Yahoo奇摩新聞 Matthew Modine running for SAG-AFTRA president again after contested 2019 loss to Gabrielle Carteris
Matthew Modine is giving another go at running for SAG-AFTRA president, this time with Joely Fisher on his ticket.
The Stranger Things and Full Metal Jacket actor, 62, previously ran for the position in 2019 but lost the contentious race to Beverly Hills, 90210 star Gabrielle Carteris. Following that loss, Modine's campaign manager, Adam Nelson, filed a 13-count complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor including allegations that Carteris violated federal election law by using the union's website and magazine to promote her candidacy. (The complaints had previously been dismissed by the union's national election committee, and a spokesman for the union's Unite for Strength party, of which Carteris is a member, called Nelson's claims "baseless.")
Putting the 2019 election behind him, Modine declared his new candidacy Thursday, hoping his Union First party will be victorious when ballots are sent out to SAG-AFTRA members in early August. "The union spends exorbitant amounts of our own members' money attempting to convince us that our contracts have been successfully negotiated, the truth is they fall far short of the economic conditions facing performers today," Modine said in a statement provided to EW. "I'm running to ensure that each of the locals across the United States are truthfully and transparently represented."
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images; Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Matthew Modine and Gabrielle Carteris
Modine is joined on the Membership First ticket by Fisher, who served as a national board member in the early 2000s and currently serves on numerous committees but is now running for the position of national secretary-treasurer. "Last summer, I received several official union postcards in the mail bragging that the union has achieved historic gains. I then discovered how misleading they were, and I was outraged," said Fisher, whose mother, Connie Stevens, served as national secretary-treasurer from 2005 to 2009. "I posted a video that went viral which laid out the deal points plain and simple. It was in that moment, I determined that I wanted to get back in the boardroom to help restore truth and transparency for our members. The union must be preserved for future generations."
Modine and Fisher also released an outline of what they see as the biggest issues facing the union on the Membership First website, but before they can enact their solutions they'll have to win over a plurality of SAG-AFTRA's 160,000 members — or at least a plurality of the small percentage of the membership who vote. According to Deadline, only 21.2 percent of the union's eligible members cast ballots in the 2019 election, with Carteris receiving less than 3,000 more votes than Modine. This time around, as their press release states, Modine and Fisher "look to inspiring all Union members to get out the vote and make their voices heard."
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