Gore Looks To Big Labor
In what would be a major boost for Al Gore's recently troubled campaign, Big Labor is poised to endorse him, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Peter Maer.
The endorsement of the 1.4 million United Food and Commercial Workers makes the overall AFL-CIO endorsement of Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign all but assured.
"The UFCW endorsement makes it look very good. Now, we just work on the rest of them to get them to endorse or abstain," said campaign chairman Tony Coelho, as he arrived late Sunday to lobby any holdouts.
AFL-CIO president John Sweeney already backs Gore.
"He's strong advocate of social policy," Sweeney told reporter Chris Stanley of CBS Station KNX Radio in Los Angeles. "He's also been out in the forefront on issues that are close to the labor movement, like the right of workers to organize."
Gore's opponent, Bill Bradley, wants the unions to delay an endorsement but The New York Times quotes Sweeney as saying Gore will win Labor's early backing.
"We want this to be as solid an endorsement and confirmation of where our members are on the issues [as possible] and we want to maintain the solidarity of the labor movement," he told KNX.
The United Auto Workers, Teamsters, Electrical Workers, and, perhaps, the Machinists, remained uncertain votes on the question of endorsing Gore now or later, labor and political operatives said. But these unions do not represent enough votes to block an endorsement, which, under convention rules proposed by Sweeney, must be approved by unions representing two-thirds of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members.
The executive council, made up of presidents of the AFL-CIO's largest unions, and the full convention of some 700 delegates vote on Wednesday. Gore made plans for a victorious acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Convention Center after those votes.
Sunday's unanimous endorsement of Gore by the board of the United Food and Commercial Workers followed back-to-back calls to UFCW President Doug Dority from Gore and Bradley. Labor officials said the urgent, personal calls were typical of the intense lobbying that has gone into this high-stakes endorsement and the army of grass-roots campaign volunteers that it carries.
As late as Saturday night, Dority, a Gore supporter, was nonetheless leaning toward the view that "an endorsement a couple of months from now may be the most impactful way to proceed" after building greater consensus, said Greg Denier, Dority's senior assistant.
Another call from Gore, and Dority was tipped to the vice president's position. Before Sweeney arrived to press Gore's case at a private Sunday-morning meeting of the UFCW board, Dority asked his board to join him in supporting an early nod to Gore.
Denier explained that the news media had driven the stakes so high that the UFCW didn't want a "no" vote to be misinterpreted "as weak support for Gore."
f all goes as planned, it will be one of the earliest presidential endorsements by the AFL-CIO since it gave then-Vice President Walter Mondale the nod in 1983.