California's largest union is trying to help elect...Republicans? And the GOP is ticked

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

With 700,000 members, the SEIU is California's largest labor union and on Thursday it announced they would be doing something a bit un-SEIUish: The were starting a political action committee to help moderate Republicans reach office.

Waaaa?!? You mean the same union that spent $85 million nationally to put President Obama in the White House and were the foot soldiers for Guv Jerry Brown's winning California campaign?

Yup. SEIU California has 87,000 Republican members (216,000 Dems and 80,000 decline-to-state and others) and at Thursday's rollout of the PAC, a few of the Republican ones said they felt the party of Reagan had deserted them. Now, it is held captive by social conservatives and anti-tax types who had no interest in the art of compromising. And that -- along with extremists from the left -- were the source of the state's political gridlock.

... California Republican Party chair Tom Del Beccaro ... admitted that its existence concerned him. "We have to take it seriously and we are ready to fight this effort up and down the state. You can't underestimate the power of the public employee unions."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=90664&tsp=1