AFSCME tells Hillary Campaign to chill out

[peoli]

January 4, 2008
Gerald McEntee
International President
AFSCME
1625 L St. NW
Washington, DC 20036

Dear President McEntee:

We are writing to protest in the strongest terms the negative campaign
that AFSCME is conducting against Barack Obama. We do not believe that
such a wholesale assault on one of the great friends of our union was
ever contemplated when the International Executive Board (IEB) made its
decision to endorse Hillary Clinton.

In fact, when the vote to make a primary endorsement was taken by the
IEB, there appeared to be widespread agreement that we had a strong
field of Democratic candidates all of whom had made a very positive
impression on the IEB Screening Committee. The argument for endorsing
Hillary Clinton was not that her positions were better than those of the
other candidates or that she would be the better president for working
families, but rather that she was the clear frontrunner, the most likely
primary victor, and the strongest general election candidate.

While some of us did not agree with the decision to endorse Sen.
Clinton, we all recognized that once the endorsement was made, AFSCME
would have to expend a certain amount of resources on her behalf in
order to give weight to its action. While the Board was informed at
that time that procedures for independent expenditures had been
established, there was never any discussion of how those expenditures
would be made.

None of the information presented to the International Executive Board
suggested in any way that AFSCME intended to utilize its resources to
attack the other Democratic candidates. In fact, a number of IEB members
stressed–either privately or in their comments at the meeting-how much
they respected and admired Sen. Obama. And at least one Board member
spoke passionately against the Democratic candidates attacking each
other, arguing that such negativity would damage Democratic prospects in
the General Election.

We were therefore shocked and appalled to learn that our union-through
“independent expenditures”–is squandering precious resources to wage a
costly and deceptive campaign to oppose Barack Obama. As Barack’s
standing in the polls has soared, according to numerous press reports
AFSCME has spent untold dollars in Iowa and New Hampshire to send out
mailings and run radio ads whose sole purpose is to undercut his
candidacy. And now AFSCME has even registered a website with the
explicit purpose of “opposing Barack Obama.”

While we would not approve of attacks on any of the Democratic
candidates in this race, all of whom have good relationships with our
union, it is worth noting that AFSCME has chosen to attack only one of
those candidates, Barack Obama.

It is also worth noting that the campaign that AFSCME is waging against
Sen. Obama is fundamentally dishonest and inconsistent with past
positions of our union, i.e. attacking him for not forcing individuals
to purchase health care even when they can’t afford it. The ads are
misleading in attempting to give the impression that they are associated
with John Edwards rather than Hillary Clinton and in their claims that
Sen. Obama’s health care plan will exclude 15 million people when in
fact every person will have the opportunity to participate. This
dishonesty is giving our union a “black eye” among many in the media and
the progressive community.

But even if the ads were not deceptive, we would object to the use of
our union’s funds to attack a long-time friend of AFSCME members, a
candidate who has stood up strongly in support of workers’ rights from
his earliest days as an elected official, a candidate who included the
importance of the right to form unions in his announcement speech, a
candidate who has been a forceful advocate for working families.

Supposedly, we are involved in this primary because we’re concerned
about “access” to the next Democratic president. So why would we want
to develop a hostile relationship with the man who could be that next
president?

And supposedly, our union’s fundamental commitment is to electing a
Democratic president in November. So why would AFSCME’s national
political director threaten to dilute AFSCME’s efforts in the General
Election if Senator Obama is the nominee? We were stunned to see these
kind of threats being made in the national media by one of our union’s
primary spokespersons.

It is our understanding that this attack on Sen. Obama is being carried
out through independent expenditures which are not under your direction,
but that of two members of the International staff. As we understand
it, because of the legal “firewall” that exists, those two staff members
have essentially undertaken this assault on Sen. Obama entirely on their
own initiative without direction from or even consultation with you.
Certainly there has not been any direction from the International
Executive Board regarding this course of action. And we do not believe
that AFSCME members would expect or want their PEOPLE dollars spent in
this manner.

We are calling on you to take whatever action that is within your legal
purview to immediately end AFSCME’s attack campaign against Sen. Obama.
In the event that you are not able to legally compel these staff members
to cease these actions, we are calling on you to immediately take action
to discontinue such independent expenditures in order to ensure that no
further attacks occur. And we also urge you to ensure that no funds are
utilized to wage such “attack campaigns” among our own members.

The behavior of these two individuals-so clearly inimical to the
interests and allegiances of AFSCME members, as well as to institutional
democracy-arguably constitutes chargeable offenses under the
International constitution. It also calls into question the role of
such “independent expenditures” in our organization. We believe that
the IEB needs to carefully review the role that such expenditures play
in our activities in this election season and beyond.

