Nation's two biggest unions to wait on presidential endorsement
The nation's two largest unions this week postponed a presidential endorsement, raising prospects of a split in organized labor, one of the Democratic Party's bedrock constituencies.
The delays by the Service Employees International Union and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees give former Vermont governor Howard Dean and other candidates more time to cut into Representative Richard A. Gephardt's deep share of support from organized labor.
Gephardt, a former House Democratic leader from Missouri, also gets additional time to address questions that surfaced after his weak fund-raising in the second quarter of the year. The next reporting deadline is the end of this month, when Dean's campaign says it will shatter the $10.3 million record that President Clinton set in 1995 for fund-raising in one quarter by a Democrat in the year before an election.
Gephardt's campaign has declined to reveal its fund-raising goal, except to say he will raise an additional $10 million by the end of the year.
Yesterday, SEIU President Andrew L. Stern said the union may revisit the endorsement question in early November, but after candidate appearances before 1,500 of the union's activists this week, a majority were not ready to choose. He said Dean, Gephardt, and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who was not previously well known to members, helped themselves the most in their appearances. Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, whom Stern earlier in the week had mentioned with Dean and Gephardt as leading contenders, did not fare as well, Stern said.
On Tuesday, AFSCME leaders also put off an endorsement until the fall. Union president Gerald W. McEntee listed Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, and retired General Wesley Clark, if he decides to join the field, as leading contenders in a "wide open race."
"It goes back to electability," McEntee said. "Can Dick Gephardt, as much as he has stood with unions, can he get to the dance? Can he win the nomination, and can he beat George W. Bush?"
"We'll know better by the end of September," when the next fund-raising reports come in, McEntee said.
McEntee said AFSCME executive board members this week decided to wait to see whether Clark jumps in. "If he gets in, you've got to give him a month to see if he's got some magic."
Clark has said he will announce by Sept. 19 whether he will run.
Looming in the background is the AFL-CIO endorsement. Federation President John Sweeney is surveying presidents of member unions to gauge support, spokeswoman Denise Mitchell said, and will probably decide by the end of this month whether to call an endorsement meeting for Oct. 14.
Even rival campaigns say Gephardt is the only one in the field with a shot at the endorsement.
Combined, SEIU and AFSCME account for 19.3 percent of the 13.2 million membership of the AFL-CIO. Under federation guidelines, a candidate is supposed to have the support of unions representing two-thirds of AFL-CIO members to win the endorsement. Only twice has the umbrella organization endorsed candidates before the primary season: Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and Al Gore in 2000.
To date, Gephardt has been endorsed by 12 of the 64 unions in the federation, accounting for 2.9 million members, or about 22 percent. None of the other eight Democrats has won an endorsement from a member union.
"If you're keeping score, it's still 12 to nothing," said Gephardt campaign manager Steve Murphy after the two big unions announced they were not prepared to endorse. "It's admittedly a longshot, but we're going for it."
"We're not trying to stop Dick Gephardt," said Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Dean, who has surged to a lead in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. "We'd love to get SEIU's endorsement, or AFSCME's endorsement, or the auto workers, tomorrow. The longer we have to show people we're viable and real and can raise money and run a strong campaign, the better chance we have."
Gephardt's 88 percent voting record on AFL-CIO issues since he went to Congress in 1977 ranks fourth among the six sitting members of Congress in the Democratic presidential field. Gephardt's ratings were relatively low in his early years in Congress, but in the past seven years, he has voted the union line 99 percent of the time.
Other candidate ratings with the labor federation are Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, 98 percent; Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, 96 percent; Kerry, 90 percent; Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, 82 percent; and Senator Bob Graham of Florida, 77 percent. (The federation does not have a system for rating governors, so Dean is not listed.)
Union endorsements mean money and precious workers for Democratic primary candidates, and their ability to organize and turn out voters can be decisive, particularly in caucus states like Iowa.
Labor is a core element of the Democratic Party, but union membership has been eroding steadily.
In 2002, 16.1 million US workers, or 13.2 percent of the work force, were union members, US Department of Labor statistics show. That level was down from 13.4 percent the prior year and a high of 20.1 percent in 1983. The heaviest concentration is in government, where unions represent 37.5 percent of employees, more than four times the 8.5 percent rate in the private sector, the agency said. The AFL-CIO represents more than 80 percent of all union employees.
