Teamsters defend endorsing Obama
Union denies it tied backing to US supervision
NEW YORK - The Teamsters union vigorously denied yesterday that its decision to endorse Senator Barack Obama in the presidential race was in any way tied to Obama's statement that federal supervision of the union had run its course.
The union also noted that Senator Hillary Clinton, Obama's Democratic rival, suggested that she might support ending the union's consent decree with the federal government when she spoke to the Teamsters' general executive board last year.
"You can't go around dragging the ball and the chain of the past," Clinton said on that occasion - the March 27, 2007, meeting of the board - according to an audio tape that the union made available. "And I think that's true for anybody, any organization, any individual," she continued. "And so I would be very open to looking at that, and to saying, 'What are we trying to accomplish here?' and see what the answers were. At some point, you turn the page and go on."
Bret Caldwell, the communications director for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said there was "no link whatsoever" between his union's endorsement of Obama and the candidate's statements about federal supervision.
"You're going to be hard-pressed to find any political figure saying we should be under the consent decree," Caldwell said.
The decree is a 19-year-old agreement between the union and the federal government, under which government-appointed monitors have worked to root out mob influence from the union, which has 1.4 million members. Judge Loretta Presca of US District Court in Manhattan officially oversees the consent decree, and Caldwell said that career anticorruption officials in the Justice Department, not the White House, would decide whether to petition Presca to end the decree.
Caldwell was reacting to an article yesterday in The Wall Street Journal that asserted Obama won the Teamsters' endorsement after he privately told the Teamsters, according to campaign and union officials, that he supported ending the federal oversight.
Bill Burton, chief spokesman for the Obama campaign, called the article in the Journal "surprisingly sensational."
"Obama's position on this is old news," he said.
The Clinton campaign suggested that Obama contradicted himself by saying yesterday on ABC's "Good Morning America," "You know, I wouldn't make any blanket commitments."
Burton responded, "Despite the sensational nature of this ridiculous story and the Clinton attack, Obama has not said he would take the Teamsters out of the consent decree - he's said it has run its course."
Officials with the Teamsters and the Obama campaign said yesterday that Obama had told Teamster officials in the Midwest last summer that he believed the consent decree had run its course.
"Obama has indicated his support of the Teamsters' position to end their consent decree," Caldwell said. "That's a whole lot different from saying he would end the consent decree. No candidate would ever say that. It makes no sense that anybody would go there with that."
