John Kerry Gets Backing From AFL-CIO
Democratic front-runner John Kerry earned the endorsement of the AFL-CIO Thursday, with the head of organized labor saying “the time has come to unite behind one man, one leader, one candidate.”
Amid chants of “Kerry! Kerry!,” the Massachusetts senator welcomed the support of a formidable ally as he tries to blunt rival John Edwards’ challenges to his position on trade.
“Today we stand united in a common cause and that common cause is not just to defeat George Bush, but it is to put our country back on track, on the road of prosperity, the road of fairness, the road of jobs,” Kerry told the crowd.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called Kerry a friend of the working man as he urged labor to stand with one candidate. The AFL-CIO, comprised of 64 unions representing more than 13 million U.S. workers, is planning an unprecedented effort to mobilize their members to vote for Kerry.
In another coup for the Democrat, he was poised to pick up the backing of nine-term Georgia Rep. John Lewis, a leader in the civil rights movement whose support will be crucial in the state’s March 2 primary. Georgia has 86 delegates at stake, and Southern-bred Edwards has made it a prime target.
The AFL-CIO endorsement comes as Edwards begins a tour of key political states that have lost manufacturing jobs. He continued his criticism of Kerry for voting for the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement that many workers blame for job losses. Edwards said he opposed NAFTA during his 1998 Senate campaign.
“As Senator Kerry himself has pointed out many times during this campaign, records matter,” Edwards said. “I think there is a significant difference between us on this issue.”
But Kerry said he and Edwards have the same policy on trade. Both voted for normalized trade relations with China and both want to see labor and environmental standards addressed in trade pacts, he said.
Although Edwards said he would have voted against NAFTA, Kerry said: “He wasn’t in the Senate back then. I don’t know where he registered his vote, but it wasn’t in the Senate.”
Kerry will pick up the AFL-CIO’s endorsement despite his support for free trade, blamed by the unions for eroding their memberships and sending millions of jobs to other countries. But the unions are eager to show a united front headed into November’s election after a bruising primary that used millions of labor dollars and exposed deep cracks in the movement.
In the Democratic primaries this year, those from labor households have made up anywhere from a fourth of the vote to a third of the vote in states such as Delaware, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin with a significant labor presence, according to exit polls.
Those voters tended to support Kerry, by narrow margins in Iowa and Wisconsin, and by a substantial margins – from 20 to 40 percentage points in Missouri and Delaware.
The labor vote has been a significant part of the Democratic base, with union members voting for Al Gore over George Bush by about a 2-to-1 margin in 2000, according to exit polls. Those in labor households made up a quarter of the vote, and they went for Gore by almost as big a margin.
Looking ahead to the general election, Teamsters President James P. Hoffa said Kerry has evolved on the issue of trade and has the best chance of beating President Bush.
“He might not be there yet, but I think the more he campaigns, the more he realizes this entire election is going to come down to jobs,” Hoffa said in an Associated Press interview Wednesday. “I think he’s moving towards that. Everybody evolves.”
The Teamsters originally supported Dick Gephardt for president. But the Missouri congressman dropped out after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, leaving the Teamsters and 18 other unions that formed the Alliance for Economic Justice with nowhere else to go.
Hoffa said the Teamsters can waver on the trade issue for a candidate with “a total package” who can win in November.
Edwards gave Kerry a scare in Wisconsin’s primary Tuesday after highlighting his opposition to NAFTA and Kerry’s vote for it. Edwards plans to continue the criticism as the two head toward upcoming nominating contests in Ohio, New York and Georgia.
Kerry, while in Wisconsin, often faced questions about his support of free trade and the movement of jobs overseas. The trend continued Wednesday in Ohio, which Kerry said has lost 160,000 manufacturing jobs since Bush took office.
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