UFT Election Fallout - Retiree Advocate Loses Two Elections - Warning Signs for Future Control of RTC

This is updated from the original post.

Takeaway:

RA loses to Unity and ABC as ABC triples the retiree vote of ARISE, which has two 30 year old caucuses full of retirees. How can that happen? Will RA face the facts or look to place blame on the way ABC ran their campaign or the issues they ran on - or maybe they used voodoo.

Can the damaged RA brand, king of the hill a year ago, be restored? Not without restructuring. The total retiree non-Unity vote was still 47%. To stop the bleeding, a non-partisan retiree council should be formed that would be inclusive of retirees from ARISE, ABC and independents. 

Monday, June 4, 2025

Unity has its sights set on winning back the RTC from RA in the 2027 chapter election and the recent UFT election results indicate they have a good chance. 

The impact of Marianne has been major and I will prove it with the numbers over the past 4 years of retiree votes in both chapter and general UFT elections. No wonder Unity and some ARISE went after her. And with only 53% retirees for Unity in this election, look for the attacks on her to continue (ie. Leo Casey whose analysis is a total attack on her and ABC while not recognizing that the pro-Marianne faction tripled the vote of the non-Marianne group - clearly his favored opposition is the one that got 14%). 

An old lefty told me not long ago that he thinks Marianne is remarkable and has put the left so-called labor organizers to shame by building a multi-union machine reaching deep into the working class. Let me point out here that Unity only recovered 3k votes from last year while the combined ABC/ARISE lost about 6k - meaning a whole bunch of former supporters did not vote this time and attribute some of that to the split opposition. A united retiree group next time could bring these votes back. 

The only question is will RA wise up and face the reality of their poor showing with ARISE with only 12% of retiree votes or team up with ABC and its 35% and stop Unity from taking back the chapter in 2027? Knowing the politics I'm not so sure.

Let me point out this is not about ARISE and ABC but about retirees from both groups coming together. But the way RA does business has got to change for this to happen. 

A year ago RA and the oppo cheered Marianne's support for RA but soured once she supported ABC in this election. I even heard some RA people claiming it was their organizing that won 63% a year ago, with some assistance from Marianne, which astounded me. You don't go from 30% to 63% in such a short time just based on a caucus doing better organizing.

First the hard numbers, and then some background. 

Jon Halabi chart

As you can see, Unity took 53% of the retiree vote while ARISE had only 12%, with ABC getting 35%. Now look at 2022 when UFC, an expanded form of ARISE, garnered only 29% with Unity getting 70%. I have to say that the 2022 results really disappointed me since the Medicare issue had been out there for a year and I had hoped RA would get the vote over 40% which is why I had dim hopes of winning in last year's chapter elections. Even I didn't think Marianne would be such a factor.

In the last UFT election in 2022 RA was one of the 7 or 8 members of the United for Change coalition,  which this time split into 3 for ARISE and elements of the rest with ABC. (Thus my contention from almost a year ago that an ARISE like coalition would not be able to even match the UFC output, which proved true.

Retirees: 

68,970 ballots sent,  

Retirees: 27,451 - this was over the 23k limit so each vote counted as a fraction - RA got over 8k and Unity over 18k in terms of real votes but 

Adjusted  

UFC - 6837.15      29.20%

Unity - 16580.64  70.80%

Also note that in the 2021 RTC election, RA got just short of 7K real votes, also 29%.

Now the 2021 result, just as the Medicare story was emerging, was a big improvement for RA over previous elections when they used to get under 4K -- 20%. That ARISE only pulled half of RA got in 2021 is shocking. 

In past elections, we would have seen a 53% Unity retiree vote as giving us a real shot to break their control because historically they had been winning with high 70s to 80s %. But times have changed. This time RA hoped that the way they ran the RTC chapter compared to the Unity old guard would bring votes but that had no effect as the 3k total takes us back to 2018 days.

The Chapter elections are not quite the same but are also indicators. What a difference in last year's vote, which saw a massive turnaround when Retiree Advocate, the 30-year old oppo to Unity in the retiree chapter, blew things open with a 63% win with over 17k to Unity's 10k votes, a complete reversal of recent elections. 

How do we explain these flip flops? One word - MARIANNE. She has activated a whole range of people from many city unions, which is what scares the UFT leadership. And frankly, an uncontrolled newly active group also seems to scare the old-time oppo who are often more interested in control and getting the "right" people - meaning, of their political persuasion. God forbid a Trumpie should slip in. 

RA has got to change from a tiny self-chosen group that meets and makes decisions behind closed doors.

I've been part of the Retiree Advocate organizing committee for about ten years and it's been a very satisfactory relationship - until this election where I was the only one of the dozen members to go with ABC while the rest went with ARISE. I'm not going into the details as they get annoyed if I reveal what happens at their meetings, which by the way is a problem for a group that calls for transparency and represents retirees, most of whom are not aware or invited to these meetings or even see minutes of what is discussed.

Now we were all very happy for the arrangement we had where we chose whom to invite to join us - and until we won the massive victory over Unity with 63% of the vote last June when people who ran (300 delegates) or voted for us started asking questions on how we operate. At first, back in July, I defended how we operate but it was clear RA would have to do something to expand the organizing committee which I thought would happen in 6 months. But then the division in the election came along and RA Org decided to join ARISE without any discussion with its supporters, especially the 300 who ran as delegates. 

Look at the numbers. Unity won back about 3k which I expected to happen and thought it might be worse. We won unity votes a year ago but while they might be ok in losing the chapter they were not willing to hand over the entire union yet. But together we still got 46%. Also thousands of retirees who voted last time didn’t vote. Those were our potential votes. 

Let’s get them back.