There has been a great deal of analysis done already about the 2016 UFT election. Norm Scott is doing an epic series over at Ed Notes while Kit Wainer chimed in at MORE and Jonathan Halabi contributed some words on behalf of New Action over at his blog.
I will try to keep this fairly simple and avoid one of those lengthy ramblings I am sometimes accused of writing.
MORE-NEW ACTION won the high schools because we ran together. NAC had been decimated at the high school level since the 2003 deal with Unity not to oppose Randi Weingarten dropped their vote totals from over 3,000 high school votes in 2001 to a little over 700 in 2004. They have never recovered but since they weren't running with Unity this time, they received some enthusiastic support from many people including me. I enjoyed working with my old NAC friends again.
MORE grew a high school network for sure and it helped as did having a regular high school newsletter but if MORE runs without NAC, the opposition does not take the high schools. A unified opposition makes for a stronger one. It's that simple.
A third group called Solidarity did make a splash but just could not find enough candidates to get 100 signatures on nominating petitions to run as a slate. Had they been a slate, we have no idea what would have happened.
As to whether it is better to run as a coalition like we did in 2016 or whether everyone should run under the MORE umbrella in 2019, I'll have more on that at a later date.
The opposition won't always agree and that is ok. Discussion and debate are essential in a democratic system. Let's work together on what we have in common.
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