Afscme Close to Endorsing 2008 Candidate

[Omaha Steve]

Source: NY Times blog

The executive board of one of the nation’s largest and most politically potent unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, will meet tomorrow in Washington, with some union officials saying it is likely to endorse Senator Hillary Clinton, pushed by strong support from the union’s locals in New York.

But other union officials say that the union’s locals in Illinois, which favors Senator Barack Obama, and in New Mexico, which back Gov. Bill Richardson, might manage to prevent an endorsement of Mrs. Clinton. Within the union, as in many other unions, there is also considerable support for former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Ethan Rome, a spokesman for the union, said nothing has been officially decided. “I am in no position to predict or speculate what action the board will take,” he said.

If Mrs. Clinton wins the endorsement, it will give her the backing of a union that has 1.4 million members and a political budget of more than $60 million during this campaign cycle. Moreover, the union, commonly known as Afscme, has 30,000 members in Iowa, making it one of the largest unions in the state where the nation’s first caucus will be held in January. What will also help Mrs. Clinton is that the union’s president, Gerald McEntee, is expert at deploying his union’s members in political races – he hopes to have 40,000 Afscme members working as political volunteers next year. Mr. McEntee also serves as chairman of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s political committee. The labor federation is too divided to back a particular Democratic candidate in the presidential primaries.

Read more: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/afscme-close-to-endorsing-2008-candidate/