SEIU/UHW and Fresno Teachers Association – “Chess”

In the fall of 2006, TBW worked with SEIU/UHW, the Fresno Teachers Association (FTA), and a coalition of state and local labor organizations to elect 4 members to the Fresno Unified School District Board of Trustees. This election posed a unique challenge, as we were working to re-elect two supportive incumbents (Tony Vang and Valerie Davis) while simultaneously working to unseat two hostile incumbents with our endorsed challengers (Michelle Arax-Asadoorian and Cal Johnson).

To make things even more complicated, a local Democratic Assemblyman and former school trustee, Juan Arambula, was working with the local business community and Republican leaders to elect the slate of four anti-union candidates that we were trying to defeat. Three weeks before the election, Arambula went on a local conservative radio show to attack SEIU and other local unions for their opposition to his candidate slate.

In response, we worked with SEIU/UHW and FTA to quickly craft an opinion survey to gauge where we were with the electorate then implement a direct mail program and field operation to bring home the votes we needed to win as many seats as possible. We designed and produced three creative, message-driven mailpieces to define the candidates for the very large number of undecided voters, including a positive piece for our slate, a positive for Dr. Vang which compared his experience to his opponent, and a double hit on the records of the two incumbents.

On November 7, 2006, all four of our candidates were elected to the board by comfortable margins. As noted in the attached newspaper article, the unions have received much of the credit in the community for this remarkable win.