Pressure on Region’s House Democrats to Back Health Care Overhaul

November 23, 2009
Pressure on Region’s House Democrats to Back Health Care Overhaul
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

Union-backed groups are pressuring a handful of renegade House Democrats from New York and New Jersey to back the party’s efforts to overhaul the health care system.

The organizations — including the Communications Workers of America and the Working Families Party — say they are disappointed that these lawmakers voted against the bill approved by the House this month and left open the possibility that they could withhold political support from them or even actively oppose them in next year’s elections unless they back final legislation.

The warnings come as Democrats across the country are concerned that their party’s candidates will face a tough electoral climate next year, particularly in light of the victories Republicans scored earlier this month in races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey.

The situation also reflects the growing clout of the Working Families Party, which helped propel a number of local and citywide candidates to victory in the November elections in New York.

The House’s action this month represented a major step toward President Obama’s goal of overhauling the nation’s health care system. But the House will still have to negotiate a final bill with the Senate, assuming the Senate passes its own version.

“There’s always a chance for them to redeem themselves,” said Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party. “But if they vote ‘no’ on the final bill, people will go ballistic.”

While all five Democratic House members in Connecticut voted for the legislation, 4 of the 35 Democrats from New York and New Jersey voted against it: Scott Murphy in New York’s 20th District, in the Albany area; Eric Massa in New York’s 29th District in the Southern Tier, which encompasses more than a dozen counties along New York’s border with Pennsylvania; Michael E. McMahon, in New York’s 13th District on Staten Island; and John Adler, of New Jersey’s Third District in the central part of the state.

The four Democrats represent mainly conservative swing districts where supporting the health care measure could be politically risky, particularly as Republicans prepare to mount challenges against them next year.

But the defection of liberal organizations could be problematic, too, and potentially deprive the lawmakers of the considerable resources that often bolster Democratic campaigns. The organizations can churn out mass mailings, dispatch armies of campaign volunteers, run phone banks and stage rallies — at no cost to the candidates they back.

Robert Master, the political director for the Northeast region of the Communications Workers of America, one of the largest unions in the region, said his members felt betrayed by those who opposed the health care bill.

“We are very, very upset with the ‘no’ votes of these members because we worked like crazy to send them to Washington to support us on critical issues,” he said.

Mr. Master added that his group’s members would blanket the members’ districts with phone calls, letters and leaflets urging the representatives to support the final bill that comes to the House floor. “We’re hopeful that when that vote comes, we will have the support of these four guys,” he said.

In an interview, Mr. Murphy, from the Albany region, said that he was not concerned about fallout from his vote. He said he opposed the House bill because it did little to control escalating health care costs, an issue that he said was of paramount importance to his constituents.

But he left open the possibility that he would support a final bill negotiated between the House and Senate, if it included steps to control costs. “I think we need health care reform,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. McMahon said that he supported changing the health care system but that the bill was not in the best interest of his district. The spokesman added that Mr. McMahon had spent time meeting with constituents to explain his decision.

A statement released for Mr. Adler said that he hoped to continue working on health care and eventually “send a better bill to the president.”

Mr. Massa’s office did not provide a response to the criticisms being made by the groups.

Critics on the left say that these congressmen can ill afford to alienate their party’s sizable and influential liberal base given the potentially fierce challenges they may face next year in their heavily Republican districts.

In the Southern Tier, for example, Mr. Massa won his election in 2008 with about 5,000 more votes than his Republican opponent; at the same time, he received slightly more than 9,000 votes on the Working Families Party line. And in the Albany region, Mr. Murphy had a margin of victory of 726 votes, with about 4,000 votes coming from the Working Families Party line.