Labor to Hillary's pollster Mark Penn: Sever connections to his PR firm or leave Hillary's campaign

[flpoljunkie]

Clinton aide's PR firm is under attack
Labor activists say it does anti-union work. They want Mark Penn to quit the company or her presidential campaign.

By Peter Nicholas, Times Staff Writer
August 7, 2007

WASHINGTON — As she presses for a coveted endorsement from organized labor, presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is facing a backlash over the business ties of a top campaign aide who has angered the labor movement.

Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are to speak today at an AFL-CIO candidate forum in Chicago. An endorsement promises brigades of union workers to knock on doors, drive people to the polls, and staff phone banks targeting potential voters.

Labor activists demand that Clinton give the aide, Mark J. Penn, a choice: sever connections to the public relations firm that he heads or leave the campaign.

Apart from working as a strategist and pollster for Clinton, Penn is worldwide president and chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, which has more than 100 offices in 59 countries. The firm's clients include Cintas Corp. of Cincinnati, which manufactures and launders corporate uniforms. With Burson-Marsteller's assistance, Cintas has staved off a push to unionize its workforce, and the public relations firm's website at one point boasted of its work in parrying union pressure.

"Companies cannot be caught unprepared by organized labor's coordinated campaigns," the section read, "whether they are in conjunction with organizing or contract negotiating…. That is why we have developed a comprehensive communications approach for clients when they face any type of labor situation."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-penn7aug07,1,6916995.story

[Larkspur]

1. Mark Penn is a Karl Rove wannabe

Good for Labor to demand his removal from Hillary's campaign or for him to quite his firm.

[Virginia Dare]

2. Hillary Clinton has a snowball's chance in hell at getting the union endorsement..n/t

[Stop Cornyn]

3. Penn sucks. He thinks he's a "Karl Rove" but he's just a "Dick Morris." His goal and the reality

both show that he's a cheap suit inflated with gas and hot air.