Whitman wants nurses’ union mailing list; nurses want candidate forums
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The California Nurses Assn. has been a thorn in the side of Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman, from protesting at her events with a “Queen Meg” character that makes pronouncements such as “Healthcare for the rich, education for the few, prisons for all,” to using Whitman’s own campaign ads against her on Spanish-language radio.
On Friday, the union and the candidate tussled. Whitman’s campaign fired the first shot, making the unusual request of asking for the addresses of the union’s 85,000 members so the Whitman campaign could send a letter to each member explaining Whitman’s views.
“While your union leadership may choose to only support Democratic candidates, we do hope you administer your union under fully open and democratic principles and do not fear giving your rank-and-file members access to both parties’ ideas,” wrote Whitman campaign manager Jillian Hasner. “Only good can come out of such a free and unfettered dialogue.”
The California Nurses Assn., which can be a powerful force in California politics, such as when it helped sink a set of ballot proposals that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed in 2005, declined to share its members’ addresses, saying such a move would be a major breach of its members’ privacy rights. The group proposed instead holding four candidates’ forums in which Whitman and Democratic rival Jerry Brown could speak directly with its members.
“It would be far better than just communicating with our nurses to actually meet with our nurses in multiple forums throughout California, where nurses can ask unfiltered questions of the candidates and have spontaneous answers,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, the union’s executive director.
Brown accepted the invitation. The Whitman campaign declined.
“It is now clear the policy of the California Nurses Association’s leadership is to only provide their membership with politically controlled, carefully filtered information as determined by leadership of the union,” Hasner wrote. “That is very unfortunate. We will continue in our efforts to reach out to your members, and to all of California’s hard working nurses, independently.”
An unknown entity is already apparently trying to reach out to the nurses through “push-polling,” a controversial ploy. A live person calls the nurses pretending to conduct a poll but uses leading questions and statements to make negative claims about the union’s anti-Whitman activities.
DeMoro said the union was investigating who is behind the efforts, and how its members’ phone numbers were accessed. The poll is being conducted by BR Interviewing, a firm based in Rocky Hill, N.J., the union said.
A source with the Whitman campaign denied it is behind the ploy.
“The campaign is not push-polling,” the source said. “They’re just trying to stir the pot with this allegation.”
-- Seema Mehta in Los Angeles