At the last IEB meeting, when we all gathered for dinner, you raised
your glass in a toast to organizational unity, assuring us that we would
all come together to defeat the Republican candidate in November. Today
the actions of a few unelected union staff are placing that unity in
jeopardy and degrading the reputation of our great union. We urge you
to take whatever actions are necessary to see that both are restored.

In solidarity,
Ken Allen, International Vice-President, Oregon Henry Bayer,
International Vice-President, Illinois Greg Devereux, International
Vice-President, Washington Sal Luciano, International Vice-President,
Connecticut Roberta Lynch, International Vice-President, Illinois George
Popyack, International Vice-President, California Eliot Seide,
International Vice-President, Minnesota

cc: Paul Booth
Lee Saunders
Larry Scanlon
International Executive Board

http://thepage.time.com/letter-to-afscme-president-mcentee/

[wndycty]

1. WOAH NELLY!

:kick:

[NYCGirl]

2. Wow. That's pretty serious. NT

[BeyondGeography]

3. And their position gets stronger every day

Hopefully, this costs McEntee his job.

[Adelante]

4. Excellent

Labor unions should stay out of the 527 business in the primaries.

[bunnies]

5. Good. I keep getting their shit mailers and Im pretty sick of it.

FIVE anti-Obama mailers from AFSCME... SIX pro-Clinton mailers from "NH Women Vote" aka Emilys List and absolutely NOTHING from the Clinton campaign. What a joke.

[Nailzberg]

6. Holy Shitballs!

mutiny on the bounty.

[peoli]

7. This is huge

[THUNDER HANDS]

8. good on them

bravo!

[Egnever]

9. Wow

Thats strong stuff and incredibly moving.

[Honeycombe8]

10. Wow. I've never heard of anything like this happening. Glad to hear it. nt

[Yael]

11. Zoinks!!!

And it is on time.com

Maybe now Obama will back off from attacking Edwards seeing as how it was Clinton's people going after him, not John's

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. Misleading subject header for this thread

This letter isn't AFSCME communicating to the Clinton campaign. It is from some Union Officers to the AFSCME President, and clearly some of those writing opposed AFSCME's endorsement of Clinton to begin with:


"While some of us did not agree with the decision to endorse Sen.
Clinton, we all recognized that once the endorsement was made, AFSCME
would have to expend a certain amount of resources on her behalf in
order to give weight to its action..."

That doesn't detract from their right to hold the opinions they have about subsequent AFSCME efforts to support Clinton in the Primaries. The argument they present could be made by someone supporting Clinton also - and perhaps one or more of the signers did support Clinton, that is unclear. But this letter represents an internal Union dispute. As an outsider I am not in a position to know whether some AFSCME supporters of Obama or Edwards are being less than pure in their motivations here. That is to say I am not in a position to guess whether some would be equally upset if it was a candidate who they supported who was benefiting from the AFSCME ads rather than one they opposed.

And in no way is this letter about or to the actual Clinton campaign itself.

[K Gardner]

15. What part of the letter did you not read? This is in no way good for the Clinton Campaign.

[Tom Rinaldo]

16. What part of my post did you not read?

I think I cite the facts more accurately than your OP title. And I never said this was good for the Clinton campaign. I have no doubt they would be happier without it.

[Adelante]

17. You're right, of course, Tom

It's not telling the Clinton campaign anything except as a telegraphed message, possibly. However, an unusual look inside a labor brass to brass dispute. The labor endorsements have largely been problematic this primary season, lots of discord all around. They would have done better to get in at the GE stage and save their money for then. Also, I'm completely fed up with these 527s being used against Democrats and I assure you I would be if it were being done for Obama. When does campaign finance integrity ever get to mean a damned thing to us? Feh.

[K Gardner]

13. Oh. My. God. Is this for real? Will the MSM cover this FULLY if we send them 10,000 copies of it?

I hope they pull their support entirely.

[IndianaGreen]

14. To be accurate, this is an internal AFSCME dispute regarding electoral tactics

The Hillary campaign is going on its merry way to its next defeat. What is happening is that some elements associated with AFSCME, not the Hillary campaign, have decided to take the low row in support of the candidate endorsed by AFSCME.

AFSCME will have to resolve this matter among its members. I am certain that if Obama wins New Hampshire, and he wins decisively, that there is going be a lot of soul searching among those unions that backed the losing candidates.

By the life of me, I still haven't gotten the 2004 AFL-CIO endorsement of John Kerry, who voted for NAFTA, instead of endorsing Dennis Kucinich who voted against it.