New Haven Independent

To win, unions need to pull out the rank-and-file to the polls in high numbers. If labor — and DeStefano — prevail in Tuesday’s neck-and-neck primary, it will be because of their most vigorous organizers, like Wilson. Wilson knows local nursing-home workers because she’s one of them. She used to work at the now-closed Atrium Home in New Haven. She also worked at the Jewish Home, on Davenport Avenue. She went there with a crew from SEIU/District 1199 Tuesday to remind people to go to the polls, and to vote for DeStefano.

Well, not remind. Tell them. Gently, but firmly.

The union identified 85 members at the Home who were registered and on board for voting for DeStefano, who’s currently New Haven’s mayor. (Statewide SEIU/1199 had about 5,000 identified members it hoped to pull.) Because the union enjoys good relations with the unionized home’s management, Wilson’s team had free rein of the joint. Wilson charged from ward to ward, floor to floor, from lunch rooms to nurses’ stations, where she encountered workers she knew.

The encounters with workers often began with a hug and a “Hey! How are you?” Then, fingers pointed at the workers’ chest, Wilson asked, “Did you do your thing?” She informed some members where their voting place is. Others needed the reminder to vote after their shift.

“Did you vote yet?” Wilson asked Joy McNeil, who was cleaning rooms on the third floor. McNeil said no, but promised to go to the polls after her 3 p.m. shift ended. After Wilson scurried to another corner of the floor, McNeil was asked how she would vote. “The one that’s mayor now… DeStefano. I think he would be a good senator. I’ve enjoyed him as mayor.”

Like other union members, Wilson said she supports DeStefano most of all for his universal health care position. And because, as a New Havener, she knows him, and his record of supporting unions. She wasn’t planning to vote in the “other race,” for Senate. “Right now that’s not important to me. What’s important to me is that DeStefano win the primary. I’ve been living in New Haven for 27 years. John DeStefano is the best I’ve seen come. He’s for health care. And he’s for education.”

The union took no position in the Lamont-Lieberman Senate primary. (Its New York affiliate did, endorsing Lamont.) And in general organizers didn’t mention the Senate race. However, Delphine Clyburn (pictured), a state mental-retardation agency worker who joined Wilson at the Jewish Home, pitched this Jewish Home worker at length to vote for Lieberman. Clyburn is a leader of a church her husband runs. “He’s for the family,” she said. “He was against that same-sex marriage. We’re with him. He’s against abortion, too. We like that. The video games and all that? He was fighting for us. Stem cells — we can get that from living people. We like him on those issues.”