Delegate Grant Swanson, Local 88 vice president and a page at Multnomah County library, worked to pass those resolutions, as well as push a fourth resolution encouraging AFSCME to support and do business with union-friendly co-ops. Delegates referred that resolution to the International Executive Board for further study.

The national union office also sponsored a resolution that aims to take Oregon AFSCME’s Green Caucus national. The Green Caucus is an affinity group for AFSCME members who are engaged in environmental issues. The convention-passed resolution encourages other councils and locals to form such groups.

The announcement by AFSCME secretary-treasurer William Lucy that he would retire at the close of the convention set off a contested campaign to succeed him. The two candidates were Lee Saunders, assistant to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, and Danny Donohue, an international vice president and head of Civil Service Employees Association, a large New York local. Saunders ran with McEntee’s endorsement, and Donohue with Lucy’s endorsement.

Supporters of Saunders emphasized his knowledge of Washington, D.C., politics and ability to get AFSCME’s agenda passed in Congress. Supporters of Donohue liked his proposal to beef up the efforts of AFSCME’s state and local bodies, and his assessment that AFSCME should be less tied to the Democratic Party.

Oregon AFSCME has long had close ties to Lucy, even naming its Portland office after the union leader. Lucy is the founder and long-time president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and was in Memphis when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated there, having come to support striking sanitation workers.

Unsurprisingly, Oregon was solid for Donohue. With roughly 5,000 delegates at the convention, voting strength was calculated based on the number of members they represented. The final tally was 652,660 for Saunders to 648,356 for Donohue — a margin of 4,304 votes.