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January 26, 2005 |
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Big labor
weighs in on DNC
By Hans
Nichols |
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has summoned
four of the seven candidates to be the next chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, dangling the prospect of an important
endorsement and discussing their visions for how to rebuild the
party, according to campaign and union officials.
The
private, often lengthy meetings occurred independently of
yesterday’s cattle call of all seven DNC candidates before some 50
AFL-CIO political directors, providing a clearer indication of which
candidates labor sees as viable.
Sweeney’s meetings over the past
few days with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, party strategist
Donnie Fowler, former Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas) and New Democrat
Network President Simon Rosenberg signaled the likely endorsement of
one of them by big labor, which claims to have roughly 100 members
sprinkled among the 447 delegates who will decide the race Feb.
12.
But it was still unclear if the AFL-CIO would be able to
reach the necessary consensus to make a unified endorsement.
Emerging from their meeting with political directors yesterday, the
campaigns expressed different views about whether or not the
umbrella labor organization would endorse anyone.
Gerald
McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees, is also vetting the candidates and joined
Sweeney for his meeting with Frost. Dean, Fowler and Rosenberg are
scheduled to meet with McEntee later in the week.
Sweeney’s
meetings with those four candidates do not bode well for the three
DNC aspirants who did not receive audiences with Sweeney and
McEntee: Former Rep. Tim Roemer, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb
and former Ohio state chairman David Leland were each accorded only
15 minutes with the political directors yesterday.
Fowler
confirmed his meeting with Sweeney, saying, “We did have a good
conversation, and that’s probably all I need to say.”
Several
campaigns said that a potential endorsement from the unions would be
the most crucial in the race, especially after the Democratic
Governors’ Association (DGA) decided late Thursday night not to
endorse. In addition, early support for Dean from some members of
the Association of State Democratic Chairs has sapped that group’s
ability to leverage its endorsement in the middle days of
February.
However, the certitude of a firm endorsement from
the AFL-CIO remained in doubt yesterday afternoon.
“I don’t
know and I don’t think anyone does know if they intend to make a
definitive endorsement,” Fowler said. “I don’t know if labor wants a
plurality, a majority or a consensus.”<<BR>BR>Some of
the campaigns said their reluctance to believe that an endorsement
was forthcoming sprung from the widespread shock that the DGA
declined to endorse a candidate after it conducted its own
interviews last week. Before Thursday’s DGA announcement, several
prominent red-state governors had spent the past six weeks insisting
that the DGA play a greater role in the process.
Roemer’s
camp thought that an AFL-CIO endorsement was likely, if not
imminent, but Frost’s campaign was less certain. Nearly all of the
campaigns said yesterday’s 15-minute interviews with political
directors, arranged by AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman,
were productive.
“They said, ‘We’re going to endorse.’ That’s
what they told us,” said Moses Mercado, a Roemer aide.
“The
only person who knows if they are going to endorse is Karen
Ackerman. Call her,” Webb said.
The prospects of an
endorsement may hinge on the AFL-CIO’s ability to reach a consensus
position on a single candidate, said two political directors who
wanted to remain anonymous. Absent a clear choice, the individual
unions are likely to announce their own favorites, which would carry
much less impact and be diluted by competing
endorsements.
Union sources said that Frost appeared to have
the upper hand on Dean but that if Dean appears too strong to stop,
the labor movement would be unlikely to expend capital to defeat him
and would not want to back a candidate, such as Frost, in the
process.
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