Off-Season Elections Critical to Working People With most of the country focused on the 2020 elections, CWA members are focused on electing pro-worker candidates and defeating anti-worker politicians this fall. Just this past week, CWA conducted a Tier I Political Activist Training in Kentucky, where members strengthened the skills they need to build worker power this election cycle. The electoral races heating up this fall are in Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Mississippi. In Louisiana, CWA is supporting Governor John Bel Edwards, who is running in a tough re-election campaign, facing two right-wing, anti-union challengers. Edwards has a solid pro-working families record including being the first governor to sign the most expansive state bill helping protect call center and other jobs from offshoring, expanding Medicaid and protecting funding for public education and hospitals. CWA and IUE-CWA locals in Kentucky are working to unseat Governor Matt Bevin, who has been notoriously anti-worker since taking office in 2015. His first act as Governor was to sign “Right to Work (for Less)” into law and for the last 3 years, he has staged an all-out attack on working people in Kentucky. The work done this year is helping build infrastructure to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2020, who is an anti-labor legislator and has been the primary block for pro-worker legislation getting passed in the Senate. Virginia and New Jersey have state legislatures up for re-election in 2019. Virginia is fighting to flip the seats of politicians who are not supportive of labor and protect legislators who have stood with CWA. Changing just one seat in each chamber could take control of the entire state legislature away from some of the most aggressively anti-worker state legislators in the country. New Jersey CWA members are fighting to hold anti-worker legislators accountable for attacking public workers’ collective bargaining rights. In North Carolina and Mississippi, two CWA members running for office. Yvonne Kinston is running for Fayetteville city council in North Carolina, challenging incumbent Jim Arp. Vice-President Juan Barnett of Local 3509 is running for re-election to the Mississippi State Senate. | 
