Howard Dean's Unlikely Road To a Major Boost From Labor

[ProudToBeLiberal]

Howard Dean's Unlikely Road To a Major Boost From Labor
AFSCME and SEIU Set to Announce Joint Endorsement
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 12, 2003; Page A08

When Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), arrived at the Washington condominium of Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), on the morning of Nov. 3, he had no idea they were about to transform the battle for the Democratic nomination.


McEntee, hobbled by a chipped ankle, had put out a spread of lox and bagels for Stern and the SEIU's international secretary-treasurer, Anna Burger. McEntee knew the SEIU was preparing to endorse former Vermont governor Howard Dean for president. What startled Stern was McEntee's revelation that his union also was ready to go for Dean and that he wanted the two unions to do it together.

It was a radical idea, one that would put the AFL-CIO's two largest -- and among the most politically potent -- unions behind Dean's candidacy, a move Stern later described as McEntee's "big-bang theory" of how the SEIU and AFSCME together could vault Dean above the rest of the Democratic pack in a way that acting alone might not.

This afternoon at a Washington hotel, McEntee, Stern and Dean are set to formally consummate the deal that was brokered over that Monday morning. For Dean, the endorsements showed that, even as he was building support at the grass roots, he was also playing a skillful inside game with some of the Democratic Party's most important power brokers.

.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28253-2003Nov11.html

[Rose Siding]

1. Finessing a deal between those two

speaks to Dena's diplomatic skills and increases my confidence in him.

[Demobrat]

2. Yeah, and he did it by

giving them something in common. Him. Talk about a uniter, not a divider. Nice to see the real deal in action.

[tsipple]

3. It's a Huge Win-Win-Win

That's what makes a great deal: everybody wins. I'm even more impressed.