Lawrence R. Scanlon Jr., a behind-the-scenes power in organized labor whose fund-raising elevated the political profile of public employee unions, but who had mixed results in fending off recent efforts by Republican governors to limit unions’ bargaining rights, was killed on Feb. 27 in a car accident near Beaufort, S.C. He was 65.
He was pronounced dead at the scene after a car had apparently failed to yield and hit the sport utility vehicle Mr. Scanlon was driving, Lt. Kelley Hughes, a spokesman for the South Carolina Highway Patrol, said. Mr. Scanlon’s wife, Margaret, who was in the vehicle, survived.
Mr. Scanlon, the former executive director of the New York Civil Service Employees Association, was the political director of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union from 1995 until his retirement in 2012.
Chris Policano, who was the communications director for the national union and is now a senior official at District Council 37, its New York City affiliate, said Mr. Scanlon was “the Obi-Wan Kenobi of political activism,” training and inspiring young people to champion progressive politics.
“You always had the sense that what he valued most about political power was what it could achieve for ordinary folks,” he added.
Lawrence Robert Scanlon Jr. was born on Nov. 9, 1949, in Kingston, N.Y., where his father owned a dry cleaning store. His mother, the former Jacqueline Martin, helped out in the store and was a homemaker.
After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Mr. Scanlon gravitated toward organized labor because his maternal grandfather had been active in the police officers’ union in Kingston.
Mr. Scanlon began his union career in 1974 as a field representative for the 250,000-member Civil Service Employees Association. He rose to executive director in 1992.
Three years later, he was recruited by Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, to direct its political department, which conducted polling, placed campaign ads and mobilized voters on behalf of candidates and causes that mirrored the union’s agenda. During Mr. Scanlon’s tenure, the union’s campaign war chest swelled fivefold, to more than $100 million in 2012.
One reason for the accelerated spending, Mr. Scanlon had explained, was the proliferation of legislation and state ballot initiatives in states where Republican governors had been seeking to curtail the bargaining power and shrink the pensions and other benefits of public employee unions, which represent about 35 percent of the government work force. (Less than 7 percent of private sector workers are unionized.)
Despite costly public relations and lobbying campaigns by labor leaders in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, governors pushed through legislation or executive orders abrogating or reducing collective bargaining rights or preventing some unions from automatically collecting dues from their members.
In 2004, the union supported Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, for president, and in 2008 it backed Hillary Rodham Clinton, both Democrats, but it later embraced the party’s presidential nominees.
Mr. Scanlon, who lived in Alexandria, Va., became a political consultant after he retired from the union.
Besides his wife, whom he married in 1969, he is survived by two children, Lawrence III and Sarah Scanlon; a brother, Jay; and three grandchildren.
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