Why did AFSCME and SEIU decide on Dean?
by kos
Wed Nov 12, 2003 at 03:16:38 PM PDT
Dean assidiously courted the SEIU and AFSCME locals, while none of the other candidates could be bothered. AFSCME was sold on Clark, until his organizational problems and abandonment of Iowa forced them to reconsider.
One new bit of information -- after AFSCME gave up on Clark, it seriously considered Gephardt. The courtship was so strong, indeed, that Gep assumed the endorsement was his.
The move stunned labor and political insiders and left some of Dean's rivals furious. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), who has the support of 20 unions, believed he would get the AFSCME endorsement and was particularly upset. According to one person, he fumed that McEntee had just "turned over the country to the Republicans for four more years."The AFSCME endorsement might've delivered the whole AFL-CIO to Gep, so the loss must've been particularly bitter.
If nothing else, this article shows the sheer competence of Dean's campaign team. While most of us would assume every candidate would spare no effort to win these unions' endorsements, reality was far different.
Last December, at one of their first meetings, Stern asked Dean if there was any way he could help him, thinking he could open some union doors to the little-known candidate. "He said, 'Well you can endorse me,' which I thought was a pretty bold, first opening comment," Stern said. "And I said, 'Well, we're a little far away from that,' and he said, 'Well, if you endorse me, I'm going to be president.' "As for Clark, I still think he would've gotten the AFSCME endorsement had he not announced an Iowa withdrawl. There was no need to make it public. They could've quietly left the state, yet continued to work on the AFSCME endorsement while their grassroot people worked on the ground.The SEIU offered all the candidates the same resources: a list of their local leadership and a warning that the route to the endorsement began not in Stern's fifth-floor office on L Street NW but through the rank and file. "Everybody got the same advice," an SEIU official said. "Howard Dean took it to heart." No other candidate came close to Dean's outreach. "Shockingly" not close, Stern said.
And had they still lost the AFSCME endorsment, well they could've pulled out of Iowa today. That decision, above all others, is still the worst made by any candidate this election.
Clark then caught his eye. "We saw Clark as a distinct possibility in terms of competing directly with Bush, particularly on the terrorism issue," he said. "We had many meetings with him. We had him go over to the AFL-CIO and meet with the political committee. But then we got, I guess you would say, somewhat disturbed by his organizational infrastructure."Given Clark's late entry into the race, he needs money, organization, and ground troops. All three could've been provided by AFSCME. Not only did Clark lose the union, but he handed it over to his chief rival.The fatal blow for Clark came when his campaign team decided last month to pull out of Iowa. The night the news was breaking, Clark called McEntee to tell him. McEntee told him he was making a terrible "strategic mistake." Last week, a Clark campaign official told another labor official that no one on the campaign had known how important Iowa was to AFSCME and McEntee -- further proof to AFSCME leaders of the weaknesses inside Clark's operation.
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