$15 minimum voting bloc takes shape: Brazile

Shawanda Wilson, who works at Taco Bell in Tampa, Fla. and makes $8.25 an hour, has never voted before. Neither has Tonya Harrington, a 42-year-old home care worker from Durham, NC, who makes $7.25 an hour. Both say they’ve steered clear of voting booths not because they don’t care, but because they’ve felt politicians don’t speak for them.

That’s changing. Buoyed by $15 victories across the country, including in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, fast-food cooks and cashiers, home care workers and child care workers like Shawanda and Tonya recognize that by joining together in a movement, they can make politicians care. Now they are vowing to head to the polls, and they’re hoping to bring with them the more than 60 million Americans movement organizers say are paid less than $15.

On Nov. 10, a year before the 2016 presidential elections, fast-food workers waged their biggest-ever strike, and were joined by home care, child care and other underpaid workers in launching a year-long effort to hold politicians accountable to issues affecting working Americans. It’s already bearing fruit: during the Nov. 10 Republican debate in Milwaukee, in their very first question, the moderators asked the leading candidates to respond to the demands of protestors like Shawanda and Tonya for $15 an hour. By expanding their Fight for $15 from the picket line to the ballot box, underpaid workers hope to swing 2016 elections across the country in favor of politicians who support higher pay and union rights, among other issues.

It’s not such a crazy thought. While recent ballot initiatives for $15 failed in Tacoma, Wash., and Portland, Maine, a recent poll of workers paid less than $15 an hour commissioned by the National Employment Law Project showed that 69% of unregistered voters would register to vote if there was a candidate who supported $15 and a union; and 65% of registered voters paid less than $15 an hour would be more likely to vote if there was a candidate who supported $15 and union rights.

Let’s look at Tonya’s home — a battleground state like North Carolina. According to estimates based on Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, there are slightly more than 2 million workers there like Tonya who make less than $15. Using data from the NELP poll, approximately 945,000 who are currently registered would be more likely to vote if there was a candidate who supported $15 and union rights and another 390,000 would likely be willing to register and add their names to the voting rolls because of this issue. Mitt Romney won North Carolina in 2012 by some 92,000 votes. If the Fight for $15 engaged even a fraction of the workers paid less than $15 to vote, fast-food and other underpaid workers could help elect a president.

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Take Florida, as another example, where there are likely just under 4 million workers like Shawanda paid less than $15. Nearly 1.9 million who are currently registered would be more likely to vote if there was a candidate who supported $15 and union rights and another 770,000 would likely be willing to register and add their names to the voting rolls because of this issue. Governor Rick Scott won the 2014 race for governor by a little more than 64,000 votes. Again, the math shows that workers paid less than $15, if activated, could swing an election.

They could do so in Ohio, where there are likely 2.4 million workers paid less than $15; in Missouri, where there are 1.3 million; and in Pennsylvania, where there are 2.6 million.

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Americans like Shawanda and Tonya are already saying the Fight for $15 has inspired them to vote for the first time in 2016. Shawanda just registered, and Tonya plans to soon. And as the campaign begins to engage their more than 60 million colleagues across the low-wage economy around the 2016 election, a powerful, new voting bloc could emerge that has the power to sway elections.

The Fight for $15 has already activated a group of workers many thought impossible to organize, in the process turning $15 an hour from “absurdly ambitious to mainstream” in the span of a few years, according to The Washington Post. As the workers make a foray into politics, candidates who ignore them do so at their own peril.

Donna Brazile is the DNC's vice chair for civic education and voter participation and a political commentator for CNN and ABC News

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