballots start flying through the scanners, we can't help but look to the future, which has many different possibilities depending on the outcome. I will address the future of ABC which could go from bye-bye to vibrancy after the results. One thing was proven - that an ad hoc group of individuals with a wide range of political views - with a "leave your personal politics at the door" attitude, showed they could put together a slate of 550 candidates and run a campaign, a campaign that annoyed the hell out of both Unity and the usual loyal opposition.

What about the future of ARISE? Let's look at the components of the ARISE coalition, which has some similarities to United for Change from 3 years ago, but also some differences. My premise is that each caucus has different interests and after the election will focus on pursuing those interests. And as long as there are multiple caucuses pursuing their interests, and only coming together every 3 years for elections, Unity will prevail. 

ARISE is smaller in size down from 7 voices to 3 and they have learned a few lessons from the mistakes of UFC. Three caucuses made for easier decision making than 7. Let's not forget - before ARISE arose, there was the bigger ABC in formation which I wrote about the other day: Proposal from MORE to ABC Coalition (Oct. 2024) - Why This Agreement Favors MORE Caucus and Hurts Broader Union Democracy

Before the split, the group that became ARISE pushed the idea of structure as a necessary precursor which to the ABC component, which was like a wild horse trying to break out of the barn, meant control. And limits on what type of campaign could be run. Even a modest proposal to allow committees to funtion somewhat autonomously led to a hysterical reaction with screams of "you are trying to gut the power of steering." That was the final straw when ABC found out that the major 4 page proposal from MORE was being given careful consideration by the very same people who attacked ABC for its modest offer.

Anyway, let's look at those components.

New Action was founded in 1995 in a merger of two long-time caucuses, Teachers Action Caucus (TAC) - late 60's and New Directions (1975) and through 2001 won the high school exec bd seats. C. 2002, NAC began to cooperate with Unity Caucus and worked in tandem for UFT elections through the 2013 elections before breaking with Unity in 2016. During that 12 year period, NAC lost the bulk of its support, especially from active members and became more and more of a retiree-laden group. They recouped some in-service support from the 2022 election but are still very retiree dependent.

New Action has the most to lose if ARISE finishes last as they have claimed that only the caucuses and with their history and experience, could run a campaign. Thus some of them have been the most vicious in attacking ABC, which presents an existential threat to them.

MORE: Due to the NAC deal with Unity, two new groups, ICE and TJC ran against them both from 2004-10 before coming together with other groups to form MORE in 2012. A faction in MORE pushed out the ICE people in 2018 and MORE slanted traditional left. MORE is the biggest opposition group and is very school based and can withstand any outcome in this election and still hold its own. A significant portion of MORE did not even want to run and if ARISE finishes a poor last, will become more ascendant in MORE. That will make MORE less likely to want to continue to work within the ARISE group after the election.

Retiree Advocate: A 30- year old group that was a spin-off of NAC but separated in order to attract new people -- I and some others from the ICE wing of MORE plus people picked up during the rallies against MedAdv. Currently around 12 people, of which I am one. We call ourselves the RA Organizing Committee. Last year's major victory over Unity in the RTC election gave people hope we could beat Unity this time, but for me has made some serious errors in how they decided to join the ARISE group without going outside the dozen. I was the lone dissenter, urging them to remain neutral and try to play the role of mediator to try to bring ABC and NAC/MORE together before ARISE even AROSE. 

RA is not really a caucus because it has no formal membership and we are talking about how to change that but bad feelings about this election will not go away very quickly. RTC CL Bennett Fischer, who I support, even when I disagree with him, has the potential to keep things together.

In the meantime, RA is very tied in with running the RTC --- 8 of the ten officers are RA and I am on the RTC Exec Bd.  

Well, time to go off to get the results and look for a follow-up to this post once we know more.