Bonior, Edwards, Michigan and the Unions

by: philgoblue

Wed Jan 24, 2007 at 23:37:37 PM EST

Below are some excerpts, summaries and my commentary:

[David Bonior, who initially backed Dick Gephardt in 2004 before switching to Edwards after the Iowa caucuses] the former Michigan congressman from Macomb County makes it clear that the presidential contender he's working for as national campaign manager [John Edwards] has the best agenda he's seen in more than 50 years of stumping for Democrats....

When Bonior calls John Edwards his ideological "soul mate," there's reason to believe he's doing more than spouting rhetoric. Both have strong records of assisting the working class while in office and out. Both support a national health care system. Both are outspoken in their opposition to the Iraq war, calling on Congress to block funding of Bush's plan to raise troop levels, saying America should begin a phased withdrawal now.

And both have launched nonprofit groups to work to promote economic justice and advancement. Bonior launched the nonprofit group American Rights at Work. It advocates for workers and their right to organize into unions. Edwards helped set up the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

"I've watched what he's done since he's left office and certainly he not only talks the talk but walks the walk," Bonior says....

[O]ne overarching question is whether Bonior's long-established ties with organized labor will help Edwards reap union endorsements - and the valued resources, volunteers and connections that come with labor's stamp of approval.

[W]ith Edwards' current focus on the retention of manufacturing jobs and universal health care, for example, he's got a bigger base of union support than he did four years ago, according to Elizabeth Faue, a Wayne State University professor who studies labor history.

"Bonior would help him enhance those credentials and bring to him union resources, especially political resources like phone banks and volunteers, invaluable in the early, underfunded days of a presidential campaign," Faue says....

Mark Gaffney, president of the 600,000-member Michigan AFL-CIO, says he's "under orders from headquarters" not to endorse 2008 presidential candidates [but Gaffney added] "unions would be incredibly stupid not to go with John Edwards."

I should note that Svoboda also quotes Taylor Dark III, "an assistant professor of political science at Cal State University" who thinks that unions may not endorse any Democrat during the primary, but I find this unlikely given the many endorsements in 2004.

Although a nice little article, Svoboda (Russian for "Freedom" FYI) misses a few key facts:

1. Edwards will also get a great deal of Union support since he spent much of the past two years working on raising the wages of Americans by working to raise the minimum wage on the federal and state levels. He worked with his former colleague Ted Kennedy and fellow populist Bernie Sanders in Washington ( video ) and was a major leader of ACORN's (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now; a national organization representing low-income families) campaign to raise the minimum wage through state-wide ballot initiatives. Those ballot initiatives were wildly successful -- we were 6 for 6: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio.

2. Edwards has been all over America walking picket lines and rallying with union workers. Edwards stood with organized labor or walked picket lines for UNITE-HERE's Hotel Workers Rising campaign in Sacramento, San Francisco (video), Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Honolulu, with Justice for Janitors at the University of Miami, with the United Steelworkers striking against Goodyear in Akron (video), etc. and etc. Edwards has attended dozens of union rallies and conferences and has been a tireless advocate of the Employee Free Choice Act. He was a headline speaker at the AFL-CIO Conference back in July 2005, at the United Mine Workers Conference this past April, and at the Teamsters Conference this past July. In addition, Edwards has been a major backer of the Wake Up Wal-Mart campaign, including headlining a rally in Pittsburgh in August and doing a conference call in November.

3. For all this work, Edwards was awarded the Wellstone Award, an award for those elected leaders who take a strong stand for workers' freedom to form unions and who fight for social and economic justice, by the AFL-CIO in early December.

4. UNITE-HERE endorsed Edwards in 2004 and their members were conspicuously present at all the stops on Edwards' Announcement Tour.

All this and Bonior too means Edwards will almost certainly gain the support of most if not all of the Change To Win unions, and will probably also earn the UAW endorsement as long as he is still a viable winner in the summer of 2007. Indeed, Edwards is doing so well among organized American workers, though he's inoculated from getting tarred as a "sop of Big Labor," that the other side is getter nervous: See Novak's recent oped "Labor's Man in '08?".

Cross-posted at MyDD and Michigan for Edwards (where I've got all the links).