Teamsters for Obama: Truckin' but not Registerin'

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/16/teamsters_for_obama_truckin_bu.html

By Alec MacGillis

Heading into next Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama's campaign is counting on a big turnout among the nearly 300,000 Keystone State voters who have recently switched their registration to Democratic so that they can vote in the primary, which bars Republicans and independents. The campaign has been working hard to register non-Democrats drawn to Obama -- a subgroup that has helped carry him elsewhere -- and would like to think that the vast majority of new Democrats on the rolls are for him.

But traveling through the state, it's hard not to conclude, after meeting voter after voter unaware of the primary rules, that both Obama and Hillary Clinton could have done a better job in goading their supporters to register as Democrats by the March 24 deadline. And one group stands out in particular: Teamster members.

The union's president, James P. Hoffa, traveled through the state last week in a convoy of three empty freight trucks to drum up support for Obama, visiting truck depots and warehouses to tell his members why the union was backing Obama. He got a decent reception. But to what avail? At each stop, there were Teamsters who said they preferred Obama to Clinton, but weren't going to vote in the primary because they were either Republicans or independents.

You might think that one of the top benefits from a big union endorsement would be knowing that the union would do its best to make sure its members were eligible to vote in the contest at hand, particularly in a state like Pennsylvania where voters are unused to voting in a presidential primary that matters. Yet that did not seem to be the case with the Teamsters: Hoffa himself was unaware that Pennsylvania is a closed primary. He reacted with surprise when informed of that by reporters during the tour.

The union's top political liaisons said they were fully aware of the rules, and had been doing all they could to get out the word to members. But they acknowledged that there were probably Obama supporters they had missed.

FULL story at link.