AFSCME ENDORSES OBAMA; FEDERATION ENDORSEMENT 'WITHIN NEXT TWO WEEKS'

Thursday, June 19, 2008

(PAI)AFSCME ENDORSES OBAMA; FEDERATION
ENDORSEMENT ‘WITHIN NEXT TWO WEEKS’
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

    WASHINGTON (PAI)--By unanimous vote, the AFSCME Executive Board voted June 18 to endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), his party’s presumed presidential nominee, for the presidency of the United States, union President Gerald McEntee aid. And McEntee, who chairs the AFL--CIO’s Political Committee, added he expects a federation-wide endorsement of the Illinoisan “within the next two weeks.”

    In a telephone press conference, McEntee said his union expects to mobilize at least 40,000 of its 1.4 million members as activists for Obama in the fall campaign. It also expects to spend “close to $50 million on the campaign,” including advertising.

    A big motive for AFSCME--the AFL-CIO’s largest union--will also be defeating the presumed GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whom McEntee said “would bring us four more years of the disastrous policies of George W. Bush.”

    AFSCME and MoveOn.org recently launched their first joint anti-McCain TV spot, airing in key swing states. It shows a young mother holding a baby and--referring to McCain’s comment that the U.S. presence in Iraq could last 100 years--declaring of her son: “You’re not going to get him.”

    AFSCME campaigned hard during the primary season for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) whom its board strongly--though not unanimously--endorsed. Its pro-Clinton campaign included criticism of Obama’s health care plans as incomplete and of Obama as inexperienced. But McEntee said conditions changed and that union leaders were particularly satisfied by intensive meetings on June 17-18 with Obama, where they quizzed him and exchanged views on education, trade, health care and other issues.

    “He said we’ve got to be tough and hard in negotiating” trade treaties “and that labor rights are the key to endorsement of any of them,” McEntee quoted Obama as saying. “Same thing with environmental standards; he wants to toughen those up.”

    The second meeting, on the morning of June 18, involved just McEntee, Obama, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney and AFT President Ed McElroy. McElroy’s union, which also strongly backed Clinton, has yet to make a new endorsement. Its convention is in July in Chicago.

      At that second session, McEntee said, the four discussed education, universal health care, “and the roles we would play in the campaign” for the White House. The first session, the night before, saw Obama answer questions from the AFL-CIO

Executive Council. Another member of the council, Building and Construction Trades Department President Mark Ayers, announced his department’s unanimous endorsement of Obama the same day as the council session.

    “It came down to a choice between…McCain, who fundamentally embraced the disastrous economic and foreign policies espoused by” Bush “or the candidacy of Barack Obama, where concerns of working families are placed front and center, and where, amid the partisanship and bickering of today's public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose - a politics that puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain,” Ayers added. McCain, Ayers said, offered the “Republican rhetoric of the 1980s.”

    McEntee also suggested Obama could win over working-class male voters--whom he notably lost to Clinton in most industrial-state primaries--by crafting “an Appalachian strategy” talking economic issues in the working-class areas of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and western New York. “If he’s given this opportunity to communicate with them, he can connect with them,” McEntee said of Obama.

    Though McEntee did not say so, AFSCME’s strong support for Clinton was one big reason Obama lost Ohio and Pennsylvania, among other states, to her.   But McEntee pointed out Obama won working-class voters in Oregon.

    AFSCME was particularly satisfied with Obama after its staffers and his staffers started meeting in the last several days on both politics and policy--and by Obama’s answers to McEntee’s questions in both the Executive Council meeting and the private session with Obama, McEntee, Sweeney and McElroy.

    In those meetings, McEntee said, the senator showed he respected both the role of government and the role and rights of those who perform its duties--many of them AFSCME members.

    And Obama expanded his position on health care, calling for universal coverage and--if that’s not immediately achievable--extending the health care plan that covers lawmakers to the millions of people who now lack private coverage. But AFSCME will evaluate the details of Obama’s plan, McEntee said, even as health care “is the biggest issue” in bargaining and one of the top two nationwide, polls say.

    To get the AFL-CIO’s endorsement, Obama needs votes of unions representing two-thirds of the federation’s nine-million-plus members. That endorsement would not come from the federation’s Executive Council, but from its larger General Board. McEntee said he expects Sweeney to convene a telephone conference call among that board’s members to make the decision.   Obama already has Change to Win’s endorsement.             ###