Howard Fineman has a story up saying AFSCME will endorse Hillary Clinton next week:
I’m told by labor sources that the endorsement will come next Thursday after a series of AFSCME committee meetings. The union, whose members by definition are no strangers to politics, has 30,000 members in the crucial caucus state of Iowa, plus 90,000 in Michigan and 110,000 in Florida – two other “early” states in the nomination process.
And so the Clinton Family Machine grinds on. The president of AFSCME, Gerald McEntee, goes back a long way with the Clintons, to the early stages of the 1992 presidential campaign. McEntee took a flier on a then-obscure governor of Arkansas. The AFSCME endorsement provided Bill Clinton with an important early foothold in a labor movement that had doubts about him. Not surprisingly, McEntee became a White House favorite.
Fineman claims that Bill personally lobbied McEntee and had a lot to do with this endorsement.
Clearly any Democrat would love to get the AFSCME endorsement, and I'd be lying if I said I think it's irrelevant. Yet the largest union in Iowa's recent track record (Dean, Blouin) doesn't suggest that its foot soldiers can deliver the goods.
On Labor Day two women who are very involved in AFSCME in Iowa told me that there was strong support for Edwards and Obama as well as for Hillary within the union's ranks.
It will be interesting to see how much AFSCME is able to add to Hillary's ground game here.
Anyone out there know more about the inner workings of AFSCME in Iowa? How helpful do you think this endorsement will be?