The Union and the Republican Prize Patrol

Last week, 1199SEIU, one of the most powerful local labor unions in America, held its first contested leadership election since 1989. An opposition candidate, Yvette Armstrong, ousted 17-year incumbent George Gresham amid allegations Gresham used the union’s treasury as a personal and political slush fund. He allegedly used it to pay for left-wing activist Jesse Jackson’s medical bills, concerts that just so happened to coincide with Gresham’s family reunions, and his daughter’s room and board, among other questionable expenses.

But as “the union that rules New York” waves goodbye to its self-interested longtime boss, allow me the opportunity to give a brief history lesson, one that should serve as a warning to those Republicans and conservatives who hope to appease unions into political dominance. Because even as he was launching the political careers of leftists like former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), Gresham and his predecessor Dennis Rivera played union whisperer to a now-deceased faction of New York State politics: the Republican “Prize Patrol.”

The Dearly Departed Prize Patrol

At the state level, electorates tend to check their state’s partisan “id.” Texans have checked their Republicanism with a moderate coalition controlling the state House of Representatives. Vermont and Massachusetts Democrats frequently elect moderate Republican governors to check their overwhelmingly liberal-controlled legislatures. Kansas frequently elects Democratic governors to check its conservative legislature.

And until the 2018 elections, with a brief interruption following the Obama mega-wave election, New York checked its Democratic id by placing the balance of power in the state senate under Republican-led control. (I use “Republican-led” because in the 2010s, the Republican-led majority caucuses often relied on dissident Democrats to make up the numbers.) It also had a moderate Republican governor, George Pataki, from 1995 through 2007—as of 2025, his 2002 gubernatorial election is the most recent Republican victory in a statewide race, the longest state-level losing streak for any state GOP.

But the Republicans who led that state senate were not conservative; instead, they were machine-patronage operators. These state senates were happy to deliver bloated budgets and even facilitate Democratic social policies in exchange for deals for their districts or the members themselves. Dean Skelos, the Long Island Republican who led the state senate from 2008 to 2015 with an interruption, would later go to jail for corruption. The questionable ethics of these nonideological Republicans earned them a memorable nickname from the bloggers at the independent Republican-leaning elections blog RRHElections: the “Prize Patrol.”

The realignments following President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 put the Prize Patrol out to pasture. Since the 2018 elections, New York State has been under “trifecta” Democratic control.

Dennis Rivera, the Prize Patrol, and 1199’s Rise

Now back to the labor angle. A key ally of the Prize Patrol, at least as described by Stephen Eide and Daniel DiSalvo in their 2015 history of 1199SEIU titled appropriately “The Union that Rules New York,” was believe it or not 1199SEIU. (It is sometimes also called “1199” as it was known by the number alone before it was agglomerated into the Service Employees International Union during Andy Stern’s merger-and-acquisition era of union leadership.)

This unusual alliance was not because 1199SEIU was a particularly conservative union. As Eide and DiSalvo wrote, “Deploying its members and financial resources, 1199 has branched out to support other “progressive” causes, including tax increases, gay rights, climate change, and an expansive immigration policy.” Left-wing former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) was a former employee of the union.

No, the 1199–Prize Patrol détente came about by a classic Republican trick: unilateral capitulation. While then-1199 head Dennis Rivera “burnished his progressive bona fides, championing tenants’ rights, gay marriage, universal health care, and the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy from the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico,” he was also courting then-state senate leader Joseph Bruno (R). Per Eide and DiSalvo, Rivera “used campaign funds and a personal touch to woo the Republican leadership, bonding with Joseph Bruno, senate majority leader from 1994 to 2008, over a shared love for horses and Bruno’s liberal sympathies on health-care policy.”

The Prize Patrol’s capitulation to Rivera and 1199 was so complete that they made the New York State Democrats look like the responsible party on Medicaid cost reform. Eide and DiSalvo continue:

Given the Medicaid squeeze on the state budget, [Republican former Gov. George] Pataki’s successor, Eliot Spitzer, tried to turn the tables on 1199 after he took office in 2007. Unlike Pataki, Spitzer rejected the concept of Medicaid as a union jobs program. At a breakfast meeting attended by hospital and labor leaders, Spitzer delivered a hard-hitting presentation that branded 1199 and GNYHA [Greater New York Hospital Association] “guardians of the status quo.” In response to a proposal by the governor to impose cuts on hospitals and nursing homes, 1199 ran a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that sank Spitzer’s approval rating. Union ally Joseph Bruno, in control of the Republican Senate, staked out a position to the left of the governor; in the end, only a quarter of Spitzer’s proposed cuts went into effect.

The alliance also broke up before the Prize Patrol was put out to pasture. In 2014, 1199SEIU let its ideological colors fly and broke with the state senate Republicans. The Prize Patrol’s control of the state senate would hang on until the 2018 elections. That year, Democrats took “trifecta” control of the whole New York State government, with 1199SEIU’s support. FollowtheMoney.org, a project of OpenSecrets, calculated Democratic candidates as receiving $332,500 of the $388,500 that 1199SEIU spent on state senate elections that year.

Learning from the Fall of the Prize Patrol

The fall of the Prize Patrol from New York State government and the more recent fall of Rivera’s successor George Gresham from the top of 1199SEIU’s greasy pole provides a lesson to the Republicans like Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Lori Chavez-DeRemer who see the path to workers’ support through the support of union bosses. Specifically, the union bosses don’t command their workers and won’t stick around if the Democrats that they have supported for over a century give them a better offer than Republican appeasers. Union bosses’ “loyalty” counts for nothing when they are pushing against organized labor’s natural left-progressivism.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-union-and-the-republican-prize-patrol/