Remember Me?

As a labor issue injected momentum into his campaign for U.S. Senate, Dick Blumenthal returned to the home of New Haven’s most politically active unions to rally his base — and cash in on 20 years worth of favors.

Democrat Blumenthal sought the vote-pulling help during a ​“Call To Action” Wednesday evening inside First & Summerfield Church across from the Green. Some 150 members and supporters of Yale’s blue- and pink-collar unions, which are housed in the church, promised to stand by his side as he takes on Republican candidate Linda McMahon for Connecticut’s open U.S. Senate seat.

The rally took place on a day when several polls showed Blumenthal pulling 10 or more points ahead of McMahon in a race that just two weeks ago was deemed too close to call. The spike followed a successful Monday night debate appearance and continual Democratic attacks on McMahon for fumbling questions about the minimum wage at a recent press conference.

With as few as 2 percent of voters undecided, and fewer than four weeks to go before the election, Blumenthal needs to inspire his base — of which labor is a key component — to get to work.

“This man is not just a politician. He is one of us,” declared Laurie Kennington (pictured above, after addressing the rally), the newly elected president of Local 34 of the Federation of University Workers, which represents Yale office workers.“He walked our picket line. He sued Yale-New Haven Hospital. He got Aramark out of the public schools.”

“Richard Blumenthal has been there every time we needed his help,” Kennington said. ​“Will we be there for him?”

That question was rhetorical for labor stalwarts like Shirley A. Lawrence (pictured at left).

Lawrence started working in Yale’s dining halls 21 years ago. She now works as an organizer for the unions. She has walked every picket line since she started at Yale. (There have been plenty.) She turns up at every union rally, every local labor action against, say, the hospital, every political campaign into which the unions throw themselves. Dick Blumenthal turns up at every one of those events too.

“He’s a familiar face,” Lawrence said. When he showed up on the picket line, she said, ​“it lifted our spirit up and made us want to fight more.” She vowed to knock on doors and help pull voters to the polls for Blumenthal on Election Day.

The unions’ ​“Call to Action” Wednesday aimed to sign up more Shirley Lawrence. The goal is to find 100 people to commit to pull voters in New Haven and Hartford on behalf of Blumenthal and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy, said Gwen Mills, political director for five Connecticut UNITE HERE unions locals (including Yale’s) representing 9,000 workers. The group already has a team of 22 volunteers speaking to fellow union members once a week either at their workplaces or at their homes to make sure they’re registered to vote and to promote the ticket.

In his address to the gathering, Blumenthal emphasized economic and labor issues.

He spoke of closing loopholes ​“to corporations that send jobs overseas.” (Blumenthal hammered McMahon in Monday’s debate for her World Wrestling Entertainment company marketing toys manufactured in the Third World. McMahon responded that WWE contracts with another company, Mattel, that decides where to make the toys.)

“We can’t go back to the Bush administration’s trickle-down economics,” Blumenthal told Wednesday night’s union gathering. Then he spoke of the need to renew almost all of Bush’s tax cuts. He framed it this way: ​“We need a middle-class tax cut now.” He was referring to Democrats’ efforts to renew all the soon-to-expire Bush cuts except those on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. McMahon has sided with Republicans insisting that all the tax cuts be preserved.

Blumenthal also made sure to take a dig at McMahon for the flub that has helped turn around the campaign’s dynamic: Her failure to immediately deny she would support reducing the minimum wage when asked about it by reporters. ​“If I were ever asked would I reduced the minimum wage in this country, I would say, ​‘Absolutely not!’” Blumenthal told his union supporters. (McMahon said the same thing soon after that encounter with reporters, and has had to keep repeating it since, only serving to keep the issue alive.)

After the rally, Blumenthal said he supports labor’s quest for Congress to pass ​“card-check neutrality,” which would enable union organizers to get new locals certified by gathering a set number of signatures. McMahon opposes card-check, said her campaign spokesman, Ed Patru, ​“because it would eliminate the secret ballot which is a fundamental tenet of democracy.”

Ted Kennedy, Jr. also spoke on behalf of Blumenthal at the rally.